only, you know, you had got five left at home, and it was only for a
short time, and the Doctor hasn't any Brownie at all. Don't you pity
him?"
And the Rector, who was old enough to remember that grave-stone story
we wot of, hugged his Brownie in his arms, and answered,
"My Darling, I do pity him!"
THE LAND OF LOST TOYS.
AN EARTHQUAKE IN THE NURSERY.
It was certainly an aggravated offence. It is generally understood in
families that "boys will be boys," but there is a limit to the
forbearance implied in the extenuating axiom. Master Sam was condemned
to the back nursery for the rest of the day.
He always had had the knack of breaking his own toys,--he not
unfrequently broke other people's; but accidents will happen, and his
twin-sister and factotum, Dot, was long-suffering.
Dot was fat, resolute, hasty, and devotedly unselfish. When Sam scalped
her new doll, and fastened the glossy black curls to a wigwam
improvised with the curtains of the four-post bed in the best bedroom,
Dot was sorely tried. As her eyes passed from the crown-less doll on
the floor to the floss-silk ringlets hanging from the bed-furniture,
her round rosy face grew rounder and rosier, and tears burst from her
eyes. But in a moment more she clenched her little fists, forced back
the tears, and gave vent to her favourite saying, "I don't care."
That sentence was Dot's bane and antidote; it was her vice and her
virtue. It was her standing consolation, and it brought her into all
her scrapes. It was her one panacea for all the ups and downs of her
life (and in the nursery where Sam developed his organ of
destructiveness there were ups and downs not a few); and it was the
form her naughtiness took when she was naughty.
"Don't care fell into a goose-pond, Miss Dot," said Nurse, on one
occasion of the kind.
"I don't care if he did," said Miss Dot; and as Nurse knew no further
feature of the goose-pond adventure which met this view of it, she
closed the subject by putting Dot into the corner.
In the strength of _Don't care_, and her love for Sam, Dot bore much and
long. Her dolls perished by ingenious but untimely deaths. Her toys were
put to purposes for which they were never intended, and suffered
accordingly. But Sam was penitent and Dot was heroic. Florinda's scalp was
mended with a hot knitting-needle and a perpetual bonnet, and Dot rescued
her paint-brushes from the glue-pot, and smelt her india-rubber as it
boiled down in Sam's waterproof manufactory, with long-suffering
forbearance.
There are, however, as we have said, limits to everything. An
earthquake celebrated with the whole contents of the toy cupboard is not
to be borne.
The matter was this. Early one morning Sam announced that he had a
glorious project on hand. He was going to give a grand show and
entertainment, far surpassing all the nursery imitations of circuses,
conjurors, lectures on chemistry, and so forth, with which they had
ever amused themselves. He refused to confide his plans to the faithful
Dot; but he begged her to lend him all the toys she possessed, in
return for which she was to be the sole spectator of the fun. He let
out that the idea had suggested itself to him after the sight of a
Diorama to which they had been taken, but he would not allow that it
was anything of the same kind; in proof of which she was at liberty to
keep back her paint-box. Dot tried hard to penetrate the secret, and to
reserve some of her things from the general conscription. But Sam was
obstinate. He would tell nothing, and he wanted everything. The dolls,
the bricks (especially the bricks), the tea-things, the German farm,
the Swiss cottages, the animals, and all the dolls' furniture. Dot gave
them with a doubtful mind, and consoled herself as she watched Sam
carrying pieces of board and a green table cover into the back nursery,
with the prospect of the show. At last, Sam threw open the door and
ushered her into the nursery rocking-chair.
The boy had certainly some constructive as well as destructive talent.
Upon a sort of impromptu table covered with green cloth he had arranged
all the toys in rough imitation of a town, with its streets and
buildings. The relative proportion of the parts was certainly not good;
but it was not Sam's fault that the doll's house and the German farm,
his own brick buildings, and the Swiss cottages, were all on totally
different scales of size. He had ingeniously put the larger things in
the foreground, keeping the small farm-buildings from the German box at
the far end of the streets, yet after all the perspective was extreme.
