THE PLAYHOUSE
Then they all went down to dinner, the twins holding hands with each
other, round Aunt Rachel’s ample waist. As she had an arm round each of
their necks, locomotion down the stairways was difficult, but they all
accomplished it somehow, and made a triumphal entry at the dining-room
door.
Aunt Penninah was already in her chair, and looked up sharply, as if
expecting to see a doleful pair of twins.
But the laughing faces proved that, if not enjoying their punishment,
the children were, at least, making the best of it, and Aunt Nine
sniffed a little, as she asked:
“What have you been doing all morning?”
“Oh, having the beautifullest time!” exclaimed Dolly. “We found an old
doll’s house, that used to be Auntie Rachel’s when she was a little
girl.”
“And my father played with it, too,” said Dick, proudly.
“Oh, Rachel,” said Miss Abbie, with a disappointed look, “we meant to
keep that for their Christmas!”
“It doesn’t matter,” said her sister, serenely; “they may as well have
it now. Hannah, tell Michael to bring it down to the playroom while
we’re at dinner.”
Hannah obeyed, and the twins could scarcely eat their dinner for
anticipation of the fun to come.
“Your punishment doesn’t seem very hard to bear,” said Aunt Nine,
looking quizzically at the children.
“Oh, yes it is, Auntie,” said Dick. “We’d ever so much rather run out of
doors in this sunshiny day, and save the playhouse for a rainy day.
Truly, we feel the punishment very much.”
It somehow seemed to Dick’s queer little brain that it was rude to
defraud Aunt Penninah of her rights. She had evidently expected them to
repine at being kept indoors, and though they hadn’t exactly done that,
she was entitled to know that they really were feeling the punishment.
And it was quite true. Both he and Dolly would have gladly postponed the
playhouse fun, to scamper out for a run in the garden. Aunt Nine nodded
a sort of approval.
“You’re an honest little chap, Dick,” she said; “I’m beginning to like
you.”
“Don’t you like Dolly, too?” asked Dick, with the air of one merely
seeking information.
“Yes, I like you both. If you’d be a little more thoughtful, and——”
“Oh, we’re going to learn to think,” said Dolly. “Auntie Rachel is going
to teach us.”
“I wish her joy of her task,” said Aunt Penninah, but her eyes twinkled
just a little mite, and the twins began to think she was really not such
an ogress as she had seemed at first.
After dinner they all went up to the playroom, and found the playhouse
well placed, in a corner between two windows.
“Oh,” cried Dolly in rapture, as she saw the boxes full of furniture,
and the bundles of carpet.
The carpets smelled of camphor as Aunt Rachel unrolled them, for they
had been carefully put away from the moths, and proved to be in perfect
condition.
The aunties all looked a bit sober, as the small squares were unfolded,
for their thoughts flew back nearly forty years, when Rachel and Abbie
had been little girls, and Penninah Dana had been a beautiful young
woman.
But no such memories saddened the twins’ hearts, and they capered about
in glee, shaking out the carpets, and holding them up for inspection.
“This is the parlour one!” cried Dolly, as a light velvety square
appeared.
She tucked it into place, and it exactly fitted the parlour floor.
Two bedroom carpets were there; a library and a dining-room,—and the
kitchen already had oilcloth on it.
Then came the furniture, and both twins fairly squealed with delight
over the funny little things, as they took them from the boxes and put
them in place in the rooms of the playhouse.
The dining-room furniture was all of iron.
“That stove,” said Miss Rachel, holding a black iron stove of the shape
known as “cylinder,” “father brought me when I was getting well after
the measles. ‘You can build a real fire in it,’ he said, ‘it’s a real
little stove.’”
“And did you?” asked Dick.
“Yes; several times. There’s a tiny tin pipe that goes out through this
hole in the wall of the house. See?”
The twins saw, but there was so much to see, little time could be spent
on any one thing. The parlour furniture was of satin brocade, of deep
red colour, which was unfaded, and quite as good as new.
“I helped make those chairs,” said Aunt Nine. “I cut and basted, while
your mother sewed them, Rachel.”
“They’re beautifully made,” said Miss Rachel. “Dolly, if you want some
more, you can make them in your sewing-hour.”
“I’ll make you some,” said Aunt Penninah. “If you can find some pretty
bits of stuff, Abbie, I’ll make a few to-day.”
