John Strange Winter

We train up our children, kindly or harshly, according to our temperaments, that they may walk along a certain road. The road is usually one of several, and it is an almost invariable chance that our children will take one contrary to that of our choice.

Let there be no mistake about the Whittaker girls. They were not in any way deceived or blinded by their mother’s partiality for them.

“There is one thing you and I have got to make up our minds to, Maudie,” said Julia, the day after they had had the little serious talk with their mother. “It’s one thing to climb up a wall, it’s another to topple over on the other side. If we don’t look out what we are doing, we shall topple over the other side of our wall.”

“I don’t understand you,” said Maudie; “at least not quite.”

“Well, it’s like this,” remarked Julia. “We have got to take everything that mother says as partly being mother’s way. I don’t know whether you have ever noticed it, Maudie, but mother never half does things. That’s why she’s such a splendid worker on all these committees she goes in for. Mother calls us beauties; she says you are purely Greek in type, and that I am a cross between the French and Irish styles of beauty. Well, that’s as may be. We can’t go against mother; it would be rude—besides, it wouldn’t be any good—but you and I needn’t stuff each other up—or even ourselves for that matter with the idea that we are going to set the world on fire with our faces. We sha’n’t,” she ended conclusively.

“I think you are rather nice-looking, Ju,” said Maudie.

“Do you? I don’t agree with you. But that’s neither here nor there. As to your being purely Greek—well, don’t understand that either. I never saw a Greek that was the least little bit like you. You remember those girls at Madame’s? Why, they had a touch of the East about them; they were next door to natives. I used to talk to them about it. I told them that I never knew Greeks were so dark—I always had an idea Greeks were fair people—but Zoe declared they were the common or garden pattern, and that a fair Greek was a thing almost unheard of.”

“That’s all rubbish and nonsense!” said Maudie in a more dominant tone than was her wont. “Do you remember Maurice Dolmanides?”

“The man who was at the boarding-house in Paris? Of course I do.”

“Well, he was ginger.”

“So he was—yes. And he was a Greek, wasn’t he? All the same, Maudie, he had a Scotch mother, you know.”

“Ah, I see. Yes, that does make a difference.”

“I assure you,” Julia went on, “that I talked it over with Zoe and Olga, and they both declared that they were the ordinary Greek type—round features, round black eyes, masses of coal-black hair, palest of olive skins. There’s a touch of the Orient about it. But you, you are blonde; your nose has got a bump in the middle of it, your mouth is far from Greek—”

“Oh, my mouth,” cried Maudie, with a look at herself in the glass, “my mouth is a regular shark’s mouth!”

At this the two girls fell to laughing as heartily as if they were discussing the merits of some animal rather than one of themselves.

“In short,” Julia went on, when they had somewhat recovered themselves, “in short, you and I have got to consider, first and foremost, what we can do to be original. We are not beauties, although mother, poor dear lady, persists that we have inherited an amount of beauty which is absolutely fatal. Dress us in an ordinary manner and we should look horrid. If we want to be any good in the world at all, we must do something a bit out of the common.”

“Follow in our mother’s footsteps?” said Maudie.

“Not a bit of it. What good does mother do by all her strenuous efforts to improve the condition of women? Is mother’s condition one that requires improvement? Not a bit of it. Is our condition one that requires improvement? Not a bit of it.”

“We don’t know yet,” said Maudie in a quiet, sensible tone.

“No, we don’t. And until we get married and see how we get on with our respective husbands, we shall have to remain in our ignorance. One thing is very certain, Maudie, that neither you nor I are girls that can go in leading-strings. We have been made original and unconventional and independent; in fact, originality and unconventionalism and independence have been rammed down our throats from the time we could remember anything. It has been the key-note of mother’s life. But we have, before we can do anything in our own set, to see to our room and arrange all our things. Now that old playroom is just as we left it. It’s an awfully jolly room, capable of great things in the way of adornment. We must get daddy to have it done up for us, and to give us a certain amount for furnishing it. And we must have a piano.”

“A piano?” said Maudie. “I don’t think a piano is at all a necessary article. Clean paper and paint, a decent something to walk on—yes, that we can fairly ask father to give us, and I’m sure he won’t grudge it; but seeing that neither you, nor I, nor mother knows one tune from another, and that there is a piano that cost a hundred and twenty guineas in the drawing-room, I don’t think it would be fair to ask father to spend even half that sum in such an instrument for our exclusive use.”

“Perhaps you are right,” said Julia. “I must think that over. But a piano we must have. If we are going to have an At Home day we must be able to have music, even though we can’t make it ourselves.”

“But why not have our At Home day in mother’s drawing-room?”

“Because that would very quickly degenerate into mother’s At Home day, and you know what mother’s At Home day means—seven women, two girls, and half a man. No, if we have an At Home day of our own, it must be in our own room. I’ll tell you what we’ll do, Maudie, we’ll go up to town and choose a little piano somewhere, the kind of piano that you see in the Army and Navy Stores’ list as suitable for yachts, and we’ll pay for it out of our allowance.”

“But we can’t.”

“Yes, we can. We can take three years to pay for it. If we spend thirty pounds on a piano, that’s quite enough. People can’t walk into your room and ask you whether your piano cost thirty pounds or ninety pounds. It wouldn’t be very much out of our allowance for each of us to pay fifteen pounds in three years—only five pounds a year—then the piano will be ours.”