The effect of three large horses from the toy stables in front, with
the cows from the small Noah's Ark in the distance, was admirable; but
the big dolls seated in an unroofed building, made with the wooden
bricks on no architectural principle but that of a pound, and taking
tea out of the new china tea-things, looked simply ridiculous.
Dot's eyes, however, saw no defects, and she clapped vehemently.
"Here, ladies and gentlemen," said Sam, waving his hand politely
towards the rocking-chair, "you see the great city of Lisbon, the
capital of Portugal--"
At this display of geographical accuracy Dot fairly cheered, and rocked
herself to and fro in unmitigated enjoyment.
"--as it appeared," continued the showman, "on the morning of November
1st, 1755."
Never having had occasion to apply Mangnall's Questions to the
exigencies of every-day life, this date in no way disturbed Dot's
comfort.
"In this house," Sam proceeded, "a party of Portuguese ladies of rank
may be seen taking tea together."
"_Breakfast_, you mean," said Dot, "you said it was in the morning,
you know."
"Well, they took tea to their breakfast," said Sam. "Don't interrupt
me, Dot. You are the audience, and you mustn't speak. Here you see the
horses of the English ambassador out airing with his groom. There you
see two peasants--no! they are _not_ Noah and his wife, Dot, and
if you go on talking I shall shut up. I say they are peasants
peacefully driving cattle. At this moment a rumbling sound startles
everyone in the city"--here Sam rolled some croquet balls up and down
in a box, but the dolls sat as quiet as before, and Dot alone was
startled,--"this was succeeded by a slight shock"--here he shook the
table, which upset some of the buildings belonging to the German
farm.--"Some houses fell."--Dot began to look anxious.--"This shock was
followed by several others"---"Take care," she begged--"of increasing
magnitude."--"Oh, Sam!" Dot shrieked, jumping up, "you're breaking the
china!"--"The largest buildings shook to their foundations."--"Sam!
Sam! the doll's house is falling," Dot cried, making wild efforts to
save it: but Sam held her back with one arm, while with the other he
began to pull at the boards which formed his table.--"Suddenly the
ground split and opened with a fearful yawn"--Dot's shrieks shamed the
impassive dolls, as Sam jerked out the boards by a dexterous movement,
and doll's house, brick buildings, the farm, the Swiss cottages, and
the whole toy-stock of the nursery sank together in ruins. Quite
unabashed by the evident damage, Sam continued--"and in a moment the
whole magnificent city of Lisbon was swallowed up. Dot! Dot! don't be a
muff! What is the matter? It's splendid fun. Things must be broken some
time, and I'm sure it was exactly like the real thing. Dot! why don't
you speak? Dot! my dear Dot! You don't care, do you? I didn't think
you'd mind it so. It was such a splendid earthquake. Oh! try not to go
on like that!"
But Dot's feelings were far beyond her own control, much more that of
Master Sam, at this moment. She was gasping and choking, and when at
last she found breath it was only to throw herself on her face upon the
floor with bitter and uncontrollable sobbing. It was certainly a mild
punishment that condemned Master Sam to the back nursery for the rest
of the day. It had, however, this additional severity, that during the
afternoon Aunt Penelope was expected to arrive.
AUNT PENELOPE.
Aunt Penelope was one of those dear, good souls who, single themselves,
have, as real or adopted relatives, the interests of a dozen families,
instead of one, at heart. There are few people whose youth has not
owned the influence of at least one such friend. It may be a good
habit, the first interest in some life-loved pursuit or favourite
author, some pretty feminine art, or delicate womanly counsel enforced
by those narratives of real life that are more interesting than any
fiction: it may be only the periodical return of gifts and kindness,
and the store of family histories that no one else can tell; but we all
owe something to such an aunt or uncle--the fairy godmothers of real
life.
The benefits which Sam and Dot reaped from Aunt Penelope's visits may
be summed up under the heads of presents and stories, with a general
leaning to indulgence in the matters of punishment, lessons, and going
to bed, which perhaps is natural to aunts and uncles who have no
positive responsibilities in the young people's education, and are not
the daily sufferers by the lack of due discipline.
Aunt Penelope's presents were lovely. Aunt Penelope's stories were
charming. There was generally a moral wrapped up in them, like the
motto in a cracker-bonbon; but it was quite in the inside, so to speak,
and there was abundance of smart paper and sugar-plums.
