[21]CHAPTER IIPRETENDING“Far away and yet so near us, lies a land where all have been,Played beside its sparkling waters, danced along its meadows green,Where the busy world we live in, and its noises only seemLike the echo of a tempest, or the shadow of a dream.”Allthe other dolls belonging to the pair led quiet, domestic lives, into whose annals few things more eventful came than tea-parties, christenings, funerals, and attacks of galloping consumption or heart disease.But Jennie and Suey, the two longest owned and most deeply cherished, were called upon to enact every possible and impossible phase of the romance with which the souls of those two little maids were bitten through and through.Both of the waxen creatures were of pallid complexion; their hair was thin, their noses were worn down by the vicissitudes of years. Sometimes they might be met clad in blue cashmere frocks, with white muslin pinafores, shoes, stockings, and even a[22]microscopic handkerchief apiece. And it might then be known they were passing through a calm period of existence, and were simply the daughters of the pair, or such mild and admired characters from books as Ellen Montgomery or Alice Humphreys.But if you came across their attenuated forms swathed merely in pieces of black velvet or crimson cashmere, you would know—that is, if the scales could fall from your eyes, and the eager, wonderful second-sight of under twelve be yours for half-an-hour—that all domesticity had passed away and heroines lay before you.Perhaps Virginia, walking blindly and happily to her lurid death, or Flora Macdonald struggling through dangers to save her king, or glorious Mary bowing her doomed head, or Lammermuir’s bride, or Constance following Marmion to the wars.There was hardly an adventure of hero and heroine of all the strange miscellany of books devoured by the little pair that those unemotional little dolls had not been through.They had been lowered by knotted handkerchiefs from the highest windows in the house, both as princesses running away with fairy princes, and as heroines escaping from burning hotels. They had had their internal sawdust badly congested by being forced to swim across the narrow ditch of water that ran below the currant-bushes and formed an enchanted castle’s moat. They had been hanged by the neck,[23]shut up in a disused bird-cage called the Bastille, buried up to their necks, plants for a Nero’s eyes to gaze upon, placed in an arena to meet with fortitude the Christian martyr’s death from ravening lions.But hitherto, when eight o’clock came, Romance’s wings had always fallen to, and fingers, merely loving and maternal now, had soothed and comforted the racked bodies, clad them in night-gowns of most patient work, and laid them to rest in the most elaborate and comfortable of all the little beds.This was the first night that when bedtime came Romance was still soaring irresistibly. All the afternoon Joan of Arc and Grace Darling had been making their way with unheard-of difficulties from the mines of Siberia to St. Petersburg, to beg an audience of the Czar, in order to rescue their aged parents from the life of toil.When the tea-bell rang Dorothy picked Jennie up from the salt mine in which she had taken refuge for an hour.“Let’s ask if we may have waspberry jam for tea, Phyl,” she said, tucking her heroine under her arm.But Phyl’s eyes still held the fire and glory of the struggle.“I’ll tell you,” she said; “let’s leave them here on this mountain till bedtime—they never get anyrealadventures; Grace and Joan didn’t go in and sit by the nursery fire as soon as the tea-bell went.”“O-oh,” said Dolly, clasping her dear one jealously.[24]It was all very well to have adventures when they themselves were actually on the spot to see no real harm befell, but it seemed a horrible thing to go and leave them unprotected, out-of-doors at night. “O-oh, Phyl,—I wouldn’t like to leave Jennie where I couldn’t see her.”“Grace’s and Joan’s mothers couldn’t see them,” Phyl said darkly.“It might be wet,” said Dorothy, with an anxious look at the sky.“No; it’s beautifully fine,” said Phyl; “at any rate Joan is going to stay and brave it; p’raps Grace hasn’t got enough pluck, though.”“Gwace is a lot bwaver than Joan,” protested Dolly, quickly fired. She sprang across to the stones and laid her down recklessly. Phyl placed Joan in an equally exposed position, and then with determined faces but anxious hearts they ran in to tea, and left the heroines to struggle on across Russia in the dark.When bedtime came Dolly was ready to slip out and bring them in after the long three hours.But Phyl’s eyes were full of exultation, and drew her sister away from Weenie, who tried thirstily to hear the whisper.“Let’s let it be a really truly adventure this time,” she said; “let’s let them go on struggling there till morning.”Dolly’s heart swelled.