that angel upstairs crying for it every minute, and the doctor saying
she’s in a high fever with lying on the wet grass”; and with a swirl of
white skirts and apron, nurse and Joan Shoesmith were gone.
Roy put his hands in his pockets and wandered moodily into the garden.
The world seemed to have no sun in it any more.
The next day Christina was really ill. It was not only the ankle, but
she had caught a chill, the doctor said, and they must be very careful
with her. Roy went about with a sad and sadder face, for Christina was
his only playmate, and he loved her more than anything else; and, also,
it seemed so silly not to be able to mend a doll’s eyes. He moped in and
out of the house all the morning, and was continually being sent away
from Christina’s door, because she was too ill to bear anyone in the room
except nurse. She was wandering in her mind, nurse said, and kept on
saying that she had blinded her doll, and crying to have its eyes made
right again; but she would not let a hand be laid upon her, so that to
have Joan Shoesmith mended seemed impossible. Nurse cried too as she said
it, and Roy joined with her. He could not remember ever having been so
miserable.
The doctor looked very grave when he was going away. “That doll ought to
be put right,” he said to Mrs. Tiverton. “She’s a sensitive little thing,
evidently, and this feeling of disobeying you and treating her father’s
present lightly is doing her a lot of harm, apart altogether from the
chill and the sprain. If we could get those eyes in again she’d be better
in no time, I believe.”
Roy and his mother heard this with a sinking heart, for they knew that
Christina’s arms locked Joan Shoesmith to her side almost as if they were
bars of iron.
“Anyway,” the doctor said, “I’ve left some medicine that ought to give
her some sleep, and I shall come again this afternoon.” So saying, the
doctor touched up his horse, and Mrs. Tiverton walked into the house
again.
Roy stood still pondering.
Suddenly his mind was made up, and he set off for the high road at a good
swinging pace. At the gate he passed Jim. “If they want to know where I
am,” he called, “say I’ve gone to the Miss Bannisters’ brother.”
Miss Sarah Bannister and Miss Selina Bannister had lived in Dormstaple
as long almost as anyone could remember, although they were by no means
old. They had the red house with white windows, the kind of house which
one can see only in old English market towns. There was a gravel drive
before it, in the shape of a banana, the carriages going in at one end
and out at the other, stopping at the front door steps in the middle.
The blinds were of that kind through which no one who is outside can see
anything, and all who are inside can see everything. The door knocker was
of the brightest brass. Behind the house was a very large garden, with
a cedar in the midst; and a very soft lawn on which hundreds of birds
used to settle every morning in winter for the breakfast that the Miss
Bannisters provided. The cedar and the other trees had cigar boxes nailed
to them, for tits or wrens to build in, and half cocoa-nuts and lumps of
fat were always hung just outside the windows. At one side of the house
was the stable and coach-house, on the other side a billiard-room, now
used as a workshop. And his workshop brings us to the Miss Bannisters’
brother.
The Miss Bannisters’ brother was an invalid, and he was also what is
called an eccentric. “Eccentric, that’s what he is,” Mr. Stallabrass, who
kept the King’s Arms, had said, and there could be no doubt of it after
that. This meant that he wore rather shabby clothes, and took no interest
in the town, and was rarely seen outside the house or the garden.
Rumor said, however, that he was very clever with his hands, and could
make anything. What was the matter with the Miss Bannisters’ brother no
one seemed to know, but it gradually kept him more and more indoors.
No one ever spoke of him as Mr. Bannister, they always said the Miss
Bannisters’ brother. If you could see the Miss Bannisters, especially
Miss Selina, you would understand this; but although they had deep, gruff
voices they were really very kind.
As time went on, and the Miss Bannisters’ brother did not seem to grow
any better, or to be likely to take up his gardening again, the Miss
Bannisters had racked their brains to think of some employment for him
other than reading, which is not good for anyone all day long. One
evening, some years before this story, while the three were at tea, Miss
Selina cried suddenly, “I have it!”—so suddenly, indeed, that Miss Sarah
spilt her cup, and her brother took three lumps of sugar instead of two.
“Have what?” they both exclaimed.
“Why,” she said, “I was talking to-day with Mrs. Boniface, and she was
saying how nice it would be if there were someone in the town who could
mend toys—poor Miss Piper at the Bazaar being so useless, and all the
carpenters understanding nothing but making book-shelves and cucumber
frames, and London being so far away, and I said ‘Yes,’ never thinking of
Theodore here. And, of course, it’s the very thing for him.”
