He established a furniture factory under a spreading apple tree at a respectable distance from the house, and began to remodel the black-walnut relics which were evidence of his kinsman’s poor taste. He took many a bed apart, scraped off the disfiguring varnish, sandpapered and oiled the wood, and put it together in new and beautiful forms. He made several tables, a cabinet, a bench, half a dozen chairs, a set of hanging shelves, and even aspired to a desk, which, owing to the limitations of the material, was not wholly successful.
Dorothy and Elaine sat in rocking-chairs under the tree and encouraged him while he worked. One of them embroidered a simple design upon a burlap curtain while the other read aloud, and together they planned a shapely remodelling of the Jack-o’-Lantern. Fortunately, the woodwork was plain, and the ceilings not too high.
“I think,” said Elaine, “that the big living room with the casement windows will be perfectly beautiful. You couldn’t have anything lovelier than this dull walnut with the yellow walls.”
Whatever Mrs. Carr’s thoughts might be, this simple sentence was usually sufficient to turn the current into more pleasant channels. She had planned to have needless partitions taken out, and make the whole lower floor into one room, with only a dining-room, kitchen, and pantry back of it. She would take up the unsightly carpets, over which impossible plants wandered persistently, and have them woven into rag rugs, with green and brown and yellow borders. The floor was to be stained brown and the pine woodwork a soft, old green. Yellow walls and white net curtains, with the beautiful furniture Dick was making, completed a very charming picture in the eyes of a woman who loved her home.
Outspeeding it in her fancy was the finer, truer living which she believed lay beyond. Some day she and Harlan, alone once more, with the cobwebs of estrangement swept away, should begin a new and happier honeymoon in the transformed house. When the book was done—ah, when the book was done! But he was not reading any part of it to her now and would not let her begin copying it on the typewriter.
“I’ll do it myself, when I’m ready,” he said, coldly. “I can use a typewriter just as well as you can.”
Dorothy sighed, unconsciously, for the woman’s part is always to wait patiently while men achieve, and she who has learned to wait patiently, and be happy meanwhile, has learned the finest art of all—the art of life.
“Now,” said Dick, “that’s a peach of a table, if I do say it as shouldn’t.”
They readily agreed with him, for it was low and massive, built on simple, dignified lines, and beautifully finished. The headboards of three ponderous walnut beds and the supporting columns of a hideous sideboard had gone into its composition, thus illustrating, as Dorothy said, that ugliness may be changed to beauty by one who knows how and is willing to work for it.
The noon train whistled shrilly in the distance, and Dorothy started out of her chair. “She’s afraid,” laughed Dick, instantly comprehending. “She’s afraid somebody is coming on it.”