All things considered, it was certainly most proper that the
much-injured Dot should be dressed out in her best, and have access to
dessert, the dining-room, and Aunt Penelope, whilst Sam was kept
up-stairs. And yet it was Dot who (her first burst of grief being over)
fought stoutly for his pardon all the time she was being dressed, and
was afterwards detected in the act of endeavouring to push fragments of
raspberry tart through the nursery keyhole.
"You GOOD thing!" Sam emphatically exclaimed, as he heard her in fierce
conflict on the other side of the door with the nurse who found
her--"You GOOD thing! leave me alone, for I deserve it."
He really was very penitent He was too fond of Dot not to regret the
unexpected degree of distress he had caused her; and Dot made much of
his penitence in her intercessions in the drawing-room.
"Sam is so very sorry," she said; "he says he knows he deserves it. I
think he ought to come down. He is so _very_ sorry!"
Aunt Penelope, as usual, took the lenient side, joining her entreaties
to Dot's, and it ended in Master Sam's being hurriedly scrubbed and
brushed, and shoved into his black velvet suit, and sent down-stairs,
rather red about the eyelids, and looking very sheepish.
"Oh, Dot!" he exclaimed, as soon as he could get her into a corner, "I
am so very, very sorry! particularly about the tea-things."
"Never mind," said Dot, "I don't care; and I've asked for a story, and
we're going into the library." As Dot said this, she jerked her head
expressively in the direction of the sofa, where Aunt Penelope was just
casting on stitches preparatory to beginning a pair of her famous
ribbed socks for Papa, whilst she gave to Mamma's conversation that
sympathy which (like her knitting-needles) was always at the service of
her large circle of friends. Dot anxiously watched the bow on the top
of her cap as it danced and nodded with the force of Mamma's
observations. At last it gave a little chorus of jerks, as one should
say, "Certainly, undoubtedly." And then the story came to an end, and
Dot, who had been slowly creeping nearer, fairly took Aunt Penelope by
the hand, and carried her off, knitting and all, to the library.
"Now, please," said Dot, when she had struggled into a chair that was
too tall for her.
"Stop a minute!" cried Sam, who was perched in the opposite one, "the
horse-hair tickles my legs."
"Put your pocket-handkerchief under them, as I do," said Dot.
"_Now_, Aunt Penelope."
"No, wait," groaned Sam; "it isn't big enough; it only covers one leg."
Dot slid down again, and ran to Sam.
"Take my handkerchief for the other."
"But what will you do?" said Sam.
"Oh, I don't care," said Dot, scrambling back into her place. "Now,
Aunty, please."
And Aunt Penelope began.
"THE LAND OF LOST TOYS.
"I suppose people who have children transfer their childish follies and
fancies to them, and become properly sedate and grown-up. Perhaps it is
because I am an old maid, and have none, that some of my nursery whims
stick to me, and I find myself liking things, and wanting things, quite
out of keeping with my cap and time of life. For instance. Anything in
the shape of a toy-shop (from a London bazaar to a village window, with
Dutch dolls, leather balls, and wooden battledores) quite unnerves me,
so to speak. When I see one of those boxes containing a jar, a churn, a
kettle, a pan, a coffee-pot, a cauldron on three legs, and sundry
dishes, all of the smoothest wood, and with the immemorial red flower
on one side of each vessel, I fairly long for an excuse for playing
with them, and for trying (positively for the last time) if the lids
_do_ come off, and whether the kettle will (literally, as well as
metaphorically) hold water. Then if, by good or ill luck, there is a
child flattening its little nose against the window with longing eyes,
my purse is soon empty; and as it toddles off with a square parcel
under one arm, and a lovely being in black ringlets and white tissue
paper in the other, I wish that I were worthy of being asked to join
the ensuing play. Don't suppose there is any generosity in this. I have
only done what we are all glad to do. I have found an excuse for
indulging a pet weakness. As I said, it is not merely the new and
expensive toys that attract me; I think my weakest corner is where the
penny boxes lie, the wooden tea-things (with the above-named flower in
miniature), the soldiers on their lazy tongs, the nine-pins, and the
tiny farm.
