that last copy of yours. I wish I could spare you to get an education
like my mother gave me, but I can’t. Still, it ain’t every child with
eyes can read raised point.”
Almira was untying the boat. “I wouldn’t let you spare me. You’d catch
afire or you’d fall into the river. We’d rather stay here, wouldn’t we?”
She was talking to Botsey now. “No, you can’t go with me.” Jumping nimbly
into the skiff, she began to cross the narrow strip of water.
“That baby row us?” she heard the lace lady ask. So she ran the boat in
skilfully.
Miss May stepped lightly in; the lace lady hesitated, then followed with
a laugh. Almira could hardly work the oars for looking at her soft brown
eyes and the little brown curl that fluttered on her cheek.
A few strokes brought the skiff to the boat. “Good morning, Mrs. Wing!”
called Miss May. “Here’s somebody you want to meet. Guess!”
“Is it Mrs. Lenox, who sends the raised point books in the travelling
library?”
“You’re a witch!” cried the girl.
The woman smiled brightly. Her blue eyes, with the white, sightless
pupils, turned toward the stranger. “I’m glad to see you at last. We
heard you were coming. Almira, have you brought seats for the ladies?”
The child, keeping her eyes on the beautiful stranger, brought forward
two soap-boxes upholstered in gay calico. If Botsey only had something
like that for her neck! And she caught up the bottle in its crude skirt
and blue crocheted shawl with an emphatic hug.
“Is that your doll?” asked Mrs. Lenox·
“No, ma’am. It’s Botsey.”
“It’s the bottle I’ve fixed up for her. I don’t know how she’d pass the
time if it wasn’t for Botsey. You see, being so helpless, I try to make
her enjoy staying with me. You know how helpless I am without her, Miss
May.”
“I know how helpful you are and what a good housekeeper,” said Miss May,
looking about at the tidy interior.
Then she told her errand. Almira was invited to the schoolhouse reception
party the next Wednesday. Wally Jim had offered to fish near _The Wing_,
if Mr. Wing should have to be filling orders in town.
Almira, her eyes still fixed on the beautiful lady’s face, said, “I went
once. Miss May had an Easter just after we first come here. May I bring
Botsey?”
But Miss May said no. A new library was due, and if it reached the
village in time Almira would have books to bring her mother.
Mrs. Wing smiled softly. “How good of you! The last one was about little
Nell. Why is it our books are so much better than books for people that
can see? Jack thinks so, and so does Almira. How I bless you, ma’am!”
Mrs. Lenox could say nothing. May had told her the story of the young
mother, attacked by the scarlet fever that left her sightless ten years
before.
“I’ll let her come on Wednesday,” pursued Mrs. Wing, “but I’ll never
budge from this chair till she gits back. It’s not as if I’d never seen
how dangerous things are.”
* * * * *
With the school party this tale has naught to do. The child reached home
betimes, carrying a package of books and a pasteboard box that seemed
almost as long as herself. She was trembling with excitement.
“The library’s come, ma! And here’s two books and some cake and candy
and—O ma, just guess what’s in the box?”
The mother felt, smiled, and shook her head.
“A little girl—a live little girl-baby doll!” And she lifted it from its
shell. “And Miss May—she’s sometimes so funny!—she said at first she
believed she’d rather I wouldn’t have her, but the lady said she wanted
me to.”
The mother held out her arms for the doll, almost as excited as the child.
Almira expounded, “Its dress is blue, with buttons and buttonholes, and
her hair’s real; put your hand here. It’s brown, and these teenty brown
curls slant on her cheeks, and her eyes are brown, and she can shut them
and go to sleep just like you and me.”
“Well, I never!” said the mother, feeling. “And what is this paper pinned
on her dress?”
“It’s a letter,” answered Almira, sagely. “It begins in print and ends
in writing, but I can’t make it all out. It says, ‘Patent, unbreakable,
celluloid. Made in France.’ I’ll ask daddy the rest when he comes. And
feel the petticoat, ma! Lace!”
“And tucks,” added the mother. “And see how fine the stuff is. Are these
slippers?”
“With heels, real heels!” gurgled Almira. “And stockin’s! And in the box
here’s a hat and feather and a white nightgown!” Almira’s emotion got the
better of her, and she flung herself into her mother’s arms and rocked in
ecstasy.
Then came a familiar bark, and Sweepins preceded the husband and fell to
sniffing the doll immediately. “It’s mine, Sweepins,” cried the child.
“Look, daddy!”