[25]“They’d get dreadful colds, Phyl,” she pleaded, “and Jennie’s only just getting over her menumia.”“Oh!” said Phyl impatiently, “heroines can’t think about colds and things,—I’ve decided to let Joan stay,—your cowardly little Grace Darling can come to bed if she likes.”Of course she did not like, and the result was both small maidens crept unhappily into bed, and after long and wistful gazing at the window dropped off at last into troubled sleep.But who could wake and find it snowing,—an undreamed-of thing that fine night,—and still leave two unfortunate heroines making their harrowing way across the Steppes? There was no thought of Grace in Dolly’s mind and none of Joan in Phyl’s in that midnight hour; it was little Jennie and Suey who lay beneath the bitter sky, and their instantaneous rescue had to be effected at all costs.But who could marvel that, even despite the cod-liver oil, Phyllidaawoke with laboured breathing, and even strong, rosy Dolly sneezed and sneezed as she slipped on her clothes in the morning to run and tell her mother the sorrowful news that Phyl’s Old Man of the Sea was sitting on her chest?“Oh dear! oh dear!” cried the mother, when after much questioning all the story of the night was extracted. “WhatamI going to do with you? Phyl, Phyl, are you trying to break my heart again? Dolly, and you promised to help me!”[26]“We didn’t think,” sobbed the little girls, heartbroken themselves to have given such trouble.“But you never do,” said the distracted young mother. “All these dreadful, dreadful things that come into your heads,—you always do them first, and then are sorry after.”“If only you had forbidden us to do it,” wept Phyl; “we never do the things you forbid, do we, mother?”The mother was forced to admit this; their obedience to direct command was unswerving, but how could any one circumvent wild proceedings by laying an embargo on them before the wild young minds had conceived them?“How could I have dreamed you would do anything so mad?” she said. “Didn’t you stay one moment to think how it would grieve me?”“When we got back we did,” said Dolly, with streaming eyes, “and Phyl ate ever so much cod-liver oil to please you.”What was there to be done but scold and scold, and then beg and entreat future carefulness?“Write it down in the book, Dolly,” Phyl said, when the mother had gone off to see about linseed poultices and hot drinks.And Dolly got out a little book made of bits of paper stitched together by themselves, and she made one new entry on the list of “Things we’re not to do on any account.”“Not to go out in the garden when it’s snowing in[27]middle of the night,” she wrote now in large plain letters.The prohibitions on the preceding page or two were a little curious.“Not to read any more of Sarah’s and Jane’s books in paper covers.”“Phyl not to get her feet wet in the ditch, and D. not to let her get them wet.”“Not to tie Weenie to the table any more when she touches our things.N.B.—Weenie not to touch our things.”“Not to pretend we’re angels going up and down Jacob’s ladder.”“Not to pretend Suey is Jael, and not to hammer nails in the table.”“Not to pretend Bibel stories any more at all.”“P. not to pretend Sarah is Sinbad when she is washing the floor, and never to get on her back again.”“D. not to give her best books to poor girls at the door any more.”“What’ll we be to-day?” Dolly said, tucking the book of prohibitions in a secret place between the skirting-board and the wall. “Tell you, I’ll be Snow-White and you can be Rose-Red.”Phyl considered.“Well, out of the blue book,” she said. “The green with twirly letters is stupid.”The blue held Andersen’s versions, all other[28]attempts to disguise or dress up this immortal story being swiftly resented by the two.Phyl was at a disadvantage, being confined to a prostrate position, and could only make passes in the air, but Dolly moved about the room in a slow, queer way, her arms outstretched and waving regularly.At any hour of the day the two might be seen moving about the house or garden in the same mysterious fashion, their arms tossing gently, their eyes dreamy. But if they met any one their arms dropped guiltily to their sides and their faces grew very red; to no one, not even their mother, would they have confessed that they were fairies floating about the earth.Rose-Red, with a blissful smile on her face, was in the midst of a conversation with the Prince when the steaming linseed poultice came to interrupt.“You must keep your arms under the blankets,” the mother said, tucking the clothes well in.“Oh, mother!” was Phyl’s dismayed answer.“Wouldn’t it do if you tied some flannel round each arm?” said Dolly anxiously.—Howwasa fairy to “float” and be “wafted airily,” or to “rustle musically,” with her arms smothered in bed-clothes?“No,” said Mrs. Conway very decisively, “until the fire burns up much better Phyl is to keep the clothes—faithfully—up to her chin. Remember, I trust you, Phyl. Now I am going to see about your tray.”