THE LITTLE BACK DOOR
SALLY was busily bustling around the kitchen, clad in one of Dinah’s
clean gingham aprons and with a stiff and clean bandanna ’kerchief
perched on her shining hair. For Dinah was ill, the result of an
unfortunate accident, for which the little girl felt herself more or
less responsible.
For some time the Little Lamb had been growing “grimy, grimier and
grimier,” as Sally said to herself, and the child had finally resolved,
although not without some misgivings, that a bath would be the next
best thing in the order of events. Having several old scores to
settle, Mary joyfully offered to assist, and with such a backing Sally
proceeded with her preparations in a resolute and hopeful frame of mind.
As the Little Lamb was indeed very dirty, Sally prepared a kind of
shampoo, such as she had often seen nurse concoct for her own use. This
was composed of tar soap, melted over the fire to a kind of jelly,
and then beaten up with a couple of eggs and a dash of borax. When it
was finished, it made a yellow, frothy compound, altogether nice and
delectable looking. Sally had made a liberal quantity, owing to the
area that had to be covered in the personality of the Little Lamb.
She left it on the kitchen table, and hurried off to find that worthy
who, scenting an impending conflict, had betaken himself to the attic.
Entrenched behind Bedelia’s screen, he firmly awaited the onslaught of
the enemy.
Dinah had all this time been busy in the upper part of the house and
now returning below stairs beheld the foamy, creamy mixture frothing
over the pan on the kitchen table. It never entered into her wooden
head to suppose that it was anything except some nice omelet or
something of the kind that one of the dolls or perhaps Sally had
knocked together for luncheon. Stirring it up with a spoon, she found
it rather thin, and proceeded to thicken it with flour and finally
decided that it would serve best as batter for griddle cakes. As she
herself was extremely fond of lemon flavoring, she added a large dose
of that, and then proceeded to bake the mess on the well-greased and
sputtering griddle.
[Illustration]
Now it must be confessed that Dinah was greedy, and the brown cakes
certainly looked tempting. Besides, had she not planned something quite
different for the dolls’ luncheon? Just one nibble she took, and then,
like other people who have hesitated, she proceeded to get lost. Her
wooden palate certainly failed to detect the flavor of tar soap, and
one brown and smoking cake speedily disappeared after another. Goodness
knows when she would have stopped had not Bedelia, attracted by the
odor of the baking cakes, suddenly appeared in the kitchen.
That worthy had been decidedly out of favor with Sally for several
days, and consequently was in no enviable frame of mind. Without so
much as a “by your leave,” she now advanced on the greedy Dinah,
snatched the plate of cakes from under her very nose, and proceeded
to dispose of them with neatness and despatch. Her taste for eatables
had been well cultivated, however, and she now discovered something
decidedly peculiar in the flavor of the cakes. But she swallowed them
all to the last crumb, more in order to spite Dinah than because she
wanted them, pausing now and then between bites to utter a threatening
little growl that served very effectually to keep Dinah at a distance,
for the cook was dreadfully afraid of the Teddy Bears. It did not take
very long for the soap and borax to get in some very fine work, and
soon Dinah and Bedelia found themselves companions in misery.
[Illustration]
When Sally had hunted all over the house without being able to find the
Little Lamb—and no wonder, for he was safely entrenched under Bedelia’s
bed in the attic—and came hurrying into the kitchen to look after her
shampoo, she found two unutterably wretched individuals tied up in
knots and rolling around on the kitchen floor. Had it been Bedelia
alone, Sally would have suspected a trick, but Dinah’s sufferings were
too genuine to admit of suspicion.
Sally flew for help without waiting for explanations, and in a short
time the sufferers were tucked up in their beds, feeling decidedly more
comfortable and listening to a lecture on gluttony which they did not
soon forget. Not but that this same lecture had to be administered in
two sections, one to Dinah in her room and one to Bedelia in the attic,
for Dinah would have died sooner than lie down in the same room with
the Teddy Bear that she now regarded with more fear and dislike than
ever.