But the fisherman was too hungry to notice dolls, so the trio prepared
the supper of frizzled bacon, corn, hoe-cakes and weak coffee. Afterward
was bedtime, and the little feather bed was pulled from the big one to
the floor, and made up with clean quilts for the child. But first she
undressed the doll, carefully plaiting its hair in two nice plaits,
putting the front in curl-papers, and robing it in the night-dress fine
enough for day. Mrs. Lenox had cautioned her to teach her child tidy ways
like its grandmother’s. Poor Botsey, hitherto her constant bedfellow,
stood motionless outside the door.
When morning came, and she was helping, her mother asked, “What are you
going to name her?”
“It ought to be something pretty. I thought of Queeny.”
“Queeny’ll be fine,” agreed Mrs. Wing. “But where’s the paper? Maybe
she’s already named.”
Outside “daddy” was mending a net when Almira brought him the paper. He
read:
“‘Patent, unbreakable, celluloid. Made in France.’ That’s in print,
and here in writing is, ‘This travelling doll goes with Travelling
Library Number Ten to any child selected by persons responsible for the
distribution of the books. It is the reward for good behavior or special
merit in the place of a medal, and is to belong to the child until the
library is ready to go on, when the dolly in neat condition and clean,
her hair combed, her clothing washed and ironed, must be put back in her
box and packed for the next child on the circuit.’”
Almira snatched at the paper and ran into the boat. She laid Queeny on
her mother’s lap and crept out to the little deck. Botsey, again on
guard, stood by the door. Almira seized her fiercely, tore off the blue
shawl, dragged at the soiled skirt. An old greasy bottle! How could it
ever be taken back as her very own child when Queeny had to go?
“Almira,” called the mother, scenting tragedy, “don’t you want me to play
grandmother with you and Queeny?”
“What’s the use? She’s like your books. She ain’t mine, and I never had a
real child before. The paper says she must travel with the books.”
But the placid cheeriness of the blind woman smoothed matters: “But she’s
yours now, and sometimes the books stay for weeks and weeks.”
Here was some comfort. One week was a long time; a month so long that
Almira could hardly remember it. And Queeny was beautiful. Why not love
her and be happy?
And she was, for weeks and weeks that went by like a dream. She quite
forgot what had to happen until one day Wally Jim stopped with a note
from Miss May—in printing writing that Almira could read. It said:
“Will you let Queeny go on to-morrow? There’s a dear little
girl just your age up in the mountains who may have to walk on
crutches all her life. She is expecting the doll every day now,
so have it looking clean and pretty.”
“Almira?” questioned the mother. But the child did not answer.
Fortunately no one was near but Wally Jim to see her screwed-up face as
she gulped once or twice. She handed him the paper to read, making a sign
of silence. Whatever her emotions, she always instinctively spared her
sympathetic mother.
“I wouldn’t let her go!” blurted Wally Jim, kicking one cowhide boot so
hard against the tying-post that he rocked the house.
Almira’s head shook in mournful dissent. “When I took her I knew I had to
let her travel with the books,” she said, with wonderful logic.
Wally Jim would not look at her. “You take my advice—kick about it.
’Twon’t do any harm.” He got into his skiff, with head turned from
Almira’s drawn face. “But if you’re bound to send her, I’ll be round
to-morrow for her and the books.”
“What’s that he said about the books?” called the mother. “Are some more
coming?”
“I suppose so. These have to go back.”
“And the doll? O baby!”
“Of course,” answered Almira, shortly. “We’ll wash her clothes to-day,
for it says, ‘Returned clean and neat.’”
It was all right while the work went on. Queeny was washed, combed,
braided and dressed. Almira touched her as little as possible.
When Queeny was laid in her box, wearing a blue hood knitted by the
mother, and tied with the tapes that had held her still on her former
journey, Almira thought she looked as if she were in her coffin. Then
Almira caught sight of Botsey, as usual on guard outside the door. Before
Queeny came Botsey was ever so much sweeter. If she had never seen
Queeny! Why could not the little girl in the mountains on crutches have a
Botsey? They do all right until you’ve seen the other kind.
Almira’s character was one of quick decision. With a furtive look at her
mother, she took Queeny from her nest and removed her hood, dress, shoes,
stockings. Then she stripped Botsey of her old skirt and blue shawl,
putting Queeny’s clothes on Botsey after a painful fashion, put the blue
woolen hood over Botsey’s green glass countenance, and folded Queeny’s
freshly starched nightgown on Botsey’s chest. She viewed her work
critically, and with an access of turpitude, stuffed empty sleeves and
stockings with paper, putting on the slippers so that they stuck quite
naturally from beneath the blue frock: and right over the place where
Queeny’s face should have looked from the hood, she pinned the paper.