[29]“Oh!” began Dorothy with beseeching eyes.The mother laughed resignedly.“I suppose I must say yes,” she said, and went down to see that the tray was laid for two bedroom breakfasts. She had long since found the only way to induce Phyl to eat anything when she was ill was to allow Dolly to have her meals with her.Harriet came up with the two pink bowls of bread-and-milk.“Serve you well right, Miss Phyl,” she said; “real bad girls, that’s what you are! And people thinking you’re so good. Do you know what Jane’s mother said when she first saw you?”“No,” they answered, but they looked nervous; they were both very sensitive to anything said about them.“She sez to me, she sez, ‘What nice quiet little ladies yours look, Harriet! They’d never give you any trouble, I’m sure,’ she sez. An’ do you know what I sez to her?”“No,” they said again, meekly.“I sez, ‘Don’t you go judging by aperyances, Mrs. Barnes. For all they look so quiet, they’re real downright bad,’ I sez. An’ so you are.”They accepted the statement with a certain amount of relief, for they had both secretly feared it was a worse charge that Mrs. Barnes had brought against them. They would far rather have been termed “bad” than “silly” or “romantic.”[30]“What dishes have the minions set before us?” said Phyl as the door shut behind the hard speaker-of-truth.“There are woc’s eggs, haunches of venison, pweserved woses, and almond toffee,” responded Dolly.“Then let us anon,” said Phyl. “Anon” was the last word that had struck her fancy, and she dragged it into her conversation in all possible and impossible places.They had just emptied their heavy gold plates and laid down their spoons, the handles of which were encrusted with priceless diamonds, when the mother came in with another tray bearing cocoa, bread-and-butter, and boiled eggs. Weenie followed with the salt, and a look of envy on her face.“I never det any colds,” she said forlornly.After breakfast, when the tray had been taken away and the mother had gone to her various duties, Dolly looked at Phyl, and Phyl looked at Dolly, and then they both looked at Weenie.“Oh,” the small one said entreatingly, very quick to interpret the glances, “do let’s stay, Phyl—please, Dolly, let’s stay.”Phyl looked at her impatiently. “Don’t begin to be tiresome, Weenie,” she said; “you’re not nearly old enough for this game. Think how nice it will be to have the nursery to yourself all day.”“We’ll lend you the pink tea-set if you’ll be very careful with it,” Dolly added consolingly.[31]But Weenie seemed entirely to fail to see the advantage of the sole use of the nursery, even with the pink tea-set—which was not the very best one—thrown in.“Iwillstay,” she said. “I shall stay. I will stay—I will stay.” She wound her arms round the bedpost to prevent the forcible ejection that so often overtook her.“Take no notice of her,” whispered Dolly, “she’ll soon get tired of it and go.”They commenced waving their arms and talking in that strange tongue of theirs again.Within the space of ten minutes Dolly had been rescued from an enchanted castle; turned into a swan to elude the pursuit of a wicked step-mother; had danced at a ball on the waters of the lake, clad in a garment made of sunset clouds studded with dewdrops; and now, seated on a magnificent throne hewn out of a block of priceless jasper, arrayed in royal purple robes sparkling with diamonds, she was a princess once more restored to her own rights, and was extending a fairy-like foot in a golden slipper for a prince to kiss.But Weenie listened to the low buzz of talk, and watched the strange actions with contemptuous discontent.She was the most practical child in the world, and for her life could see nothing of the cloud-capp’d towers, the gorgeous palaces wherein her sisters were[32]dwelling. There was no glittering throne for her eyes, no dazzlingly beautiful princess gracefully extending a foot slippered in gleaming gold. There was merely Dolly to be seen, rosy-cheeked, ordinary little Dolly with a long bath-towel trailing from her waist, and the pincushion-cover on her head. And she was just sitting on two pillows with a very silly look on her face, and was stiffly sticking out a foot clad in a plain black stocking and well-worn house shoe.“Oh,” said the little weary one, “please, Dolly,isn’t zere a dogin the story, and I could bark—or isn’t zere a drate bear and I could roar?” Dolly was advancing now towards the washstand with her arm crooked slightly, a small pocket-handkerchief hanging over her curls, and an ineffable smile on her face. The prince was leading her, a bride, up the rose-strewn church-path, and the air was full of joy-bells and the happy voices of the villagers. Weenie caught pleadingly at the black frock. “Or I could be ze wicked old woman, and chase you,” she said.