[81]CHAPTER VIIITHE PITILESS LONDON STREETSUnbolsteredin such ways of hope, their thoughts flew to wild extremes; Phyl was ill again, and was confined to bed; the harsh biting winters always caught at her poor little chest, and four or five times from November to March they were obliged to keep her a week or more safely amongst the blankets. Dolly was of course always her faithful companion and slave at such times, and the days never dragged; if those two had been set down on a desert island for a year, their quaint resources and strange imaginings would have filled every day to the brim with action and enjoyment.And this time they had a limitless subject for discussion.They had climbed up their own particular beanstalk of imagination, and peeped into the land of poverty wherein soon their feet were to walk.Dolly went about as much as she could, unobserved, without her boots.[82]“They’ll wear out quickly enough twamping about the stweets,” she said. “I’ll take good care of them now.”Weenie slipped hers off. “Le’s take our stockings off too, Dolly,” she said, “then they won’t get worned out.”“Oh,” said Dolly, “stockings are cheap, I think—besides we could go without them altogether; the little girls who came selling holly had no stockings on at all.”Phyl, tied to bed, could not economize in this way, but when Harriet ran up with her eleven o’clock lunch-tray she only ate half the bread to her beef-tea, and did not touch the arrowroot biscuits. “Here,” she said, gathering them up carefully, “put them in the box quickly, Dolly, before Harriet comes back, or she’ll make me eat them.”Dolly got out the old bonnet-box, that until the last few days had held their patches of materials for dolls’ clothes. It was half full of broken victuals,—bits of cake, bread, a jar with butter in it, quite a quantity of sugar that they had saved instead of having it in their tea; even a couple of mutton-chops.This was to provide against the coming days when they would be starving in the streets of London, and was to be brought out as a beautiful surprise to their mother when she was tired out one day and hopeless of getting food for dinner.Phyl and Dolly sketched the future with dark[83]enjoyment on their faces, and Weenie listened aghast.Their mother, of course, would strive to earn a livelihood by singing in the snowy London streets, Weenie in her arms, themselves beside her trying to sell bunches of violets or watercress, or even shoelaces. Sometimes the passers-by would put pennies into their mother’s hand, or buy their own wares, but sometimes no one would take any notice of them at all, and they would go home at length to a dark, damp cellar, and divide a crust of bread amongst them, and sleep on the old floor beneath sacks.At this point in the pleasing prospect Weenie used to cry dismally, and their own eyes would fill with tears of self-pity.They would pursue it a little further, however; their clothes would grow more and more ragged, and the wind would whistle through them, and chill them to the bone; they would all be barefoot, their boots having worn out and their stockings gone long since; and they would all have such hacking coughs that the passers-by, hurrying away to their rich, luxurious homes, would occasionally fling them a glance of pity. And at last a benevolent old gentleman would be passing by, and touched at their distress would put his hand hastily in his pocket and bring out a coin which he would slip into their mother’s hand with the words, “Here’s a shilling for you, my poor woman,” and when he got some distance away they would[84]discover he had given them a sovereign in mistake. And the mother would sternly put away the temptation to buy food and clothes for her starving children with it, and bid Phyl and Dolly run after him and tell him of the mistake. And they would catch him at last, and tendering the glittering gold back to him would tell him of his error. And he would be so overcome with their honesty that he would take them by the hand and go back to their mother and ask questions of her,—what was her name?—why was she in such great distress? And when he heard the name he would lean up against the lamp-post quite overcome; and when they asked him what was the matter he would answer that he was their father’s long-lost brother, and had been searching for them for years, as he was immensely wealthy and did not know what to do with his money. And thereupon he would adopt them all, and they would all live happily to the end of their days.“Then why doesn’t mama tell Dadda’s bruvver now?” demanded the practical Weenie.Phyl and Dolly glanced at her impatiently. That the father had no brother, long-lost or otherwise, was a detail they had not troubled about.“Oh, well, it’ll be an uncle or a cousin,” they said, and ran on painting the brilliant future life they would lead, in colours as glowing as they had painted the other days dun.It was on the first day that Phyl was up again that[85]they actually learned the great news. At tea-time Mrs. Conway ran into the nursery for a moment. She had been busy with the lawyer most of the afternoon, and now he and her own brother were staying for the evening that yet more business might be talked.