Then she tied the tapes, tied them with a vicious screw of her mouth in
hard, hard knots, put the lid on the box, and brought all to her mother,
saying, in the evenest of tones:
“I want you to help me wrap her up.”
“Poor baby!” said the mother. “Maybe some day Mrs. Lenox will send
another.”
“Never want another!” said the child, sullenly.
Going out to her stool in front, she dressed Queeny in the old skirt, put
the shawl over her head, and tried to stand her on guard, Botsey fashion.
But Queeny doubled up, and refused. So she held her in her arms with a
savage satisfaction, thinking, “Queeny isn’t any bottle doll.”
Once the mother brushed the wool of the little shawl as the child passed
her on some household task.
“You’ve done gone back to Botsey? That’s right. You’ve the sense of a
grown-up.”
The afternoon brought a scare. Miss May herself came for the packages.
Suppose! Oh, suppose! Almira barely had time to plump Queeny between the
feather beds before Miss May landed in Wally Jim’s skiff. Almira was glad
that she had been prompt, and that the string was tied in hard knots.
Miss May praised her for being a good little girl, and made her wince by
depicting the gladness of that lame child in the mountains when Queeny
should arrive.
But Almira did not repent for a minute. She even said, “Poor little
girl!” with a hard-hearted irony. Miss May puckered her forehead, as she
always did when she was thinking.
That night Almira tossed and tumbled, unable to sleep. Then the moon
rose and sent a straight shaft of light through one of the little square
windows on the doll’s face. Almira smothered a scream. One of Queeny’s
eyes was asleep, the other wide open, staring at her. She shook her hard,
but that eye would not sleep. She held her up, but although the shut eye
opened, the open eye shut, giving the effect of a wicked wink.
How she longed for dear, blind Botsey! Where was Botsey now? Could she
feel, and did she know what had been done? No, Botsey was only a bottle.
But _Queeny knew_! And Queeny was watching her with one eye to see
what other wicked things were going to happen; and there was Miss May
praising her and trusting her, and that little lame girl in the mountains
expecting a doll, and getting—
Almira could not have called this a protest of conscience, but she knew
she was utterly miserable. Furthermore, she realized that Queeny’s
ability to bring pride and happiness was gone, and that she herself would
always have this something gnawing her inside.
But must she? Perhaps it was not too late. Jim would help her. To-morrow
she would get him to stay near her mother while she went ashore with
Queeny, the glaring Queeny, to Miss May, telling her how bad she had
been. Perhaps Number Ten had not gone on, and Botsey could be stopped on
her deceitful way.
This resolve so comforted Almira that as the moon went down and darkness
hid the staring eye, she fell asleep.
She was awakened by voices and a motion she knew well. The daylight came
broadly through the windows. She heard a clanging and creaking.
A sick realization overwhelmed her. They had left the island, they were
in the broad bed of the river, skimming away who knew where?—away from
Miss May and the chance of making things all right.
She dressed herself, asking no questions; but her mother, holding to the
arms of her chair, explained:
“Your pa thinks he’ll do better off a larger town, so he came in before
day and raised sail to get into the current while this good wind’s
blowing.”
Almira sat limply on her little stool. Queeny could not go back to Miss
May, but she should not glare at her with her one eye for the rest of her
life. Botsey could swim, but Queeny—Queeny could drown! And this time
there was no deliberation. She snatched at the doll, and going to the
back of the boat, hurled it as far as she could into the river!
Then she fell to helping her mother assiduously, being extra loving and
attentive, giving little pats and squeezes as she passed her in her
morning tasks, even running to hug her whenever the boat rocked in the
waves made by passing craft. Mrs. Wing did the washing, Almira hung the
clothes to dry in the bright, breezy sunshine. She scoured the already
bright tins, she shook up the beds, hung the quilts to air, washed
the floor, the deck. It was work she wanted, hard work. She made the
discovery that work brought forgetfulness. She would have liked to scrub
the floor of the world.
Day was all right, but for all her bodily fatigue she slept but fitfully
that night. She wished people could work at night.
Although they soon reached a place that her father called the Point, and
anchored a little way up a creek, where things stopped shaking and were
quiet, her eyes would not close.