“She’s been put in a spiked barrel, and is rolling down a mountain,” Phyl said darkly; “her machinations are over.” She pronounced the word “machine-ashones,” and her tongue lingered admiringly over it.“Zen I’ll be ze little dog, and I’ll drink up your blood when your head falls off,” said Weenie, undeterred. That and the character of the “sullen headsman”[33]were the only parts that took her fancy in the frequently played dramaMary Queen of Scots.Dolly turned from the washstand altar, her bouquet (the three small toothbrushes) in her hand. There was a sound of tears in the forlorn little sister’s voice that touched her conscience.[Illustration]“Isn’t zere a dog in the story?”“We might play Wobin Hood for a little time—eh, Phyl?” she said, unwillingly taking off her bridal veil and putting it back in her pocket. There were opportunities for shooting, a lively work in this game which led Weenie to tolerate it.“All right,” Phyl said, also softened by the lonely tone in the small sister’s voice.[34]Weenie scrambled energetically up a bedpost and hung there, showing her small gleaming teeth.“We’re playing Zoo,” she said, swift to take advantage of the concession. “I am ze monkey, an’ Phyl can be ze effelunt, an’ Dolly’s ze tross old zrinoceros.”The room was in an uproar speedily, Dolly and Phyl playing their allotted parts with great vigour and enjoyment. “We can be pwetending we’re pwincesses, an’ have been changed into these shapes,” Dolly seized a moment to whisper consolingly to Phyl. Then she swung herself over the foot-rail of the bed and hung head downwards and growled, which pleased Weenie’s ideas of realism even if it was hardly in accordance with the character of rhinoceros.
“Far away and yet so near us, lies a land where all have been,Played beside its sparkling waters, danced along its meadows green,Where the busy world we live in, and its noises only seemLike the echo of a tempest, or the shadow of a dream.”
“Far away and yet so near us, lies a land where all have been,Played beside its sparkling waters, danced along its meadows green,Where the busy world we live in, and its noises only seemLike the echo of a tempest, or the shadow of a dream.”
“Far away and yet so near us, lies a land where all have been,Played beside its sparkling waters, danced along its meadows green,Where the busy world we live in, and its noises only seemLike the echo of a tempest, or the shadow of a dream.”
“Far away and yet so near us, lies a land where all have been,
Played beside its sparkling waters, danced along its meadows green,
Where the busy world we live in, and its noises only seem
Like the echo of a tempest, or the shadow of a dream.”
Allthe other dolls belonging to the pair led quiet, domestic lives, into whose annals few things more eventful came than tea-parties, christenings, funerals, and attacks of galloping consumption or heart disease.
But Jennie and Suey, the two longest owned and most deeply cherished, were called upon to enact every possible and impossible phase of the romance with which the souls of those two little maids were bitten through and through.
Both of the waxen creatures were of pallid complexion; their hair was thin, their noses were worn down by the vicissitudes of years. Sometimes they might be met clad in blue cashmere frocks, with white muslin pinafores, shoes, stockings, and even a[22]microscopic handkerchief apiece. And it might then be known they were passing through a calm period of existence, and were simply the daughters of the pair, or such mild and admired characters from books as Ellen Montgomery or Alice Humphreys.
But if you came across their attenuated forms swathed merely in pieces of black velvet or crimson cashmere, you would know—that is, if the scales could fall from your eyes, and the eager, wonderful second-sight of under twelve be yours for half-an-hour—that all domesticity had passed away and heroines lay before you.
Perhaps Virginia, walking blindly and happily to her lurid death, or Flora Macdonald struggling through dangers to save her king, or glorious Mary bowing her doomed head, or Lammermuir’s bride, or Constance following Marmion to the wars.
There was hardly an adventure of hero and heroine of all the strange miscellany of books devoured by the little pair that those unemotional little dolls had not been through.
They had been lowered by knotted handkerchiefs from the highest windows in the house, both as princesses running away with fairy princes, and as heroines escaping from burning hotels. They had had their internal sawdust badly congested by being forced to swim across the narrow ditch of water that ran below the currant-bushes and formed an enchanted castle’s moat. They had been hanged by the neck,[23]shut up in a disused bird-cage called the Bastille, buried up to their necks, plants for a Nero’s eyes to gaze upon, placed in an arena to meet with fortitude the Christian martyr’s death from ravening lions.