“And suppose one of us gets married?” asked Maudie.

“Well, if one of us gets married, she must leave it for the other one.”

“And the other one?”

“Well, if the other one gets married, she must leave it for the use of the home.”

“Oh, I see.”

“Well,” said Julia, briskly, putting down the book that she held in her hand, “let us go into the playroom and just cast our eyes over its capabilities.”

So the two girls went off to their old playroom, which was just as they had left it when they had departed for their school in Paris two years before.

“It’s a good shape,” said Julia. “That bow window and those two little windows on that side give it great possibilities. We ought to have a cosy corner there.”

“That will cost five-and-twenty guineas,” said Maudie.

“Oh no; I mean a rigged-up cosy corner. We’ll take in Home Blither for a few weeks. We are sure to get an idea out of that.”

“I’ve never,” remarked Maudie, “seen anything about a cosy corner in Home Blither that did not combine a washstand with it. We don’t want a washstand, Julia.”

“No, not in this room—certainly not. I propose that we have a delicate French paper with bouquets of roses—perhaps a white satin stripe with bouquets of roses tied up with delicate blue or mauve ribbons. That will give us an interesting background to work upon.”

“Then for the curtains?” said Maudie.

“Well, for the curtains I should have—well, now, what should I have? Well, I’ll tell you. I should have chintz.”

“I shouldn’t; I should have cretonne. It will look warmer.”

“We don’t want to look warm; we want to look dainty. Or we might have lace curtains.”

“Yes, we might. And we might have those lovely dewdrops to hang in front of the window, but of course it looks into the garden, and it would be rather a pity to shut the garden out in any way.”

“Yes,” said Julia. “A little desk there,” she went on; “white wood, you know, the kind of thing that you get in the High Street all ready for painting, or poker work. We might sketch all over it, or get our friends to autograph it.”

“Autograph it?”

“Yes. And then varnish it over with a very clear, colorless varnish. It would look very beautiful, and it would be original too.”

“Yes, it would be original. Supposing we have all the furniture like that?”

“No, no, not all the furniture—only the writing-table. There’s something appropriate about autographs on a writing-table,” Julia declared.

Eventually Mr. Whittaker agreed to have the room done up according to the girls’ ideas, and to give them a certain sum for furnishing it according to their own taste.

“Now I do beg, dear Alfie,” said Mrs. Whittaker, who, in spite of her desire that her girls should be original, was a person who loved to have a finger in every pie, “now I do beg, Alfie, that you will not be too lavish. Have the room thoroughly done up according to their ideas; that is only right. I like the notion of delicate bouquets of roses, tied together with a sky-blue ribbon, on a white satin stripe. It is elegant, refined, and capable of great things in the general effect. I would have a suitable ceiling paper to match, and you must give them a pretty electric light arrangement in place of this simple one. After that, leave everything to the girls. Yes, dears, the paint will have to be touched up. It won’t require newly painting, because, you see, it has been white, and it is not in very bad condition. So have it entirely done, Alfie—ceiling, walls, paint—then give them a sum of money, just enough for them to exercise their ingenuity in making it go the very furthest.”

“I’ll give you thirty pounds,” said Alfred Whittaker, slapping his pocket and thrusting his hand into it with an air of firm determination. “Thirty pounds after I have done the decoration, and no more. If you can’t make a room look smart with thirty pounds, you don’t deserve to have a room of your own.”

“All right, daddy. Thank you very much,” said Julia.

“Yes, daddy dear, we’ll make it do very nicely,” said Maudie.

And then they sat down to hold another council of war.

“Maudie,” said Julia, “thirty pounds won’t go very far.”

“No,” replied Maudie. “We can’t possibly buy a carpet under ten pounds for a room of that size.”

“Well, then, I’ll tell you what we’ll do—we’ll polish the floor, and we’ll have two or three nice rugs. We shall get them for about a guinea or thirty shillings apiece. And we must go in for bamboo.”

“Oh, I hate bamboo,” Maudie cried.

“We could enamel it white.”

“H’m—bamboo enamelled white,” said Maudie, dubiously; “it doesn’t sound particularly fascinating.”

“Well, that was rather a nice stand we saw up at Derry & Tom’s the other day, wasn’t it, with three sticks of bamboo arranged so as to hold a pot in the middle? Enamelled white it would be rather fetching, particularly if we had a nice trailing plant in it. Then we’ve got to get a fender; and they’ve got some lovely basket chairs at Barker’s, I know they have; and I saw some tables at two-and-eleven in a shop down the High Street—I don’t know what the name is. Oh, we shall find it easy enough; you can do a good deal at furnishing a room when you can get a table for two-and-eleven.”

“Yes, I daresay you’re right. You’ve got a wonderful headpiece, Ju. Then, I’ll tell you what we’ll do. We’ll get our room papered and painted, and then we’ll have the floor done up—that’s all quite plain sailing—and then we shall be better able to decide whether we’ll have a small square of carpet or two or three rugs. We needn’t have very expensive ones; it isn’t as if we had got a lot of boys to come clumping about with muddy boots, is it?”

“No, there’s something in that. And I’ll tell you what, Maudie—if we have chintz for the curtains, we could have chintz covers for the big old couch and the large armchair that we had in the room from the beginning. One thing is very certain,” Julia continued impressively, “that we shall have to weigh every penny before we spend it.”