“I want you all to be very quiet and good,” she said; “play here all the time, Phyl mustn’t be in the draughts, and no one is to come running into the breakfast-room under any pretext.”“Mayn’t we even come to dessert?” said Dolly. This had always been their privilege.“There is no dessert,” said the mother. “There is nothing but a very small leg of mutton, and an apple-pie, and some custards. Tell Harriet, Dolly, to look in the store-room, I think there is just one more pot of red currant-jelly for the meat.”She went to the door, then came back; her cheeks were flushed, her crinkly hair pushed back from her forehead as if with much and difficult thinking.“Before you go to bed to-night you shall know everything,” she said; “till then be good little chickies, and don’t let me see a bit of you.”But there were four hours to bed-time,—how could they make the time endurable, confined within the limits of these four walls?Yet on ordinary occasions it was a most resourceful room.It was fairly large and well lighted, with a window[86]that had what all nurseries should have,—a deep, broad window-seat. Of necessary furniture there was nothing beyond a table, four or five chairs, an old horse-hair sofa, and two large cupboards. And all of it, by the earnest request of the three remaining inhabitants, was crowded down to one end, in order to leave the other quite bare for play. Phyl and Dolly had begged an old clothes-horse, and had coaxed Harriet into nailing some material over it. The big corner it had screened off from the room was entirely sacred to them; and Weenie, when they retired within it and extended no invitation to her, had no other course left but to stay outside and make a disturbing noise. For she was such a destructive small morsel that Mr. and Mrs. Conway, in the interests of the two to whom dolls were living breathing beings and the centres of passionate affections, had been obliged to join the coalition against her in this respect, and say she must not touch that corner without permission. They sought to recompense her for the interdict by giving her boxes of wooden and tin soldiers, boats and horses, and they begged the two elder little maids to be unselfish and not abuse the privilege.Inside the screen the floor-space was covered with an old hearth-rug. The most imposing article of furniture was the bedstead. Mr. Conway had had it made by a carpenter three Christmases ago, and Mrs. Conway had made the clothing. Surely there never[87]was so beautiful a thing. It was made of cedar, and was large enough to accommodate at a pinch four dolls, seeing the habit of these diminutives is to lie perfectly straight and not sprawl about like humans. The head and foot were slightly carved, it had prettily-turned pillars, and beneath the mattress were white laths. The bed itself was of feathers, and the casing of blue Belgian tick exactly like “grown-up” beds. Then there came an under-blanket with a red button-holed edge, a beautiful sheet, two sweet tiny pillows in frilled pillow-cases, another sheet, another blanket (this one prettily stitched), and, crowning glory of all, a patchwork counterpane made of lovely bits of silk, and lined delicately with pale pink. There were even nightdress pockets, edged with lace, to lay upon it in the daytime.Phyl and Dolly went to their corner to see their large families into bed as one means of filling the time this evening.They folded all the tiny garments in stacks, and inducted even the most battered and headless specimens of dollhood into nightgowns.“The sheets are very dirty,” Dolly said; “we quite forgot, Phyl, it was washing day to-day. How’d it be if we do it now? We can dry the things on the fire-guard.”But Phyl had covered up the last of her offspring, and was bringing out a tattered copy ofThe Arabian Nights.[88]“I think we’d better read,” she said, “then the time will go very quickly.”“Well, wait for me a second,” Dolly said, hastily plaiting up the long golden hair of Constance, the one fashionable doll of the assembly. Then they lay down together on the hearth-rug, the book between them, and their chins propped in their hands.“Oh,” said the little lonely person outside the screen, “I’ve nosing to do, Dolly, le’s wash the things and hang them upon the line? Le’s come in, Phyl?”“Hide the best little cups,” whispered Phyl to Dolly.“She’ll bweak the mangle,” whispered Dolly to Phyl,“don’t let’s get it out.”“No, I won’t,” said the maligned young person, entering.“Where’s the tubs and the bucket?—le’s play, I’m Jane. An’ I must have the mangle, Dolly.”Phyl and Dolly sighed. They had their own particular ways of turning the garments inside out, and soaking and rinsing them; they knew just what things were worn then and needed gentle rubbing; it was a real hardship to remember their mother’s words and let the careless little one in to help.“It’s a very small wash this week,” Phyl said; “I don’t think I shall put even Suey’s pinafores in.”“When you look at them, the sheets and pillow-cases aren’t so very dirty,” Dolly said.[Plate][Plate]“‘I tell you it’s only a small wash this week,’ Phyl said.”Three Little Maids][Page89[89]They gave Weenie two or three print frocks and a heap of under-linen.