This Point place was not like the green island. There were smells. They
were far enough inland to see a street with people walking; indeed, they
were almost under a bridge that let the street-cars go by. “Daddy” left
early. After putting the cabbage on to boil, her mother sat down to her
seams and hems in the checked blue gingham. Almira, empty-handed, moped
on her little three-legged stool at the door. Sweepins, wringing wet,
snored on the sunny deck.
A skiff came up the stream; in it Wally Jim. “I’ve brought you
something!” he called. “Miss May got to thinking after she got home, and
she says she’ll get another doll for that mountain kid, and you can have
Queeny back.” He reached under the seat, and with dramatic effect drew
out the long box.
At the sight of it Almira’s self-control gave way. Here was punishment,
indeed! To her mother’s arms she rushed, blurting out the truth with
sobs.
“Wally Jim,” asked Mrs. Wing, “how far is Miss May’s from here?”
“Not so very far, and she’s down in town to-day—said she was coming.”
“Take the box back to her, Wally Jim!” sobbed Almira. “Let her see it
just as it is, because she hasn’t opened it, and she thinks she’s sending
me Queeny. And I’ll write a letter besides.”
“I’ll take all the letters you want, but I won’t take the box, because
whatever’s in it, it’s yours.” There was something different and set
about Wally Jim this morning. Almira sighed resignedly, and with
painstaking labor proceeded to print her letter of repentance.
“You have got back Botsey, dear,” said the mother, “so try to forget.”
“I’ll never play with Botsey again. I’ll give her away first.”
In an incredibly short time they heard Jim’s oars again, and Miss May
stepped on deck. She was holding out her arms to Almira, and there were
tears in her eyes.
“Dear child, I didn’t like the idea from the very first, but Mrs. Lenox
does so much for us. You’ll be all the better for the sharp experience,
and you have really shown your repentance. Now let’s open the box and see
exactly what you did.”
Quite cheerfully, all the miserable feeling gone, Almira brought
scissors, cut strings, pointing out the while the iniquities of hard
knots and covered features.
What! Queeny! From the bottom of the river, dry, clothed, and with her
two eyes shut! Almira looked at Miss May and at Wally Jim, grinning over
Miss May’s shoulder.
“What has happened now?” asked Mrs. Wing.
“Tell your story, Jim,” said Miss May.
“I was drifting some way off behind you all,” said Jim, “and maybe
sleeping some, when who should swim up to the skiff with something in
his mouth but Sweepins. It was Queeny, but as she’s cellyloid, only her
clothes were wet. I puzzled out that somehow she hadn’t gone back to Miss
May, and that she ought to. So I took her, and Miss May says, ‘If this is
Queeny, what’s in Almira’s box?’ And we looked, and there was Botsey.”
“And oh, I was so sorry,” said Miss May, taking up the tale, “though I’d
known all along that a travelling doll would cause heartache—and this
proved it would do worse. I sent Queeny back, after having her doctored,
knowing that my little Almira was good before temptation came, and
wishing to know what it had made of her. I’m satisfied,” and Miss May
hugged the child once more.
The blind mother was smiling. “Miss May, she’s only a child, you know,
but she suffered like a grown-up, and with it all, helped me just the
same as ever.”
Almira dug her bare toes into the rag carpet. “Where’d Botsey go to?” she
asked, without looking up.
“If I were you, I’d look under the seat of my boat,” said Wally Jim.
THE DOLL DOCTOR
By E. V. Lucas
Christina’s father was as good as his word—the doll came, by post, in a
long wooden box, only three days after he had left for Paris. All the
best dolls come from Paris, but you have to call them “poupées” there
when you ask the young ladies in the shops for them.
Christina had been in the garden ever since she got up, waiting for
the postman—there was a little gap in the trees where you could see
him coming up the road—and she and Roy had run to meet him across the
hay-field directly they spied him in the distance. Running across the
hay-field was forbidden until after hay-making; but when a doll is
expected from Paris!…
Christina’s father was better than his word, for it was the most
beautiful doll ever made, with a whole wardrobe of clothes, too.
Also a tiny tortoiseshell comb and a powder puff. Also an extra pair of
bronzed boots. Her eyes opened and shut, and her eyebrows were real hair.
This is very unusual in a doll. “She shall be called Joan Shoesmith,”
said Christina, who had always loved the name, it had been her first
nurse’s.
Christina took Joan to her mother at once, Roy running behind her with
the box and the brown paper and the string and the wardrobe, and Chrissie
calling back every minute, “Don’t drop the powder puff whatever you do!”
“Hold tight to the hand-glass!” and things like that.