But hitherto, when eight o’clock came, Romance’s wings had always fallen to, and fingers, merely loving and maternal now, had soothed and comforted the racked bodies, clad them in night-gowns of most patient work, and laid them to rest in the most elaborate and comfortable of all the little beds.
This was the first night that when bedtime came Romance was still soaring irresistibly. All the afternoon Joan of Arc and Grace Darling had been making their way with unheard-of difficulties from the mines of Siberia to St. Petersburg, to beg an audience of the Czar, in order to rescue their aged parents from the life of toil.
When the tea-bell rang Dorothy picked Jennie up from the salt mine in which she had taken refuge for an hour.
“Let’s ask if we may have waspberry jam for tea, Phyl,” she said, tucking her heroine under her arm.
But Phyl’s eyes still held the fire and glory of the struggle.
“I’ll tell you,” she said; “let’s leave them here on this mountain till bedtime—they never get anyrealadventures; Grace and Joan didn’t go in and sit by the nursery fire as soon as the tea-bell went.”
“O-oh,” said Dolly, clasping her dear one jealously.[24]It was all very well to have adventures when they themselves were actually on the spot to see no real harm befell, but it seemed a horrible thing to go and leave them unprotected, out-of-doors at night. “O-oh, Phyl,—I wouldn’t like to leave Jennie where I couldn’t see her.”
“Grace’s and Joan’s mothers couldn’t see them,” Phyl said darkly.
“It might be wet,” said Dorothy, with an anxious look at the sky.
“No; it’s beautifully fine,” said Phyl; “at any rate Joan is going to stay and brave it; p’raps Grace hasn’t got enough pluck, though.”
“Gwace is a lot bwaver than Joan,” protested Dolly, quickly fired. She sprang across to the stones and laid her down recklessly. Phyl placed Joan in an equally exposed position, and then with determined faces but anxious hearts they ran in to tea, and left the heroines to struggle on across Russia in the dark.
When bedtime came Dolly was ready to slip out and bring them in after the long three hours.
But Phyl’s eyes were full of exultation, and drew her sister away from Weenie, who tried thirstily to hear the whisper.
“Let’s let it be a really truly adventure this time,” she said; “let’s let them go on struggling there till morning.”
Dolly’s heart swelled.
[25]“They’d get dreadful colds, Phyl,” she pleaded, “and Jennie’s only just getting over her menumia.”
“Oh!” said Phyl impatiently, “heroines can’t think about colds and things,—I’ve decided to let Joan stay,—your cowardly little Grace Darling can come to bed if she likes.”
Of course she did not like, and the result was both small maidens crept unhappily into bed, and after long and wistful gazing at the window dropped off at last into troubled sleep.
But who could wake and find it snowing,—an undreamed-of thing that fine night,—and still leave two unfortunate heroines making their harrowing way across the Steppes? There was no thought of Grace in Dolly’s mind and none of Joan in Phyl’s in that midnight hour; it was little Jennie and Suey who lay beneath the bitter sky, and their instantaneous rescue had to be effected at all costs.
But who could marvel that, even despite the cod-liver oil, Phyllidaawoke with laboured breathing, and even strong, rosy Dolly sneezed and sneezed as she slipped on her clothes in the morning to run and tell her mother the sorrowful news that Phyl’s Old Man of the Sea was sitting on her chest?
“Oh dear! oh dear!” cried the mother, when after much questioning all the story of the night was extracted. “WhatamI going to do with you? Phyl, Phyl, are you trying to break my heart again? Dolly, and you promised to help me!”
[26]“We didn’t think,” sobbed the little girls, heartbroken themselves to have given such trouble.
“But you never do,” said the distracted young mother. “All these dreadful, dreadful things that come into your heads,—you always do them first, and then are sorry after.”
“If only you had forbidden us to do it,” wept Phyl; “we never do the things you forbid, do we, mother?”
The mother was forced to admit this; their obedience to direct command was unswerving, but how could any one circumvent wild proceedings by laying an embargo on them before the wild young minds had conceived them?
“How could I have dreamed you would do anything so mad?” she said. “Didn’t you stay one moment to think how it would grieve me?”
“When we got back we did,” said Dolly, with streaming eyes, “and Phyl ate ever so much cod-liver oil to please you.”