“The tub isn’t half full, dive me some more,” said the young washerwoman, tucking her sleeves up to her shoulders, tying her handkerchief round her head, and turning up the front of her dress to look business-like.“I tell youit’s only a small wash this week,” Phyl said.“I know,” said Weenie, pouting, “you fink I won’t get your old clothes clean.”Without a doubt they did think so.“Wash those first,” Dolly said; “p’waps we’ll find some more soon.”Weenie gathered up the things indicated, and one other thing, and went off to the end of the room to the window-seat that was used as a laundry.She dragged both the tubs with her, and insisted upon being given possession of the mangle. When they demurred she looked at them reproachfully.“I fought you promised mummie on Sunday that you would be good to me,” she said.So they sighed and gave it up to her—even tried to dole out the necessary stores with a show of cheerfulness—the pat of soap, the microscopic blue-bag, the soda, starch, and infinitesimal pegs. Then they fell down to their book again. The Prince of Persia was making his first visit to the palace of Schemselnihar, and how those children revelled in the gorgeous[90]colouring of the scene! The unstinted wealth of adjectives acted like intoxicants to their senses. They were not lying down face downwards on a hearth-rug in England; they were far away in that brilliant East, in a noble saloon the dome of which was supported by a hundred pillars of marble white as alabaster. The bases and chapiters of the pillars were adorned with four-footed beasts and birds of different sorts, gilded. In every space between the columns was a little alcove adorned in the same manner, and great vessels of china, crystal, jet, porphyry, agate, and other precious materials garnished with gold and jewels. The windows looked into the most delicious garden. Ten black women came towards them, carrying with much difficulty a throne of massy silver, curiously wrought; then twenty handsome ladies richly appareled alike, and playing on instruments. Lastly Schemselnihar herself, easily distinguished from the rest by her majestic air, as well as by a sort of mantle of a very fine stuff of gold and sky-blue, fastened to her shoulders over her other apparel, which was the most magnificent that could be imagined. It was of purple. . . .“Ugh!” said the voice of the distant washerwoman, “ah, ugh!” There was a sound of the spilling of much water, and the falling of something.Phyl and Dolly scrambled to their feet and rushed out, to find Weenie’s wash had been much more extensive than bargained for.[91]They were allowed to use the water from an old “puzzle” jug that stood on one of the cupboards, but Harriet had been careless enough this evening, with the demands of “company” on her mind, to leave her bowl of washing-up water on the table, and Weenie had utilized that instead, since it was warm.She had washed all the dolls’ clothes in it, they hung over the fire-guard, grey and greasy: there were two ancient wool antimacassars that were kept on the sofa when they were not doing duty as wraps for dolls or “ladies,”—she had washed them also and turned the water a queer shade of green. When she found her own pinafore was stained from the running wool she took it off and washed it too: when she found her white woollen frock was in the same condition she struggled out of it and dipped it in the basin and soaped and rinsed it vigorously, standing all the time on a chair. The clattering sound was caused by the chair slipping aside, and “down tumbled baby and white frock and all.”Phyl and Dolly scolded energetically, as became elder sisters.Then suddenly Phyl gave a scream of absolute horror and flew to the fire-guard. Hanging over it to dry, its gay colours running streakily into each other, its delicate lining turned a nondescript hue, was their cherished dolls’ counterpane.“What’s the matter?” said Weenie wonderingly.But Phyl and Dolly had burst into tears and[92]rushed together for the first overwhelming minute of bitter sorrow.Weenie ran to them confidently, perfect joy on her face.“The mangle isn’t broked,” she said, “it’s nosing but the handle tomed off. Mover’ll stick it on again; don’t cry, Dolly.”Then they looked at her innocent face more in anger than in sorrow. Phyl even pushed her roughly away.“You’re a bad, wicked, horrid girl,” she said.Weenie lost her balance and staggered against Dolly.“You’re a howid, wicked, bad girl,” said Dolly, and pushed her back.The return push gave her into Phyl’s power again. That young person caught her by her bare shoulders and gave her a slight shake.“How dare you touch our things?” she said.Dolly ran to her and gave her another little shake.“How dare you touch our things?” she said.Weenie burst into tears, the heartbroken tears of injured innocence. She had not dreamed of doing injury to the counterpane; it had seemed a beautiful thing to her to take it surreptitiously and wash it so well for them; she had thought they would be delighted when they saw it fresh and clean, for they had been saying the lining was getting dirty for a long time.