Page:To-morrow Morning (1927).pdf/142

 ished saying, "Yes-in-deed we do miss her!" Before she had gotten used to the holiday feeling of having no one say, "Pull down your hat in front, Aunt Kate," or, "Oh, Aunt Kate, you've sat on your coat!" Before she had time to do any of the wonderful care-free things she had planned. She had meant to get seriously to work at her painting, now Charlotte was out of the studio and Joe helping with expenses so that she was able to have Effa Ashburn come in every day, instead of now and then. But Joe's old room was so tiny, just about big enough for the sewing machine and the cutting table, and she loved letting him have the studio for his own, to make his models of stage scenery. She thought his stage sets were perfect. The drawing-room scene for "The Wild Duck," with its marbled fireplace and looped-back scraps of brocade curtains, and pyramid bouquets, so quaintly pompous that it made her laugh; the ice-blues and water-greens of the Undine sets that made her feel lonely, she didn't know why. She watched him working in the evenings, fascinated. Making peach trees of wire, dipping the branches in glue, then rolling them in pink-dyed: wheat flakes, cutting yew trees from greendyed sponge, running glass beads on wires to make a fountain's spray. Who but her clever Joe would think of doing things like that?

She urged him to take his models to New York and show them to theatrical producers. But the idea paralyzed Joe. "They're not good enough yet," he