“Of course,” said Miss Sarah. “He could take the old billiard-room.”
“And have a stove put in it,” said Miss Selina.
“And put up a bench,” said Miss Sarah.
“And some cocoa-nut matting on the floor,” said Miss Selina.
“Linoleum,” said Miss Sarah.
“Cocoa-nut matting,” said Miss Selina.
“And we could call it the Dolls’ Hospital,” said Miss Sarah.
“Infirmary,” said Miss Selina.
“I prefer Hospital,” said Miss Sarah.
“Infirmary,” said Miss Selina. “Dr. Bannister, house surgeon, attends
daily from ten till one.”
“It would be the prettiest and kindliest occupation,” said Miss Sarah,
“as well as a useful one.”
“That’s the whole point of it,” said Miss Selina.
And that is how—five or six years ago—the Miss Bannisters’ brother came
to open the Dolls’ Infirmary. But he did not stop short at mending dolls.
He mended all kinds of other things too; he advised on the length of
tails for kites; he built ships; he had even made fireworks.
Roy walked into Dormstaple at about one o’clock, very tired and hot and
dusty and hungry; and a little later, after asking his way more than
once, he stood on the doorstep of the Miss Bannisters’ house. The door
was opened by old Mary, and as the flavor of roast fowl rushed out, Roy
knew how hungry he was. “I want to see the Miss Bannisters’ brother,” he
said, “please.”
“You’re too late,” was the answer. “Come to-morrow morning. Mr. Theodore
never sees children in the afternoon.”
“Oh, but I must,” Roy almost sobbed.
“Chut, chut!” said old Mary, “little boys shouldn’t say must.”
“But when they must, what else is there for them to say?” Roy asked.
“Chut, chut!” said old Mary again. “That’s imperent! Now run away, and
come to-morrow morning.”
This was too much for Roy. He covered his face with his hands, and really
and truly cried—a thing he would scorn to do on his own account.
While he stood there in this distress a hand was placed on his arm, and
he was drawn gently into the house. He heard the door shut behind him.
The hand then guided him along passages into a great room, and there he
was liberated. Roy looked round; it was the most fascinating room he
had ever seen. There was a long bench at the window with a comfortable
chair before it, and on the bench were hammers and chisels and all kinds
of tools. A ship nearly finished lay in one place, a clockwork steamer
in another, a pair of rails wound about the floor on the cocoa-nut
matting—in and out like a snake—on which a toy train probably ran, and
here and there were signals. On the shelves were colored papers, bottles,
boxes, and wire. In one corner was a huge kite, as high as a man, with a
great face painted on it. Several dolls, more or less broken, lay on the
table.
All this he saw in a moment. Then he looked at the owner of the hand,
who had been standing beside him all the while with an amused expression
on his delicate, kind face. Roy knew in an instant it was the Miss
Bannisters’ brother.
“Well,” said the Miss Bannisters’ brother, “so when one must, one must?”
“Yes,” Roy said, half timidly.
“Quite right too,” said the Miss Bannisters’ brother. “‘Must’ is a very
good word, if one has the character to back it up. And now tell me,
quickly, what is the trouble. Something very small, I should think, or
you wouldn’t be able to carry it in your pocket.”
“It’s not in my pocket,” Roy said, “it’s not here at all. I want—I want a
lesson.”
“A lesson?” Mr. Theodore asked in surprise.
“Yes, in eye mending. When eyes fall inside and rattle, you know.”
The Miss Bannisters’ brother sat down and took Roy between his knees.
There was something about this little dusty, nervous boy that his clients
(often tearful enough) had never displayed before, and he wished to
understand it. “Now tell me all about it,” he said.
Roy told him everything, right from the first.
“And what is your father’s name?” was the only question that had to be
asked. When he heard this, the Miss Bannisters’ brother rose. “You must
stay here a minute,” he said.
“But—but the lesson?” Roy exclaimed. “You know I ought to be getting back
again. Christina—”
“All right, just a minute,” Mr. Theodore replied.
When the Miss Bannisters’ brother came back, Miss Selina came with him.
“Come and get tidy for dinner,” she said, “and afterwards we’ll drive
home.”
“Oh, but I can’t stop for dinner!” Roy cried. “It’s much too important to
stop for dinner; I’m not really hungry either.”
[Illustration: “I’M NOT YOUR DOCTOR. I’M A DOLL’S DOCTOR.”—page 165
_From the drawing by Carton Moorepark_]
“Dinner will only take a little while,” said Miss Selina, “and the horse
can be getting ready at the same time; and if you were to walk you
wouldn’t be home nearly so soon as you will if you drive, dinner time
included.”