[93]She flung herself down in a miserable shivering heap on the floor.But the elder girls left her alone, and took their anger and the counterpane behind the screen.She cried for nearly ten minutes before their wrath cooled. Then the pitifulness of her sobbings suddenly softened their hearts. They ran out to her.“Poor old Weenie,” Dolly said; “never mind, Weenie, it doesn’t matter.”Weenie clung to her convulsively, she had sobbed herself quite ill.Phyl ran to the press where the clothes were kept and found a frock and pinafore; she was reproaching herself bitterly for the blue little arms and chattering teeth.“Darling little Weenie,” she said, “here, let Phyl put this on—don’t cry so, baby sweet,—we aren’t angry a bit now, are we, Dolly? It doesn’t matter a scrap, does it, Dolly?”“Not a scwap,” said Dolly eagerly.They pulled her to the fire, and Phyl leaned perilously over the guard and poked till the flames leaped up warmly; they rubbed her perishing little hands, they petted and kissed her and called themselves all sorts of names for being so unkind to her.“We’ll do anything, Weenie—anything,” said Phyl distractedly, when the convulsive sobbing still continued.[94]Weenie was sufficiently recovered to press the advantage.“Give me the l-little m-mangle for my ownty own,” she said.They promised to her cheerfully.“An’ le’s make ice-cream an’ have a p-p-party.”They set to work to obey her.They spread tea-towels over two chairs and laid out their best dinner-set that contained a soup-tureen and a sauce-boat in addition to the usual things. Phyl made soup of three currants and weak tea, Dolly cut an apple into thin slices, arranged them in slanting piles on a small plate, and called it bread-and-butter.Weenie herself stirred flour-and-water and sugar together into a lump of dough and then stuck four currants into it; that was the pudding. Phyl mixed sugar-and-water together for sauce.Then came thechef-d’œuvre. They listened at the door to make sure no footsteps approached; then Dolly stealthily opened the window, leaned out and got a handful or two of snow from the creeper outside. They put it on a plate and stirred sugar into it; then they reached down the precious bottle of cochineal their mother had given them, and coloured it a pale, lovely pink.They dressed all the dolls in their very best and brought them to the feast. Even Weenie’s “Molly Coddles” was hunted up and introduced into a[95]garment. She was Weenie’s only doll—a gaunt, wooden one with a black painted head and vividly red cheeks.In the beginning she had possessed the jointed wooden legs and arms that are usually found on her species; but Weenie had thought them troublesome and pulled them off. The stump of a body and the big head she used variously as a horse, a hammer, a ship, and a missile. Dolly to-day, however, wrapped the poor wreck in Jennie’s second-best party cloak, and she was propped up at the table among her betters.How delicious was that pink ice-cream, eaten off inch-wide plates, with microscopic tin spoons! What delicate flavour that soup had, especially when Phyl chopped up very small a leaf of the outside creeper and made the effect still more realistic? Nothing could have been more enjoyable than that rather dirty-looking ball of dough, yclept a pudding, with the sweet sauce, also coloured pink, poured over it.Weenie was beamingly happy again, and Phyl and Dolly were enjoying themselves so intensely that all thought of the counterpane faded from their minds.“But, oh,” cried Phyl, “I don’t think Suey ought to have another ice-cream, she’s had five, and it was only yesterday she had whooping-cough and perelsis.”“Give it to my old Molly Coddles,” said Weenie, and kissed her poor puppet in an unusual burst of[96]tenderness,—“poor old Molly, I wisht you’d let her sleep in the bed with Jennie and Suey,—she hasn’t got nowhere to sleep.”The door opened and the mother came in.Weenie greeted her hilariously.“Come an’ have some ice-cream, mummie,” she cried, “twickerly, twickerly, or Molly ’ll eat it all.”[Illustration]“We are going to Australia.”But Phyl and Dolly dropped their dolls and rushed to their mother with parted lips and eagerly questioning eyes.Mrs. Conway’s face was a little pale, but her hair was no longer pushed back, and worry-wrinkles had smoothed themselves from the forehead.[97]Her eyes looked brave and calm and smiling, there was no fear in them at all.“Oh, what is it?” Phyl cried; “it is a big, big thing, I know, I know.”The mother sat down in a chair while they pressed round her.“Yes, it is rather a big thing,” she said. “In one month, little girls,we are goingto Australia.”
Unbolsteredin such ways of hope, their thoughts flew to wild extremes; Phyl was ill again, and was confined to bed; the harsh biting winters always caught at her poor little chest, and four or five times from November to March they were obliged to keep her a week or more safely amongst the blankets. Dolly was of course always her faithful companion and slave at such times, and the days never dragged; if those two had been set down on a desert island for a year, their quaint resources and strange imaginings would have filled every day to the brim with action and enjoyment.
