"That's just what I sha'n't do. Don't you see that the bureau and washstand and the bedstead and towel-frame and all the rest fill up nearly all the space I have left for a border. What's the use of buying carpet for them to stand on?"
May shook her head. She was not capable of such original reasoning. In her code the thing that generally had been always should be.
"Well, it seems rather queer to me—and not very comfortable," she said. "And I can't think why you painted those shelves over the mantel instead of covering them with something,—chintz, now. They would have looked awfully pretty with pinked ruffles, you know, and long curtains to draw across the front like that picture you saw in 'Home made Happy.'"
"Oh, I shouldn't have liked that at all. I should hate the idea of calico curtains to a mantel-piece. It would always seem as if they were going to catch fire."
"But they couldn't. You don't have any fire," persisted May.
"No, but they would seem so. And I want my fire to look as if it could be lighted at any minute."
Eleanor's instinct was based on an "underlying principle." It is a charming point in any fireplace to look as if it were constantly ready for use. Inflammable draperies, however pretty, militate against this look, and so are a mistake in taste, especially in our changeful New England climate, where, even in midsummer, a little blaze may at any moment be desirable to cheer a dull day or warm a chilly evening.
But May herself was forced to admit that the room looked "comfortable" when the square of pretty ingrain carpeting of a warm golden brown was tacked into its place, and the furniture brought back from the attic and arranged. Things at once fell into harmonious relation with each other, as in a well-thought-out room they should do. The creamy, bright paper made a pleasant background; there was an air of cheerfulness even on cloudy days. May could not understand the reason of this, or why on such days her reds and pinks and drabs and greens and blues never seemed to warm her out of dulness.
"I am sure my colors are a great deal brighter than yours," she would say; "I cannot imagine why they don't light up better."
Eleanor did not try for many evanescent prettinesses. In fact, she could not, even had she wished to do so, for her money was all spent; so, as she told her mother, she contented herself with having secured things that would wear, and a pretty color. She put short curtains of "scrim" at her windows, and plain serviceable towels which could be often washed on her bureau and table-tops. The bureau was enlivened by a large, square scarlet pincushion, the only bit of finery in which Eleanor indulged. Amid the subdued tone of its surroundings it looked absolutely brilliant, like the famous red wafer which the great Turner stuck in the foreground of his dim-tinted landscape, and which immediately seemed to take the color out of the bright pictures on either side.