“But the lesson—?” Roy gasped again.
“Oh, we’ve thought of a better way than the lesson,” Miss Selina said.
“Mr. Bannister is going with you.”
It took a moment for Roy to appreciate this, but when he did he was the
happiest boy in Dormstaple.
He never tasted a nicer chicken, he said afterwards.
Certainly not more than three-quarters of an hour had passed before the
carriage was on its way to Mapleton—with the Miss Bannisters’ brother
propped up with cushions (for he could not bear the jolting of carriages)
on the back seat, and Miss Selina and Miss Sarah, who had come to look
after their brother, on the other. Roy was on the box. You never saw such
puzzled faces as the Dormstaple people had when the party went by, for
Mr. Theodore had not driven out these twenty years; but their surprise
was nothing to that of old Mary, who wandered about the rooms all the
rest of the day muttering, “Little imperent boy!”
At the Mapleton gates Roy jumped down and rushed up to the house. His
mother came to the door as he reached it. “Oh, mother, mother,” he cried,
“he’s come himself!”
“Who has come?” she asked, forgetting to say anything about Roy’s long
absence. “I hoped it was the doctor. Christina is worse, I’m afraid; she
won’t sleep.”
“It’s all right,” Roy assured her. “I’ve brought the Miss Bannisters’
brother, who mends dolls and everything, and he’ll put the eyes right in
no time, and then Chrissie’ll be well again. Here they are!”
At this moment the carriage reached the door; but Mrs. Tiverton’s
perplexities were not removed by it. On the contrary, they were
increased, for she saw before her three total strangers. Miss Selina,
however, hastily stepped out and took Mrs. Tiverton’s hand and explained
the whole story, adding, “We are not coming in; my sister and I have a
call to pay a little further on. We shall come back in less than an hour
for our brother, carry him off, and be no trouble at all. I know how
little you must want even people that you know just now.” In spite of
Mrs. Tiverton’s protest, Miss Selina had her way, and the sisters drove
off.
While this conversation had been in progress, Roy had been speaking to
the Miss Bannisters’ brother. He had been preparing the speech ever since
they had started, for it was very important. “Please,” he said, “please
how much will this visit be, because I want to pay for it myself?”
The Miss Bannisters’ brother smiled. “But suppose you haven’t enough,” he
said.
“Oh, but I think I have,” Roy told him. “I’ve got seven-and-six, and when
the vet. came to see General Gordon it was only five shillings.”
The Miss Bannisters’ brother smiled again. “Our infirmary is rather
peculiar,” he said. “We don’t take money at all; we take promises;
different kinds of promises from different people, according to their
means. We ask rich parents’ friends to promise to give away old toys
or story-books, or scrap-books, or something of that kind, to real
hospitals—children’s hospitals. We find that much better than money.
Money’s such a nuisance. One is always losing the key to the money-box.”
Roy was a little disappointed. “Oh, yes,” he said, however, “I’ll do
that. Won’t I just? But, you know,” he added, “you can always break open
a money-box if it comes to the worst. Pokers aren’t bad.”
It was just then that the Miss Bannisters drove off, and Mrs. Tiverton
asked their brother to come to Christina’s room with her. Roy would have
given anything to have been allowed upstairs; but as it was forbidden he
went to see Jim and tell him the news.
Christina was moaning in the bed with Joan Shoesmith in her arms as the
Miss Bannisters’ brother sat down beside her. “Come,” he said gently,
“let me feel your pulse.”
Christina pushed her wrist towards him wearily·
“Oh, no, not yours,” he said, with a little laugh. “I mean your little
lady’s. I’m not your doctor. I’m a doll’s doctor.”
Christina turned her poor flushed face towards him for the first time. A
doll’s doctor—it was a new idea. And he really seemed to be all right—not
anyone dressed up to make her feel foolish or coax her into taking horrid
medicine. “Was it your carriage I heard?” she asked.
“Yes,” he said. “I have come on purpose. But so many dolls are ill just
now that I must be getting away soon. It’s quite a bad time for dolls,
especially—oddly enough—French ones.”
“Mine is French,” Christina said, growing really interested.
“Ah, how very curious!” he answered. “And now for the pulse,” and he drew
out a large gold watch.
Mrs. Tiverton was looking on with tears in her eyes. Christina had not
taken this quiet interest in anything or kept so still in bed for many
hours. Not even the sleeping draught had had any effect.