And this time they had a limitless subject for discussion.
They had climbed up their own particular beanstalk of imagination, and peeped into the land of poverty wherein soon their feet were to walk.
Dolly went about as much as she could, unobserved, without her boots.
[82]“They’ll wear out quickly enough twamping about the stweets,” she said. “I’ll take good care of them now.”
Weenie slipped hers off. “Le’s take our stockings off too, Dolly,” she said, “then they won’t get worned out.”
“Oh,” said Dolly, “stockings are cheap, I think—besides we could go without them altogether; the little girls who came selling holly had no stockings on at all.”
Phyl, tied to bed, could not economize in this way, but when Harriet ran up with her eleven o’clock lunch-tray she only ate half the bread to her beef-tea, and did not touch the arrowroot biscuits. “Here,” she said, gathering them up carefully, “put them in the box quickly, Dolly, before Harriet comes back, or she’ll make me eat them.”
Dolly got out the old bonnet-box, that until the last few days had held their patches of materials for dolls’ clothes. It was half full of broken victuals,—bits of cake, bread, a jar with butter in it, quite a quantity of sugar that they had saved instead of having it in their tea; even a couple of mutton-chops.
This was to provide against the coming days when they would be starving in the streets of London, and was to be brought out as a beautiful surprise to their mother when she was tired out one day and hopeless of getting food for dinner.
Phyl and Dolly sketched the future with dark[83]enjoyment on their faces, and Weenie listened aghast.
Their mother, of course, would strive to earn a livelihood by singing in the snowy London streets, Weenie in her arms, themselves beside her trying to sell bunches of violets or watercress, or even shoelaces. Sometimes the passers-by would put pennies into their mother’s hand, or buy their own wares, but sometimes no one would take any notice of them at all, and they would go home at length to a dark, damp cellar, and divide a crust of bread amongst them, and sleep on the old floor beneath sacks.
At this point in the pleasing prospect Weenie used to cry dismally, and their own eyes would fill with tears of self-pity.
They would pursue it a little further, however; their clothes would grow more and more ragged, and the wind would whistle through them, and chill them to the bone; they would all be barefoot, their boots having worn out and their stockings gone long since; and they would all have such hacking coughs that the passers-by, hurrying away to their rich, luxurious homes, would occasionally fling them a glance of pity. And at last a benevolent old gentleman would be passing by, and touched at their distress would put his hand hastily in his pocket and bring out a coin which he would slip into their mother’s hand with the words, “Here’s a shilling for you, my poor woman,” and when he got some distance away they would[84]discover he had given them a sovereign in mistake. And the mother would sternly put away the temptation to buy food and clothes for her starving children with it, and bid Phyl and Dolly run after him and tell him of the mistake. And they would catch him at last, and tendering the glittering gold back to him would tell him of his error. And he would be so overcome with their honesty that he would take them by the hand and go back to their mother and ask questions of her,—what was her name?—why was she in such great distress? And when he heard the name he would lean up against the lamp-post quite overcome; and when they asked him what was the matter he would answer that he was their father’s long-lost brother, and had been searching for them for years, as he was immensely wealthy and did not know what to do with his money. And thereupon he would adopt them all, and they would all live happily to the end of their days.
“Then why doesn’t mama tell Dadda’s bruvver now?” demanded the practical Weenie.
Phyl and Dolly glanced at her impatiently. That the father had no brother, long-lost or otherwise, was a detail they had not troubled about.
“Oh, well, it’ll be an uncle or a cousin,” they said, and ran on painting the brilliant future life they would lead, in colours as glowing as they had painted the other days dun.
It was on the first day that Phyl was up again that[85]they actually learned the great news. At tea-time Mrs. Conway ran into the nursery for a moment. She had been busy with the lawyer most of the afternoon, and now he and her own brother were staying for the evening that yet more business might be talked.
“I want you all to be very quiet and good,” she said; “play here all the time, Phyl mustn’t be in the draughts, and no one is to come running into the breakfast-room under any pretext.”
“Mayn’t we even come to dessert?” said Dolly. This had always been their privilege.
“There is no dessert,” said the mother. “There is nothing but a very small leg of mutton, and an apple-pie, and some custards. Tell Harriet, Dolly, to look in the store-room, I think there is just one more pot of red currant-jelly for the meat.”
