NINETY-THREE and Ninety-four were two houses standing side by side in the outskirts of a country town, and to all outward appearance as like each other as two peas. They were the pioneer buildings of a small brick block; but as yet the rest of the block had not been built, which was all the better for Ninety-three and Ninety-four, and gave them more space and outlook. Both had French roofs with dormer windows; both front doors "grained" to represent oak, the graining falling into a pattern of regular stripes like a watered silk; and across the front of each, on the ground floor, ran the same little sham balcony of varnished iron, – balconies on which nothing heavier than a cat could venture without risk of bringing the frail structures down into the street.

Inside, the houses differed in trifling respects, as houses must which are under the control of differing minds; but in one point they were precisely alike within, – which was, that the back room of the third story of each was occupied by a girl of seventeen.

It is of these two rooms that I want to tell the story. So much has been said and written of late years about home decoration and the methods of producing it, that I think some other girls of seventeen with rooms to make pretty may like to hear of how Eleanor Pyne and May Blodgett managed theirs.

Eleanor was the girl at Ninety-three. She and May were intimate friends, or considered themselves such. Intimacy is a word very freely used among young people who have not learned what a sacred word it is and how very much it means. They had grown up together, had gone to the same schools, shared most of their pleasures as well as their lessons, sent each other Christmas presents and birthday cards every year, and consulted in advance over their clothes, spring bonnets, and fancy work, which, taken all together, may be said to make an intimacy according to the general use of the term. So it was natural that, when May, stirred by the sense of young-ladyhood just at hand and by the modern impulse for house decoration, desired to "do over" and beautify her room, Eleanor should desire it also.

Making a room pretty nowadays would seem easy enough where there is plenty of money for the purpose. There is only the embarrassment of choice, though that is so embarrassing at times as to lead one to envy those grandmothers of ours, who, with only three or four patterns of everything to choose from, and those all ugly, had but the simple task of selecting the least ugly! But in the case of my two girls there was this further complication, that very little money could be used for adornment of the bedrooms. Mrs. Blodgett and Mrs. Pyne had consulted over the matter, and the decision was that Eleanor and May might each spend twenty dollars, and no more.

What can be done with twenty dollars? It will buy one pretty article of furniture. It will pay for a "Kensington Art Square," with perhaps enough left for cheese-cloth curtains. It will paper a room, or paint it. You can easily dispose of the whole of it, if you will, in a single portière. And here were two rooms which needed renovation from floor to ceiling!

The rooms were of the same size. Both had two windows looking north and an ample closet. The most important difference lay in the fact that the builder of the houses, for some reason known only to himself, had put a small fireplace across the corner of Eleanor's room, and had put none in May's. Per contra May's room was papered, which she considered a counterbalancing advantage; but as the paper was not very pretty, Eleanor did not agree with her.

Many were the consultations held between the two girls. And just here, before they had actually begun operations, a piece of good luck befell both of them. Eleanor's grandmother presented her with an easy-chair, an old one, very shabby as to cover, but a good chair still, and very comfortable. And almost simultaneously a happily timed accident occurred to Mrs. Blodgett's spare-room carpet, which made the buying of a new one necessary, and the old one was given to May. It was a still respectable Brussels, with rather a large medallion figure on a green ground. It did not comport very well with the blue and drab paper on the walls, and the medallions looked very big on the smaller floor; but May cared nothing for that, and she accepted her windfall gleefully.

"It will save ever and ever so much," she said, joyously. "Carpets do cost so. Poor Eleanor, you will have to get one for yourself, unless you can persuade your cook to upset an oil lamp on one of your mother's."

"Oh, Annie is too careful; she could never be persuaded to do such a thing as that," laughed Eleanor. "Besides, I don't want her to. I don't like any of mother's carpets very much."

"Well, I don't care what sort of a carpet it is so long as I don't have to buy it," said May.

"I do," replied Eleanor.

She did. There was this great point of difference between the friends. Eleanor possessed by nature that eye for color and sense of effects which belongs to what people call the "artistic" temperament. May had none of this, and did not even understand what it meant. To her all reds and olives and yellows were alike; differences of tone, inflections of tint, were lost on her untrained and unappreciative vision. She was unconscious of this deficiency, so it did not annoy her, and as Eleanor had a quiet and pleasant way of differing with her, they never quarrelled. But none the less did each hold to her own point of view and her own opinion.

So, while May read eagerly all the articles in the secular and religious papers which show how girls and women have made plain homes cheaply charming by painting sunflowers and Black-Eyed Susans on ink-bottles and molasses-jugs, converting pork-barrels into arm-chairs with the aid of "excelsior" and burlaps, and "lighting up" dark corners with six-cent fans, and was fired with an ambition to do the same, Eleanor silently dissented from her enthusiasms. She was ready to help, however, even when she did not agree; and May, glad of the help, did not notice much the lack of sympathy. It is often so in friendships. One does the talking and one the listening. One kisses while the other holds out the cheek, as the French proverb puts it; one lays down the law and the other differs without disputing it, so both are satisfied.