"I need hardly say that the toy booth in a village fair tries me very
hard. It tried me in childhood, when I was often short of pence, and
when 'the Feast' came once a year. It never tried me more than on one
occasion, lately, when I was re-visiting my old home.
"It was deep Midsummer, and the Feast. I had children with me of course
(I find children, somehow, wherever I go), and when we got into the
fair, there were children of people whom I had known as children, with
just the same love for a monkey going up one side of a yellow stick and
coming down the other, and just as strong heads for a giddy-go-round on
a hot day and a diet of peppermint lozenges, as their fathers and
mothers before them. There were the very same names--and here and there
it seemed the very same faces--I knew so long ago. A few shillings were
indeed well expended in brightening those familiar eyes: and then there
were the children with me.... Besides, there really did seem to be an
unusually nice assortment of things, and the man was very intelligent
(in reference to his wares):.... Well, well! It was two o'clock P.M.
when we went in at one end of that glittering avenue of drums, dolls,
trumpets, accordions, workboxes, and what not; but what o'clock it was
when I came out at the other end, with a shilling and some coppers in
my pocket, and was cheered, I can't say, though I should like to have
been able to be accurate about the time, because of what followed.
"I thought the best thing I could do was to get out of the fair at
once, so I went up the village and struck off across some fields into a
little wood that lay near. (A favourite walk in old times.) As I turned
out of the booth, my foot struck against one of the yellow sticks of
the climbing monkeys. The monkey was gone, and the stick broken. It set
me thinking as I walked along.
"What an untold number of pretty and ingenious things one does (not
wear out in honourable wear and tear, but) utterly lose, and wilfully
destroy, in one's young days--things that would have given pleasure to
so many more young eyes, if they had been kept a little longer--things
that one would so value in later years, if some of them had survived
the dissipating and destructive days of Nurserydom. I recalled a young
lady I knew, whose room was adorned with knick-knacks of a kind I had
often envied. They were not plaster figures, old china, wax-work
flowers under glass, or ordinary ornaments of any kind. They were her
old toys. Perhaps she had not had many of them, and had been the more
careful of those she had. She had certainly been very fond of them, and
had kept more of them than any one I ever knew. A faded doll slept in
its cradle at the foot of her bed. A wooden elephant stood on the
dressing-table, and a poodle that had lost his bark put out a
red-flannel tongue with quixotic violence at a windmill on the opposite
corner of the mantelpiece. Everything had a story of its own. Indeed
the whole room must have been redolent with the sweet story of
childhood, of which the toys were the illustrations, or like a poem of
which the toys were the verses. She used to have children to play with
them sometimes, and this was a high honour. She is married now, and has
children of her own, who on birthdays and holidays will forsake the
newest of their own possessions to play with 'mamma's toys.'
"I was roused from these recollections by the pleasure of getting into
the wood.
"If I have a stronger predilection than my love for toys, it is my love
for woods, and, like the other, it dates from childhood. It was born
and bred with me, and I fancy will stay with me till I die. The
soothing scents of leaf-mould, moss, and fern (not to speak of
flowers)--the pale green veil in spring, the rich shade in summer, the
rustle of the dry leaves in autumn, I suppose an old woman may enjoy
all these, my dears, as well as you. But I think I could make 'fairy
jam' of hips and haws in acorn cups now, if any child would be
condescending enough to play with me. "_This_ wood, too, had
associations.
"I strolled on in leisurely enjoyment, and at last seated myself at the
foot of a tree to rest. I was hot and tired; partly with the mid-day
heat and the atmosphere of the fair, partly with the exertion of
calculating change in the purchase of articles ranging in price from
three farthings upwards. The tree under which I sat was an old friend.
There was a hole at its base that I knew well. Two roots covered with
exquisite moss ran out from each side, like the arms of a chair, and
between them there accumulated year after year a rich, though tiny
store of dark leaf-mould. We always used to say that fairies lived
within, though I never saw anything go in myself but wood-beetles.
There was one going in at that moment.