She went to the door, then came back; her cheeks were flushed, her crinkly hair pushed back from her forehead as if with much and difficult thinking.
“Before you go to bed to-night you shall know everything,” she said; “till then be good little chickies, and don’t let me see a bit of you.”
But there were four hours to bed-time,—how could they make the time endurable, confined within the limits of these four walls?
Yet on ordinary occasions it was a most resourceful room.
It was fairly large and well lighted, with a window[86]that had what all nurseries should have,—a deep, broad window-seat. Of necessary furniture there was nothing beyond a table, four or five chairs, an old horse-hair sofa, and two large cupboards. And all of it, by the earnest request of the three remaining inhabitants, was crowded down to one end, in order to leave the other quite bare for play. Phyl and Dolly had begged an old clothes-horse, and had coaxed Harriet into nailing some material over it. The big corner it had screened off from the room was entirely sacred to them; and Weenie, when they retired within it and extended no invitation to her, had no other course left but to stay outside and make a disturbing noise. For she was such a destructive small morsel that Mr. and Mrs. Conway, in the interests of the two to whom dolls were living breathing beings and the centres of passionate affections, had been obliged to join the coalition against her in this respect, and say she must not touch that corner without permission. They sought to recompense her for the interdict by giving her boxes of wooden and tin soldiers, boats and horses, and they begged the two elder little maids to be unselfish and not abuse the privilege.
Inside the screen the floor-space was covered with an old hearth-rug. The most imposing article of furniture was the bedstead. Mr. Conway had had it made by a carpenter three Christmases ago, and Mrs. Conway had made the clothing. Surely there never[87]was so beautiful a thing. It was made of cedar, and was large enough to accommodate at a pinch four dolls, seeing the habit of these diminutives is to lie perfectly straight and not sprawl about like humans. The head and foot were slightly carved, it had prettily-turned pillars, and beneath the mattress were white laths. The bed itself was of feathers, and the casing of blue Belgian tick exactly like “grown-up” beds. Then there came an under-blanket with a red button-holed edge, a beautiful sheet, two sweet tiny pillows in frilled pillow-cases, another sheet, another blanket (this one prettily stitched), and, crowning glory of all, a patchwork counterpane made of lovely bits of silk, and lined delicately with pale pink. There were even nightdress pockets, edged with lace, to lay upon it in the daytime.
Phyl and Dolly went to their corner to see their large families into bed as one means of filling the time this evening.
They folded all the tiny garments in stacks, and inducted even the most battered and headless specimens of dollhood into nightgowns.
“The sheets are very dirty,” Dolly said; “we quite forgot, Phyl, it was washing day to-day. How’d it be if we do it now? We can dry the things on the fire-guard.”
But Phyl had covered up the last of her offspring, and was bringing out a tattered copy ofThe Arabian Nights.
[88]“I think we’d better read,” she said, “then the time will go very quickly.”
“Well, wait for me a second,” Dolly said, hastily plaiting up the long golden hair of Constance, the one fashionable doll of the assembly. Then they lay down together on the hearth-rug, the book between them, and their chins propped in their hands.
“Oh,” said the little lonely person outside the screen, “I’ve nosing to do, Dolly, le’s wash the things and hang them upon the line? Le’s come in, Phyl?”
“Hide the best little cups,” whispered Phyl to Dolly.
“She’ll bweak the mangle,” whispered Dolly to Phyl,“don’t let’s get it out.”
“No, I won’t,” said the maligned young person, entering.
“Where’s the tubs and the bucket?—le’s play, I’m Jane. An’ I must have the mangle, Dolly.”
Phyl and Dolly sighed. They had their own particular ways of turning the garments inside out, and soaking and rinsing them; they knew just what things were worn then and needed gentle rubbing; it was a real hardship to remember their mother’s words and let the careless little one in to help.
“It’s a very small wash this week,” Phyl said; “I don’t think I shall put even Suey’s pinafores in.”
“When you look at them, the sheets and pillow-cases aren’t so very dirty,” Dolly said.
[Plate][Plate]“‘I tell you it’s only a small wash this week,’ Phyl said.”Three Little Maids][Page89
[Plate][Plate]“‘I tell you it’s only a small wash this week,’ Phyl said.”Three Little Maids][Page89
[Plate][Plate]“‘I tell you it’s only a small wash this week,’ Phyl said.”Three Little Maids][Page89
“‘I tell you it’s only a small wash this week,’ Phyl said.”Three Little Maids][Page89
[89]They gave Weenie two or three print frocks and a heap of under-linen.