Thus it happened that Sally was flying around the shining little
kitchen, putting things to rights and making ready to get together
something for the dolls’ luncheon. She smiled as she scoured and dried
the tin pan in which the shampoo, whose ending had been so unusual, had
been mixed. She wondered what had become of the Little Lamb, and could
not help wishing that he, instead of Dinah and Bedelia, had been the
one to gobble up the sickening cakes, for the stuff certainly had been
intended for him in the beginning.
Sally was a born housekeeper, and as she had formerly played with her
doll house, perpetually cleaning and straightening it, so she now
worked in the bright little rooms until at last all was in order,
the table laid for luncheon and a savory meal made ready. She was
too much delighted with her work to ask for assistance from any of
the dolls, and puttered around briskly, singing little snatches of a
song half under her breath. “Puttering around” was one of Dinah’s pet
expressions, and while Sally had never been sure what it really meant,
she felt quite certain that she could not be doing anything else while
working in Dinah’s kitchen. Vigorously, then, did she flutter Dinah’s
duster, seeking for dust where none existed, and merrily polishing
the already shining window sills, on which stood stiff little pots of
glowing scarlet paper geraniums. And then she suddenly became aware
that she was standing in front of a little door, whose existence she
had heretofore failed to observe.
The door was directly in the center of the back wall, and Sally could
not but wonder that John should have built it in such a place, for the
doll’s house stood flat against the nursery wall, as any orderly doll’s
house always stands. Hence there was absolutely no use for a door in
such a location. Sally meditated for a moment or two and then suddenly
concluded that the best thing to do would be to open the door and do a
little investigating. She seized the knob and pulled vigorously, but
to no purpose. The door was locked sure enough, and her best efforts
resulted in nothing. It seemed very odd that the door should be locked
and no key anywhere about. Suddenly she remembered that hanging up in
her room was a tiny golden key belonging to a chain bracelet that Papa
Doctor had once locked upon Mamma Wee’s pretty white wrist. For some
inexplicable reason Mamma Wee had never unlocked the bracelet, but
Papa Doctor always wore the key on one end of his watch chain until
one day the slender golden ring from which it hung broke, and Sally
had found the key lying on the floor. Papa Doctor had been called
out of town for an important consultation just then, and had not yet
returned. Therefore the key was hanging up in Sally’s room, and thither
the little girl hastened. Having possessed herself of the article
in question, she hurried back to the kitchen, all on tip-toe with
curiosity.
[Illustration]
She did not hear the padding of velvet paws behind her, nor see the
furry brown figure that came trotting stealthily in her wake. Having
taken a good nap, Bedelia awoke feeling as good as new. After a few
preliminary yawns, she bounced out of bed, much to the detriment of
the Little Lamb who, too much scared by all the rumpus to run away,
had finally fallen asleep under the bed with his head sticking out
at the inner side where he had considered it quite safe, as the bed
stood comparatively close to the wall. But with her usual perversity,
Bedelia jumped out of that side of the bed, landing plump in the Little
Lamb’s face. Bedelia was no light weight, and the unhappy Little Lamb
uttered a piercing shriek, at the same time hastily wriggling back into
his place of concealment. Bedelia had been considerably shaken by her
sickness and now, scared out of all her impudence by the queer thing
that she felt moving under her feet, she uttered a shrill squawk and
fled precipitately from the attic. She paused at the top of the stairs
and peered down between the railings just in time to see Sally emerge
from her room with the key in her hand.
In a moment the Teddy Bear was on the alert, trotting silently down the
stairs, dreadfully tempted to take a slide down the polished rail of
the banister, but equally afraid of being sent back if discovered. In
the meantime, Sally hastened to the kitchen, clutching the golden key
which was, of course, very much larger in proportion than in the time
when she had found it lying on the nursery floor.
“How I do hope it will open the door!” the little girl said to herself
as she thrust it into the lock and pressed against it very gently,
for she was rather afraid of breaking off the golden handle. To her
surprise and delight, however, it yielded at once, and with a turn of
the door knob Sally flung open the door and stepped outside, closely
followed by the still unseen Bedelia.