What was there to be done but scold and scold, and then beg and entreat future carefulness?
“Write it down in the book, Dolly,” Phyl said, when the mother had gone off to see about linseed poultices and hot drinks.
And Dolly got out a little book made of bits of paper stitched together by themselves, and she made one new entry on the list of “Things we’re not to do on any account.”
“Not to go out in the garden when it’s snowing in[27]middle of the night,” she wrote now in large plain letters.
The prohibitions on the preceding page or two were a little curious.
“Not to read any more of Sarah’s and Jane’s books in paper covers.”
“Phyl not to get her feet wet in the ditch, and D. not to let her get them wet.”
“Not to tie Weenie to the table any more when she touches our things.N.B.—Weenie not to touch our things.”
“Not to pretend we’re angels going up and down Jacob’s ladder.”
“Not to pretend Suey is Jael, and not to hammer nails in the table.”
“Not to pretend Bibel stories any more at all.”
“P. not to pretend Sarah is Sinbad when she is washing the floor, and never to get on her back again.”
“D. not to give her best books to poor girls at the door any more.”
“What’ll we be to-day?” Dolly said, tucking the book of prohibitions in a secret place between the skirting-board and the wall. “Tell you, I’ll be Snow-White and you can be Rose-Red.”
Phyl considered.
“Well, out of the blue book,” she said. “The green with twirly letters is stupid.”
The blue held Andersen’s versions, all other[28]attempts to disguise or dress up this immortal story being swiftly resented by the two.
Phyl was at a disadvantage, being confined to a prostrate position, and could only make passes in the air, but Dolly moved about the room in a slow, queer way, her arms outstretched and waving regularly.
At any hour of the day the two might be seen moving about the house or garden in the same mysterious fashion, their arms tossing gently, their eyes dreamy. But if they met any one their arms dropped guiltily to their sides and their faces grew very red; to no one, not even their mother, would they have confessed that they were fairies floating about the earth.
Rose-Red, with a blissful smile on her face, was in the midst of a conversation with the Prince when the steaming linseed poultice came to interrupt.
“You must keep your arms under the blankets,” the mother said, tucking the clothes well in.
“Oh, mother!” was Phyl’s dismayed answer.
“Wouldn’t it do if you tied some flannel round each arm?” said Dolly anxiously.—Howwasa fairy to “float” and be “wafted airily,” or to “rustle musically,” with her arms smothered in bed-clothes?
“No,” said Mrs. Conway very decisively, “until the fire burns up much better Phyl is to keep the clothes—faithfully—up to her chin. Remember, I trust you, Phyl. Now I am going to see about your tray.”
[29]“Oh!” began Dorothy with beseeching eyes.
The mother laughed resignedly.
“I suppose I must say yes,” she said, and went down to see that the tray was laid for two bedroom breakfasts. She had long since found the only way to induce Phyl to eat anything when she was ill was to allow Dolly to have her meals with her.
Harriet came up with the two pink bowls of bread-and-milk.
“Serve you well right, Miss Phyl,” she said; “real bad girls, that’s what you are! And people thinking you’re so good. Do you know what Jane’s mother said when she first saw you?”
“No,” they answered, but they looked nervous; they were both very sensitive to anything said about them.
“She sez to me, she sez, ‘What nice quiet little ladies yours look, Harriet! They’d never give you any trouble, I’m sure,’ she sez. An’ do you know what I sez to her?”
“No,” they said again, meekly.
“I sez, ‘Don’t you go judging by aperyances, Mrs. Barnes. For all they look so quiet, they’re real downright bad,’ I sez. An’ so you are.”
They accepted the statement with a certain amount of relief, for they had both secretly feared it was a worse charge that Mrs. Barnes had brought against them. They would far rather have been termed “bad” than “silly” or “romantic.”
[30]“What dishes have the minions set before us?” said Phyl as the door shut behind the hard speaker-of-truth.
“There are woc’s eggs, haunches of venison, pweserved woses, and almond toffee,” responded Dolly.
“Then let us anon,” said Phyl. “Anon” was the last word that had struck her fancy, and she dragged it into her conversation in all possible and impossible places.
They had just emptied their heavy gold plates and laid down their spoons, the handles of which were encrusted with priceless diamonds, when the mother came in with another tray bearing cocoa, bread-and-butter, and boiled eggs. Weenie followed with the salt, and a look of envy on her face.