"How little the wood was changed! I bent my head for a few seconds,
and, closing my eyes, drank in the delicious and suggestive scents of
earth and moss about the dear old tree. I had been so long parted from
the place that I could hardly believe that I was in the old familiar
spot. Surely it was only one of the many dreams in which I had played
again beneath those trees! But when I re-opened my eyes there was the
same hole, and, oddly enough, the same beetle or one just like it. I
had not noticed till that moment how much larger the hole was than it
used to be in my young days.
"'I suppose the rain and so forth wears them away in time,' I said
vaguely.
"'I suppose it does,' said the beetle politely; 'will you walk in?'
"I don't know why I was not so overpoweringly astonished as you would
imagine. I think I was a good deal absorbed in considering the size of
the hole, and the very foolish wish that seized me to do what I had
often longed to do in childhood, and creep in. I _had_ so much
regard for propriety as to see that there was no one to witness the
escapade. Then I tucked my skirts round me, put my spectacles into my
pocket for fear they should get broken, and in I went.
"I must say one thing. A wood is charming enough (no one appreciates it
more than myself), but, if you have never been there, you have no idea
how much nicer it is inside than on the surface. Oh, the mosses--the
gorgeous mosses! The fretted lichens! The fungi like flowers for
beauty, and the flowers like nothing you have ever seen!
"Where the beetle went to I don't know. I could stand up now quite
well, and I wandered on till dusk in unwearied admiration. I was among
some large beeches as it grew dark, and was beginning to wonder how I
should find my way (not that I had lost it, having none to lose), when
suddenly lights burst from every tree, and the whole place was
illuminated. The nearest approach to this scene that I ever witnessed
above ground was in a wood near the Hague in Holland. There, what look
like tiny glass tumblers holding floating wicks, are fastened to the
trunks of the fine old trees, at intervals of sufficient distance to
make the light and shade mysterious, and to give effect to the full
blaze when you reach the spot where hanging chains of lamps illuminate
the 'Pavilion' and the open space where the band plays, and where the
townsfolk assemble by hundreds to drink coffee and enjoy the music. I
was the more reminded of the Dutch 'bosch' because, after wandering
some time among the lighted trees, I heard distant sounds of music, and
came at last upon a glade lit up in a similar manner, except that the
whole effect was incomparably more brilliant.
"As I stood for a moment doubting whether I should proceed, and a good
deal puzzled about the whole affair, I caught sight of a large spider
crouched up in a corner with his stomach on the ground and his knees
above his head, as some spiders do sit, and looking at me, as I
fancied, through a pair of spectacles. (About the spectacles I do not
feel sure. It may have been two of his bent legs in apparent connection
with his prominent eyes.) I thought of the beetle, and said civilly,
'Can you tell me, sir, if this is Fairyland?' The spider took off his
spectacles (or untucked his legs), and took a sideways run out of his
corner.
"'Well,' he said, 'it's a Province. The fact is, it's the Land of Lost
Toys. You haven't such a thing as a fly anywhere about you, have you?'
"'No,' I said, 'I'm sorry to say I have not.' This was not strictly
true, for I was not at all sorry; but I wished to be civil to the old
gentleman, for he projected his eyes at me with such an intense (I had
almost said greedy) gaze, that I felt quite frightened.
"'How did you pass the sentries?' he inquired.
"'I never saw any,' I answered.
"'You couldn't have seen anything if you didn't see them,' he said;
'but perhaps you don't know. They're the glow-worms. Six to each tree,
so they light the road, and challenge the passers-by. Why didn't they
challenge you?'
"'I don't know,' I began, 'unless the beetle--'
"'I don't like beetles,' interrupted the spider, stretching each leg in
turn by sticking it up above him, 'all shell, and no flavour. You never
tried walking on anything of that sort, did you?' and he pointed with
one leg to a long thread that fastened a web above his head.
"'Certainly not,' said I.
"'I'm afraid it wouldn't bear you,' he observed slowly.
"'I'm quite sure it wouldn't,' I hastened to reply. I wouldn't try for
worlds. It would spoil your pretty work in a moment. Good-evening.'
"And I hurried forward. Once I looked back, but the spider was not
following me. He was in his hole again, on his stomach, with his knees
above his head, and looking (apparently through his spectacles) down
the road up which I came.
"I soon forgot him in the sight before me. I had reached the open place
with the lights and the music; but how shall I describe the spectacle
that I beheld?