“The tub isn’t half full, dive me some more,” said the young washerwoman, tucking her sleeves up to her shoulders, tying her handkerchief round her head, and turning up the front of her dress to look business-like.
“I tell youit’s only a small wash this week,” Phyl said.
“I know,” said Weenie, pouting, “you fink I won’t get your old clothes clean.”
Without a doubt they did think so.
“Wash those first,” Dolly said; “p’waps we’ll find some more soon.”
Weenie gathered up the things indicated, and one other thing, and went off to the end of the room to the window-seat that was used as a laundry.
She dragged both the tubs with her, and insisted upon being given possession of the mangle. When they demurred she looked at them reproachfully.
“I fought you promised mummie on Sunday that you would be good to me,” she said.
So they sighed and gave it up to her—even tried to dole out the necessary stores with a show of cheerfulness—the pat of soap, the microscopic blue-bag, the soda, starch, and infinitesimal pegs. Then they fell down to their book again. The Prince of Persia was making his first visit to the palace of Schemselnihar, and how those children revelled in the gorgeous[90]colouring of the scene! The unstinted wealth of adjectives acted like intoxicants to their senses. They were not lying down face downwards on a hearth-rug in England; they were far away in that brilliant East, in a noble saloon the dome of which was supported by a hundred pillars of marble white as alabaster. The bases and chapiters of the pillars were adorned with four-footed beasts and birds of different sorts, gilded. In every space between the columns was a little alcove adorned in the same manner, and great vessels of china, crystal, jet, porphyry, agate, and other precious materials garnished with gold and jewels. The windows looked into the most delicious garden. Ten black women came towards them, carrying with much difficulty a throne of massy silver, curiously wrought; then twenty handsome ladies richly appareled alike, and playing on instruments. Lastly Schemselnihar herself, easily distinguished from the rest by her majestic air, as well as by a sort of mantle of a very fine stuff of gold and sky-blue, fastened to her shoulders over her other apparel, which was the most magnificent that could be imagined. It was of purple. . . .
“Ugh!” said the voice of the distant washerwoman, “ah, ugh!” There was a sound of the spilling of much water, and the falling of something.
Phyl and Dolly scrambled to their feet and rushed out, to find Weenie’s wash had been much more extensive than bargained for.
[91]They were allowed to use the water from an old “puzzle” jug that stood on one of the cupboards, but Harriet had been careless enough this evening, with the demands of “company” on her mind, to leave her bowl of washing-up water on the table, and Weenie had utilized that instead, since it was warm.
She had washed all the dolls’ clothes in it, they hung over the fire-guard, grey and greasy: there were two ancient wool antimacassars that were kept on the sofa when they were not doing duty as wraps for dolls or “ladies,”—she had washed them also and turned the water a queer shade of green. When she found her own pinafore was stained from the running wool she took it off and washed it too: when she found her white woollen frock was in the same condition she struggled out of it and dipped it in the basin and soaped and rinsed it vigorously, standing all the time on a chair. The clattering sound was caused by the chair slipping aside, and “down tumbled baby and white frock and all.”
Phyl and Dolly scolded energetically, as became elder sisters.
Then suddenly Phyl gave a scream of absolute horror and flew to the fire-guard. Hanging over it to dry, its gay colours running streakily into each other, its delicate lining turned a nondescript hue, was their cherished dolls’ counterpane.
“What’s the matter?” said Weenie wonderingly.
But Phyl and Dolly had burst into tears and[92]rushed together for the first overwhelming minute of bitter sorrow.
Weenie ran to them confidently, perfect joy on her face.
“The mangle isn’t broked,” she said, “it’s nosing but the handle tomed off. Mover’ll stick it on again; don’t cry, Dolly.”
Then they looked at her innocent face more in anger than in sorrow. Phyl even pushed her roughly away.
“You’re a bad, wicked, horrid girl,” she said.
Weenie lost her balance and staggered against Dolly.
“You’re a howid, wicked, bad girl,” said Dolly, and pushed her back.
The return push gave her into Phyl’s power again. That young person caught her by her bare shoulders and gave her a slight shake.
“How dare you touch our things?” she said.
Dolly ran to her and gave her another little shake.
“How dare you touch our things?” she said.
Weenie burst into tears, the heartbroken tears of injured innocence. She had not dreamed of doing injury to the counterpane; it had seemed a beautiful thing to her to take it surreptitiously and wash it so well for them; she had thought they would be delighted when they saw it fresh and clean, for they had been saying the lining was getting dirty for a long time.
