“There! now they do look as if someone loved them,” said Ruth to herself, straightening her weary back, and brushing the soil off her fingers.
After the Thorntons’ more casual work was over, she had made a careful round of the beds, giving those dainty finishing touches which add so largely to the effect. Now her work was finished, and, seeing Mrs Thornton and Mollie standing together, she rose stiffly, and walked across the lawn to meet them.
“Have you finished? I think I have really come to the end of the beds, and everything looks delightfully ‘cared for’! I shall bring my camera down on Thursday, Mrs Thornton, and take some snapshots of your guests in pretty corners of the garden. Did you know I had taken the photographic fever? I bought myself a really, really nice camera, and I want to take mother a collection of views of the Court when we go home. She will value it more than anything else, for I shall snap all her favourite bits in the grounds, and take the interiors with time-exposures. They will be nice to look at when we are away, and someone else reigns in our stead!”
She shrugged her shoulders as she spoke, and Mrs Thornton patted her arm with kindly encouragement.
“Nonsense—nonsense! You are tired, dear, and that makes you look at things through blue spectacles. Come into the house, and we will have tea, and discuss the great question of where my guests are to sit, if anything so dreadful as a shower should happen! Two armchairs, you see, half a dozen small ones, more or less unstable (if anyone over seven stone attempts the green plush there’ll be a catastrophe!), and one sofa. Now, put your inventive brains together, and tell me what I can do. There is plenty of room for more furniture, but no money to buy it, alas!”
“Let them sit on the floor in rows; it would be ever so sociable!” said naughty Mollie.
Ruth knitted her brows thoughtfully.
“Have you any chair-beds? We could make quite elegant lounges of them, pushed up against the wall, covered with rugs and banked up with cushions; or even out of two boards propped up at the sides, if the worst came to the worst!”
“Oh–oh! Chair-beds! What an inspiration! I have two stored away in the attic. They are old and decrepit, but that doesn’t matter a bit. They will look quite luxurious when the mattresses are covered with sofa-blankets; but I don’t know where the cushions are to come from. I only possess these three, and they must stay where they are to hide the patches in the chintz. I might perhaps borrow—”
“No, don’t do anything of the kind. Use your pillows, and Ruth and I will make frilled covers out of art-muslin, at threepence a yard. They will look charming, and lighten up the dark corners. We are used to that sort of work at home. We made a cosy corner for the drawing-room out of old packing-cases and a Liberty curtain, and it is easier and more comfortable than any professional one I ever saw. The silly upholsterers always make the seats too high and narrow. We made a music ottoman of the inside, and broke our backs lining it, and our nails hammering in the tacks; but, dear me, how we did enjoy it, and how proud we were when it was accomplished for seventeen-and-six!