The Miss Bannisters’ brother held Joan Shoesmith’s tiny wrist and looked
very grave. “Dear, dear!” he said, “I ought to have been sent for before,
and then I could have cured her here in your arms. As it is, I must take
her to the light. Won’t you have that nice jelly while I am treating Miss
——? Let me see, what was the name?”
“Joan,” Christina said: “Joan Shoesmith.”
“Ah, yes—Miss Shoesmith. By the time you have finished the jelly I
ought to have finished my visit.” So saying he rose and carried Joan
Shoesmith to the window seat behind the curtains, while Mrs. Tiverton
gave Christina the jelly. Christina took it, nurse said afterwards, like
a lamb—though I never saw a lamb take jelly.
Meanwhile, the Miss Bannisters’ brother had taken some tools and a tube
of seccotine from his pocket, and he had lifted up Joan Shoesmith’s hair,
cut a hole in her head, and was busily readjusting the machinery of her
eyes. It was all done in five minutes, just as Christina was eating the
last mouthful. “There,” he said, returning to the bedside, “that’s all
right. I think our patient can see now as well as ever.”
Christina peered into Joan Shoesmith’s face with a cry of joy, and sank
back on the pillow in an ecstasy of content.
Neither Mrs. Tiverton nor the Miss Bannisters’ brother dared to move for
some minutes. While they sat there the doctor tiptoed in. He crossed to
the bed and looked at Christina. “She’s asleep,” he said. “Splendid!
She’s all right now. It was sleep she wanted more than anything. Don’t
let her hear a sound, nurse, for hours.”
They found Roy waiting for the news. When he heard it he jumped for joy.
His mother caught him up and hugged him. “You thoughtful little imp,”
she cried—and, turning to the doctor, told him the story. He went off,
laughing. “I shall take my door-plate down when I get home,” he called
out as he drove off, “and send it round to you, Bannister. You’re the
real doctor.”
When the Miss Bannisters drove back they found tea all ready, and Mrs.
Tiverton would not hear of their leaving without it. And when they did
leave, an hour later, they were all fast friends.
Roy and Christina never think of going to Dormstaple now without calling
at the red house.
THE IDEA THAT WENT ASTRAY
By Pauline Carrington Bouvé
It was Danny’s idea. Danny always had a great many ideas, and sometimes
they were good, sometimes they were not, as is apt to be the case with
people who have a great many of anything—especially ideas.
“It will be such fun!” said Amy.
“And something new,” agreed Janie.
“Who’ll cut the face?” asked Fred, who always wanted to know how things
were going to be done.
“Can’t you, Milly?” asked all the children at once. “Can’t you?” and they
all gathered round a little girl who was dressing a doll in an automobile
suit.
“What are you talking about?” she asked. “What kind of a face, and what
for?” She was fastening the odd lenses from two pairs of Aunt Mildred’s
spectacles into a wire frame for goggles for the doll.
“Why, a pumpkin face, to scare Uncle Ned! He always laughs at us if we
are afraid of anything.”
“If you will get the pumpkin—a nice large one—and will lend me your new
jack-knife, why, I’ll see what I can do,” she said.
Fred promised, and the rest of that day and the next the children spent
in preparation for Hallowe’en. Uncle Ned was a young lawyer in Boston,
but he came home Saturday nights to spend Sundays with Aunt Mildred, and
Hallowe’en happened to come on Saturday, which just suited.
Milly succeeded in making a very ugly face making enormous eyes and a
monstrous mouth, in which she managed to fasten two rows of corn grains
for teeth. Then, when the rest of the children were out playing, she
took her pumpkin head up into the attic, and hunted for other things to
complete its make-up. In an old trunk she found a heavy wig, and this she
fastened firmly on the head with some glue. When at last she showed it,
with its great shock of black hair, everybody agreed that it was ugly
enough to frighten anybody.
“He’ll think it’s a goblin,” said Milly, who had read a great many
fairy-stories.
“There aren’t any goblins,” said Fred, who was always practical.
In the evening, soon after supper, they all went out and stuck it up on
the end of a stray bean-pole, which they leaned up against the post of
the garden gate. Dave Peters gave them a candle, which they lighted and
thrust inside of the hollow head.
“Ugh, how ugly!” they said, and then went in the house to wait.
After a while Fred proposed going out to see how it looked again, and
every one of the children followed him. What if the candle should have
burned out or been blown out?
Fred gave a low whistle and stopped before he reached the gate, and all
the children called, “What’s the matter?”