“But it’s splendid!” Mrs. Tiverton said. “There isn’t a better doll in
the world; only, Chrissie dear, be very careful with it. I don’t know but
that father would have done better to have got something stronger—this is
so very fragile. I think, perhaps you had better have it only indoors.
Yes, that’s the best way; after to-day you must play with it only
indoors.”
Thus Joan Shoesmith came to Mapleton.
How Christina loved her doll that first day! She carried it everywhere
and showed it everything—all over the house, right into the attics;
all over the garden, right into the little black stove place under the
greenhouse; into the village, to introduce her to the postmistress, who
lived behind a brass railing in the grocer’s shop; into the stables, to
kiss General Gordon, the old white horse. Jim, who groomed the General,
was the only person who did not admire the doll properly, but how could
you expect a nice feeling from a boy who sets dogs on rats?
It was two or three days after this that Roy went down to the river to
fish. He had to go alone, because Christina wanted to play with Joan
Shoesmith in the nursery; but not more than half an hour had passed when
he heard footsteps in the long grass behind him, and, looking up, there
was Christina. Now, as Christina had refused so bluntly to have anything
to do with his fishing, Roy was surprised to see her, but more surprised
still to see that Joan Shoesmith had come too.
“Why, did mother say you might bring Joan?” he asked.
“No,” said Christina, rather sulkily, “but I didn’t think she’d mind.”
Roy looked troubled: his mother did not often make rules to interfere
with their play, and when she did she liked to be obeyed. She had
certainly forbidden Christina to take Joan Shoesmith out of the house.
He did not say anything. Christina sat down and began to play. She was
not really at all happy, because she knew it was wrong of her to have
disobeyed, and she was really a very good girl. Roy went on fishing.
“Oh, do do something else,” Christina cried pettishly, after a few
minutes. “It’s so cold sitting here waiting for you to catch stupid fish
that never come. Let’s go to the cave.” The cave was an old disused
lime-kiln, where robbers might easily have lived.
“All right,” Roy said.
“I’ll get there first,” Christina called out, beginning to run.
“Bah!” said Roy and ran after. They had raced for a hundred yards, when,
with a cry, Christina fell. Roy, who was still some distance behind,
having had to pack up his rod, hastened to Christina’s side. He found
that she had scrambled to her knees, and was looking anxiously into Joan
Shoesmith’s face.
“Oh, Roy,” she wailed, “her eyes have gone!”
It was too true. Joan Shoesmith, lately so radiantly observant, now
turned to the world the blankest of empty sockets. Roy took her poor head
in his hand and shook it. A melancholy rattle told that a pair of once
serviceable blue eyes were now at large. Christina sank on the grass in
an agony of grief—due partly, also, to the knowledge that if she had not
been naughty this would never have happened. Roy stood by, feeling hardly
less unhappy. After a while he took her arm. “Come along,” he said,
“let’s see if Jim can mend her.”
“Jim!” Christina cried in a fury, shaking off his hand.
“But come along, anyway,” Roy said.
Christina continued sobbing. After a while she moved to rise, but
suddenly fell back again. Her sobbing as suddenly ceased. “Roy!” she
exclaimed fearfully, “I can’t walk.”
Christina had sprained her ankle.
Roy ran to the house as fast as he could to find help, and very soon old
Stedder, the gardener, and Jim were carrying Christina between them, with
mother and nurse walking by her side. Christina was put to bed at once
and her foot wrapped in bandages, but she cried almost incessantly, no
matter how often she was assured that she was forgiven. “Her sobs,” the
cook said, coming downstairs after her twentieth visit to the nursery,
“her sobs are that heart-rending I couldn’t stand it; and all the while
she asks for that blessed doll, which its eyes is rattling in its head
like marbles through falling on the ground, and Master Roy and Jim’s
trying to catch them with a skewer.”
Cook was quite right. Roy and Jim, with Joan Shoesmith between them, were
seated in the harness-room, probing tenderly the depths of that luckless
creature’s skull. A housemaid was looking on without enthusiasm. “You
won’t do it,” she said every now and then; “you can’t mend dolls’ eyes
with skewers. No one can. It’s impossible. The king himself couldn’t. You
ought to take it to the Miss Bannisters’ brother at Dormstaple. He’d mend
it in a jiffy—there’s nothing he can’t do in that way.”
Roy at last gave up in despair. “I’ll take it to the Miss Bannisters’
brother,” he said, rising with Joan Shoesmith in his arms; “it’s only six
miles.” But a sudden swoop from a figure in the doorway interrupted his
bold plan.