It was so in this case. Eleanor was doing a great deal of quiet thinking and planning while May chattered by the hour over her projects.

"What I want my room to be," she told her friend, "is gay and dressy. I hate dull-looking rooms, and having no carpet or paper to buy I can get lots of chintz. There's a lovely pattern on the bargain counter at Shell's for fourteen cents, all over roses. I am going to have a whole piece of it, and just cover up all that awful old yellow furniture of mine entirely. The bureau is to have little rods across the front and curtains to hide the drawers, like that picture in the 'Pomologist,' and I shall make a soapbox footstool and a barrel chair, and have lambrequins and a drapery over my bed, and a coverlet and valances. The washstand I have decided to do in burlaps with cat-tails embroidered on the front, and a splasher with a pattern of swans and, 'Wash and be clean.' Won't it be lovely?

"You know those black-walnut book-shelves of mine," she went on, after a pause; "well, I am going to cover them in white muslin with little pleated ruffles on the edges and pink satin bows at the corners. Sarah Stanton has promised to paint me a stone bottle with roses to put on top, and Bell Short is working me a wall banner. It's going to be the gayest little place you ever saw."

"Won't the white muslin soil soon, and won't so much chintz get very dusty?" objected Eleanor.

"Oh, they can be washed," replied May, easily.

So the big roll of chintz was ordered home, and for a fortnight she and Eleanor spent all their spare time in hemming ruffles, tacking pleatings on to wooden shelves, and putting up frills and curtains. When all was done the room looked truly very fresh and gay. The old yellow "cottage furniture" had vanished under its raiment of chintz and was quite hidden. Even the foot-board of the bed had its slip-cover and flounce. The books were ranged in rows on the muslin shelves with crisp little ruffles above and below. Flowers and bright-colored zig-zags of crewels adorned everything. Wherever it was possible, a Japanese fan was stuck on the wall, or a bow of ribbon, or a little embroidered something, or a Christmas card. Scarfs of one sort or another were looped across the corners of the pictures, tidies innumerable adorned the chair-backs and table-tops. There was a general look of fulness and of an irresistible tendency in things to be of no particular use except to make spots of meaningless color and keep the eye roving restlessly to and fro.

"Isn't it just lovely?" said May, as she stood in the doorway to take in the effect. "Now, Eleanor Pyne, do say it's lovely."

"It's as bright as can be," answered Eleanor, cordially. "Only I can't bear to think of all these pretty things getting dusty. They're so nice and fresh now."

"Oh, they can easily be dusted," said May. "You are a perfect crank about dust, Elly. Now, here is my account. I think I have managed pretty well, don't you?"

The account ran thus: —

"There's twenty cents left over," explained May, as she finished reading the items. "That will just get a yellow ribbon to tie round the handle of my clothes-brush. Eleanor, you've been ever so good to help me so much. When are you going to begin your room? You must let me help you now."

"I began this morning."

"Have you really begun? What did you get?"

"Oh, I didn't get anything. This first thing isn't to cost anything at all."

"Why, what is it?"

"You know that ugly fire-board in front of my fireplace? I have taken it upstairs to the attic, and mother has lent me some cunning little andirons and a shovel and tongs which grandmamma gave her, and I am going to have an open fire."

"But you don't need one. The room is warm enough, with your register."

"Oh, I know that. And I didn't mean that I was going to light the fire, only have it all ready for lighting. I rubbed the brass knobs myself with Puit's Pomade, and they shine beautifully, and I painted the bricks with red-ochre and water, and arranged the wood and kindlings, and it has such a cosy, homelike look, you can't think!"

"Well, I confess I don't see the cosiness of a fire that you're never going to light."

"Oh, mamma says if I ever am sick in bed, or there is any particular reason for it, I may light it. And even if it doesn't happen often, I shall have the comfort of knowing that it's all ready."

"I call it cold comfort. What a queer girl you are! Well, what are you going to do next, Elly?"

"You will laugh when I tell you. I'm going to paper my room myself."

"Not really! Why, you can't. Papering is very difficult; I have always heard so. People have to get men to do it, always."

"I don't believe it's so very difficult. There was a piece about it once in the 'Family Friend' which I cut out and saved. It told how to make the paste and everything, and it didn't seem hard at all. Mother thinks I can. I'm going to begin to-morrow. In fact, I began yesterday, for old Joyce came and mended the crack in the ceiling and kalsomined it, and oh, May, I did such a thrifty thing! He had a nice big brush and a roller to smooth out the paper with, and don't you think, I made a bargain with him to hire them out to me for three cents an hour, so I sha'n't have to buy any."

"Didn't he laugh?"

"Yes, he laughed, and Ned laughed too; but I don't care. 'Let those laugh who win,'" concluded Eleanor, with a bright, confident smile.

"Come in to-morrow afternoon and see how I get on," she called out from the door of Ninety-three.