[93]She flung herself down in a miserable shivering heap on the floor.
But the elder girls left her alone, and took their anger and the counterpane behind the screen.
She cried for nearly ten minutes before their wrath cooled. Then the pitifulness of her sobbings suddenly softened their hearts. They ran out to her.
“Poor old Weenie,” Dolly said; “never mind, Weenie, it doesn’t matter.”
Weenie clung to her convulsively, she had sobbed herself quite ill.
Phyl ran to the press where the clothes were kept and found a frock and pinafore; she was reproaching herself bitterly for the blue little arms and chattering teeth.
“Darling little Weenie,” she said, “here, let Phyl put this on—don’t cry so, baby sweet,—we aren’t angry a bit now, are we, Dolly? It doesn’t matter a scrap, does it, Dolly?”
“Not a scwap,” said Dolly eagerly.
They pulled her to the fire, and Phyl leaned perilously over the guard and poked till the flames leaped up warmly; they rubbed her perishing little hands, they petted and kissed her and called themselves all sorts of names for being so unkind to her.
“We’ll do anything, Weenie—anything,” said Phyl distractedly, when the convulsive sobbing still continued.
[94]Weenie was sufficiently recovered to press the advantage.
“Give me the l-little m-mangle for my ownty own,” she said.
They promised to her cheerfully.
“An’ le’s make ice-cream an’ have a p-p-party.”
They set to work to obey her.
They spread tea-towels over two chairs and laid out their best dinner-set that contained a soup-tureen and a sauce-boat in addition to the usual things. Phyl made soup of three currants and weak tea, Dolly cut an apple into thin slices, arranged them in slanting piles on a small plate, and called it bread-and-butter.
Weenie herself stirred flour-and-water and sugar together into a lump of dough and then stuck four currants into it; that was the pudding. Phyl mixed sugar-and-water together for sauce.
Then came thechef-d’œuvre. They listened at the door to make sure no footsteps approached; then Dolly stealthily opened the window, leaned out and got a handful or two of snow from the creeper outside. They put it on a plate and stirred sugar into it; then they reached down the precious bottle of cochineal their mother had given them, and coloured it a pale, lovely pink.
They dressed all the dolls in their very best and brought them to the feast. Even Weenie’s “Molly Coddles” was hunted up and introduced into a[95]garment. She was Weenie’s only doll—a gaunt, wooden one with a black painted head and vividly red cheeks.
In the beginning she had possessed the jointed wooden legs and arms that are usually found on her species; but Weenie had thought them troublesome and pulled them off. The stump of a body and the big head she used variously as a horse, a hammer, a ship, and a missile. Dolly to-day, however, wrapped the poor wreck in Jennie’s second-best party cloak, and she was propped up at the table among her betters.
How delicious was that pink ice-cream, eaten off inch-wide plates, with microscopic tin spoons! What delicate flavour that soup had, especially when Phyl chopped up very small a leaf of the outside creeper and made the effect still more realistic? Nothing could have been more enjoyable than that rather dirty-looking ball of dough, yclept a pudding, with the sweet sauce, also coloured pink, poured over it.
Weenie was beamingly happy again, and Phyl and Dolly were enjoying themselves so intensely that all thought of the counterpane faded from their minds.
“But, oh,” cried Phyl, “I don’t think Suey ought to have another ice-cream, she’s had five, and it was only yesterday she had whooping-cough and perelsis.”
“Give it to my old Molly Coddles,” said Weenie, and kissed her poor puppet in an unusual burst of[96]tenderness,—“poor old Molly, I wisht you’d let her sleep in the bed with Jennie and Suey,—she hasn’t got nowhere to sleep.”
The door opened and the mother came in.
Weenie greeted her hilariously.
“Come an’ have some ice-cream, mummie,” she cried, “twickerly, twickerly, or Molly ’ll eat it all.”
[Illustration]“We are going to Australia.”
“We are going to Australia.”
But Phyl and Dolly dropped their dolls and rushed to their mother with parted lips and eagerly questioning eyes.
Mrs. Conway’s face was a little pale, but her hair was no longer pushed back, and worry-wrinkles had smoothed themselves from the forehead.[97]Her eyes looked brave and calm and smiling, there was no fear in them at all.
“Oh, what is it?” Phyl cried; “it is a big, big thing, I know, I know.”
The mother sat down in a chair while they pressed round her.
“Yes, it is rather a big thing,” she said. “In one month, little girls,we are goingto Australia.”