“I never det any colds,” she said forlornly.
After breakfast, when the tray had been taken away and the mother had gone to her various duties, Dolly looked at Phyl, and Phyl looked at Dolly, and then they both looked at Weenie.
“Oh,” the small one said entreatingly, very quick to interpret the glances, “do let’s stay, Phyl—please, Dolly, let’s stay.”
Phyl looked at her impatiently. “Don’t begin to be tiresome, Weenie,” she said; “you’re not nearly old enough for this game. Think how nice it will be to have the nursery to yourself all day.”
“We’ll lend you the pink tea-set if you’ll be very careful with it,” Dolly added consolingly.
[31]But Weenie seemed entirely to fail to see the advantage of the sole use of the nursery, even with the pink tea-set—which was not the very best one—thrown in.
“Iwillstay,” she said. “I shall stay. I will stay—I will stay.” She wound her arms round the bedpost to prevent the forcible ejection that so often overtook her.
“Take no notice of her,” whispered Dolly, “she’ll soon get tired of it and go.”
They commenced waving their arms and talking in that strange tongue of theirs again.
Within the space of ten minutes Dolly had been rescued from an enchanted castle; turned into a swan to elude the pursuit of a wicked step-mother; had danced at a ball on the waters of the lake, clad in a garment made of sunset clouds studded with dewdrops; and now, seated on a magnificent throne hewn out of a block of priceless jasper, arrayed in royal purple robes sparkling with diamonds, she was a princess once more restored to her own rights, and was extending a fairy-like foot in a golden slipper for a prince to kiss.
But Weenie listened to the low buzz of talk, and watched the strange actions with contemptuous discontent.
She was the most practical child in the world, and for her life could see nothing of the cloud-capp’d towers, the gorgeous palaces wherein her sisters were[32]dwelling. There was no glittering throne for her eyes, no dazzlingly beautiful princess gracefully extending a foot slippered in gleaming gold. There was merely Dolly to be seen, rosy-cheeked, ordinary little Dolly with a long bath-towel trailing from her waist, and the pincushion-cover on her head. And she was just sitting on two pillows with a very silly look on her face, and was stiffly sticking out a foot clad in a plain black stocking and well-worn house shoe.
“Oh,” said the little weary one, “please, Dolly,isn’t zere a dogin the story, and I could bark—or isn’t zere a drate bear and I could roar?” Dolly was advancing now towards the washstand with her arm crooked slightly, a small pocket-handkerchief hanging over her curls, and an ineffable smile on her face. The prince was leading her, a bride, up the rose-strewn church-path, and the air was full of joy-bells and the happy voices of the villagers. Weenie caught pleadingly at the black frock. “Or I could be ze wicked old woman, and chase you,” she said.
“She’s been put in a spiked barrel, and is rolling down a mountain,” Phyl said darkly; “her machinations are over.” She pronounced the word “machine-ashones,” and her tongue lingered admiringly over it.
“Zen I’ll be ze little dog, and I’ll drink up your blood when your head falls off,” said Weenie, undeterred. That and the character of the “sullen headsman”[33]were the only parts that took her fancy in the frequently played dramaMary Queen of Scots.
Dolly turned from the washstand altar, her bouquet (the three small toothbrushes) in her hand. There was a sound of tears in the forlorn little sister’s voice that touched her conscience.
[Illustration]“Isn’t zere a dog in the story?”
“Isn’t zere a dog in the story?”
“We might play Wobin Hood for a little time—eh, Phyl?” she said, unwillingly taking off her bridal veil and putting it back in her pocket. There were opportunities for shooting, a lively work in this game which led Weenie to tolerate it.
“All right,” Phyl said, also softened by the lonely tone in the small sister’s voice.
[34]Weenie scrambled energetically up a bedpost and hung there, showing her small gleaming teeth.
“We’re playing Zoo,” she said, swift to take advantage of the concession. “I am ze monkey, an’ Phyl can be ze effelunt, an’ Dolly’s ze tross old zrinoceros.”
The room was in an uproar speedily, Dolly and Phyl playing their allotted parts with great vigour and enjoyment. “We can be pwetending we’re pwincesses, an’ have been changed into these shapes,” Dolly seized a moment to whisper consolingly to Phyl. Then she swung herself over the foot-rail of the bed and hung head downwards and growled, which pleased Weenie’s ideas of realism even if it was hardly in accordance with the character of rhinoceros.