May went at the appointed time. The papering was done, and for a beginner very well done, though an expert might easily have found faulty places here and there. The paper Eleanor had chosen was of a soft, warm yellow like pale sunshine, which seemed to neutralize the cold light of the north windows. It looked plain when seen in shadow, but where the light struck it revealed a pattern of graceful interlaced disks. And the ceiling was tinted with a much lighter shade of the same yellow. A chestnut picture-rod separated wall and ceiling.

"Putting the paper on myself saved lots," announced Eleanor, gleefully. "It only cost fifteen cents a roll, so the whole room came to exactly a dollar eighty. Then I am to pay Joyce eighteen cents for six hours' use of his brush and roller, and mother isn't going to charge anything for the flour for the paste, because I boiled it myself. I had to get the picture-moulding, though, and that was rather dear, – nearly two dollars. Ned nailed it up for me."

"Why didn't you have a paper border; it would not have cost nearly as much?"

"No, but I should have had to drive nails and tacks in every time I wanted to hang up anything, and that would have spoiled the paper. And I want that to last a long, long time."

"What are you going to do with your furniture?" asked May, casting an eye of disfavor at the articles in question, a so-called "cottage" set, enamelled, of a faded, shabby blue.

"I am going to paint them," replied Eleanor, daringly.

"Eleanor Pyne! you can't!"

But Eleanor could and did. Painting is by no means the recondite art which some of its professors would have us suppose. Eleanor avoided one of the main difficulties of the craft, by buying her paint ready mixed and qualified with "dryers." She chose a pretty tint of olive brown. Ned took her bedstead apart for her, and one by one she carried the different articles to a little-used attic, where, equipped in a long-sleeved apron and a pair of old cotton gloves to save her fingers, she gradually coated each smoothly with the new paint. It took some days to finish, for she did not work continuously, but when done she felt rewarded for her pains; for the furniture not only looked new, but was prettier than it had ever been before during the memory of man. Her brother Ned was so pleased with her success, that he volunteered, if she would pay for the "stuff," to make a broad pine shelf to nail over the narrow shelf of her chimney-piece, and some smaller ones above, cut after a pretty design which he had seen in an agricultural magazine. This handsome offer Eleanor gladly accepted, and when the shelves were done, she covered them with two coats of the same useful olive-brown paint.

There was still some paint left; and grown bold with practice and no longer afraid of her big brush, Eleanor essayed a bolder flight. She first painted her doors and her window-frames, then she attacked her floor, and, leaving an ample square space in the middle, executed a border two feet and a half wide all round it, in a pattern of long diamonds done in two shades of olive, the darker being obtained by mixing a little black with the original tint.

"You see I have to buy my own carpet," she explained to the astonished and somewhat scandalized May; "and with this border a little square one will answer, instead of my having to get a great big thing for the whole floor."

"But sha'n't you hate to put your feet on bare boards?"

"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.

Later, when Eleanor had learned to do the pretty Mexican work, now in fashion, she decorated some special towels for her table and bureau, with lace-like ends, and a pair of pillow-covers. Meanwhile, she bore very well the knowledge that May and most of the other girls of their set considered her room rather "plain and bare." It suited her own fancy, and that satisfied her.

"I do like room to turn about in and not too many things, and not to smell of dust," she told her mother.

Here is Eleanor's budget of expenses, to set against May's: —

This was two years ago. If you could take a peep at the rival rooms in Ninety-three and Ninety-four to-day, you would find Eleanor's looking quite as pretty as when new, or prettier; for she has used it carefully, and each year has added something to its equipments, as years will. When a girl has once secured a good foundation for her room, her friends are apt to make their gifts work in toward its further beautification.

With May it is different. Her room has lost the freshness which was its one good point. The chintz has become creased and a little faded, the muslin and scrim from repeated washings are no longer crisp, and look limp and threadbare; all the ribbons and scarfs are shabby and tumbled; while the green carpet and the blue wall "swear" as vigorously at each other as they did at first. May sighs over it frequently, and wishes she had tried for a more permanent effect. Next time she will do better, she avers; but next times are slow in coming where the family exchequer has not the recuperative powers of Fortunatus's purse.

The Moral of this simple tale may be divided into three heads. I object to morals myself as a wind-up for stories, and I dare say most of you who read this are no fonder of them than I am; still, a three-headed moral is such a novelty that it may be urged as an excuse. The three heads are these: —

1. When you have only a small sum to spend on renovations, choose those that will last.

2. Ingenuity and energy count for more than mere money can.

3. Once make sure in a room of convenience, cheerfulness, and a good color, and you can afford to wait for gimcracks – or "Jamescracks" – or any of the thousand and one little duds which so many people consider indispensable features of pleasantness. Rooms have their anatomy as well as human beings. There must be a good substructure of bones rightly placed to underlie the bloom and sparkle in the one; and in like manner for the other the laws of taste, which are immutable, should underlie and support the evanescent and passing fancies and fashions of every day.