There the ugly thing hung, the light shining through the big empty eyes
and grinning corn teeth, and just behind there was certainly a great
white something that looked like wings!
“What’s that white thing?” said Milly, in a frightened whisper, as she
clutched Fred’s arm.
“Let’s go back!” begged Amy and Janie.
“There’s nothing to be afraid of,” said Fred, boldly; but he did not move
a step nearer to the gate. “You are always so ’fraid of things!”
“Oh, go see what it is! I’m scared, scared!” wailed Milly, who scarcely
recognized her own handiwork in the darkness, so strange it looked.
In the excitement they did not hear the car whistle nor the sound of
footsteps on the gravel walk.
Just then a breeze sprang up, flaring the candle, which sent out a long
tongue of flame from the pumpkin head’s mouth, and the white something
behind began to wave. Like a flock of frightened birds the children,
Fred, Amy, Janie and Milly, turned and ran as fast as they could,
stumbling over each other in their flight.
A man’s figure darkened the doorway. “Hello!” said Uncle Ned. “What’s
happened?”
“Oh, the pumpkin—there’s something there behind it—we thought we’d scare
you!”
They were all talking together, so Uncle Ned did not understand at first.
“And you scared yourselves?” he said, at last. “Come, let us see what the
‘something white’ is,” and he went straight up to the garden fence and
pulled down Aunt Mildred’s white crocheted shawl.
“Milly forgot to take it in, as I asked her,” remarked Aunt Mildred, “and
it’s lucky you found it.”
Uncle Ned laughed so loud that everybody else laughed, too.
Then he put his hand down into his overcoat pocket and brought forth two
big brown parcels of nuts and candy, and Aunt Mildred brought in a basket
of big red apples, and after all, it was a jolly Hallowe’en, although, as
Milly remarked, the “getting scared part got mixed up.”
GRAVITY GREGG
By Isaac Ogden Rankin
John Paul Gregg had a hobby. Nobody could doubt it who was with him, even
though he did not happen to hear one of the other boys call him “Specific
Gravity,” or “Fic,” for short. Gravity Gregg it was and continued to be
until it got into the newspapers, and now it is probably settled upon him
for life.
When he was a baby he was always investigating the why and the wherefore
and more particularly the how of everything he could get his chubby hands
on. If he saw anything moving, especially, he always wanted to know why
it moved—a curiosity which cost him a finger before he was ten years old.
He was a pretty good all-round student, but it was in the natural
philosophy class that he shone. He had picked up somewhere an old copy
of a standard book on physics, and his use of the information he had
gathered from it caused terror to the good lady who had charge of the
department in the village school.
He was apt, for instance, to complicate her mild and innocent experiments
by suggesting new applications of the principle involved; and the amount
of broken apparatus which went down to his account in the laboratory
where the boys were sometimes allowed to work made his mother sigh.
His devotion to physics seemed very unpractical to quiet Mrs. Gregg, who
had set her heart on making a minister of her eldest son. She had named
him John Paul, by way of having the names of two apostles ready for the
future, and she had day-dreams of sitting in the front pew in church to
hear him preach, while she looked up to him with wondering delight.
It was a trial to be thinking of the Rev. John Paul Gregg, a tall,
dignified and grave man, who was respected by everybody and had, perhaps,
published a book of sermons, and then to have a freckled lad, round-faced
and brown as a berry, with a scar across his forehead where an exploding
crucible had just missed the eye, burst in upon her to beg her best
preserving-kettle for an experiment. And to hear the future clergyman
called “Fic” Gregg all over her end of the town made her shudder.
Most of the people of Lavenham who knew him thought Specific Gravity
mildly insane, but they all liked him. He was so simple and sincere and
kind that they could not help it; but they never knew what he would be up
to next in the line of dangerous experiment. He was as inventive as a
fox, as spry as a cat, and as steady-headed as a monkey.
Old Deacon Podgers looked out at his window one morning when it was
blowing half a gale, and on the top of the unfinished steeple of the new
Baptist Church saw a strange black object. The deacon, who had been a
sea-captain all his active days, turned to the wall for his spy glass,
and recognized Gravity Gregg, who had climbed up there to study the
vibration of materials, as he told the deacon when he asked him why he
risked his life so recklessly.
John Paul acquired his name of Specific Gravity from an early answer in
the philosophy class, but it did not become publicly his until one day
after an anxious night in the big railroad freight-yards just outside the
town.
The Gregg house was on the brow of the hill overlooking the river and the
flats where the railroad runs, and Fic knew every landmark visible from
his window.