“Oh, do, Aunt Nine,” cried Dolly. “These chairs are all right, but it
would be so lovely to have some new ones of our very own!”
“I’m going to make some little wooden chairs and tables,” said Dick. “I
can cut them out with my jigsaw, and glue them together.”
“Do,” said Aunt Abbie, “and we’ll make satin cushions for them, and tie
them on with little ribbons.”
The furnishing of the house went on, and it would be hard to say which
were more interested, the twins or the older people.
When they came up to the bedrooms, they found the tiny sheets and
pillowcases yellow with age.
“Will you make us some new ones, Aunt Rachel?” asked Dolly.
“Yes; or Delia can bleach these for you. They’re as good as ever, except
their colour.”
Then the aunties discovered that the portières for the parlour were
faded, and the lace curtains had turned irretrievably brown, so off went
Aunt Abbie to get some bits of stuff at once, to make new ones.
And very soon the three aunties were busily engaged in cutting and
sewing all sorts of pretty things for the house.
The best bedstead was of the sort that requires dimity curtains and
valance to make it complete.
Aunt Penninah offered to fit this bed out entirely, and her deft needle
flew in and out of the muslins Aunt Abbie brought, until she had made
the little bed the most charming affair imaginable.
In addition to the curtains, she hemmed tiny sheets; she made a dear
blanket, of a morsel of white flannel bound with ribbon; and lovely
pillowcases, with hemstitched ends.
Then, to Dolly’s breathless delight, she made a little silk comfortable,
with a layer of cotton-wool in it, and tacked at intervals with
microscopic bows of blue ribbon.
Of course this work of the aunties took all the afternoon, and indeed,
it wasn’t finished that day.
But the interest in the house grew more and more absorbing as the days
went by, and though the children loved out of doors best, they often
devoted a few hours of the pleasantest days to “Dana Cottage,” as they
called it. When it was nearly finished, as to furnishing, they began to
prepare a family of dolls to occupy it. Aunt Nine offered to present the
entire family, and afterward assist in making their clothing.
So one fine afternoon Miss Penninah and the twins drove to town to
select the dolls. It was great fun, and yet it was a responsibility,
too. Dick was quite as much interested as Dolly, for somehow, the house
offered so much boyish work, and play, that it didn’t seem like “playing
with dolls.”
Besides the twins always did the same things, and Dolly would have lost
her own interest in the playhouse if Dick hadn’t shared it.
So, after much consultation, they chose a father and a mother doll, an
aunt doll, two small children dolls, and a baby doll. A nurse and two
other servants were added, and then they declared they had enough.
“Enough? I should think so!” said Aunt Nine, who began to see endless
doll-dressing ahead of her. But her eyes twinkled; and then she let the
twins select from the shop several bits of dolls’ furniture that were
not in vogue when the playhouse was originally furnished.
Laden with their treasures they all went home, and that very evening the
aunties began on the dolls’ wardrobes.
“Is this your idea of disciplining the children, Aunt Nine?” said Miss
Rachel, as they sewed, after Dick and Dolly had gone to bed.
Miss Penninah Dana looked a little confused, but she answered
straightforwardly:
“I think you were nearer right than I, Rachel. The twins are not what we
used to call ‘good children.’ I mean the meek, mild, priggish little
persons that children were taught to be when I was young. Dick and Dolly
are so full of life and spirits that they do wrong things from sheer
thoughtlessness and gaiety of heart. But they are never wilfully
mischievous, and never deceitful about it afterward. They do need firm
guidance, but they do not need to be taught the difference between right
and wrong, for they already know it. They are true Danas.”
When Miss Penninah announced that last fact, she felt that she had given
the last word of praise to the twins, and indeed, the other two aunts
thought so too.
So clannish were they, and so proud of their fine old family, that they
greatly preferred Dick and Dolly to be “true Danas” than to possess many
other admirable traits. And so, the three stitched away, quite agreed,
at last, on the management of the children, and hoping they would grow
up to manhood and womanhood, with the inherited traits of dignity,
honour, and refinement that characterised their family.
Meanwhile the “true Danas” upstairs were sleeping soundly, and only
awoke when the sun peeped in at their windows and winked and blinked
right into their eyes.
And when, later, they danced down to breakfast, there in a row on the
sofa sat a smiling and well-dressed family, all ready to take up their
abode in “Dana Cottage.”
Dolly went into ecstasies over the mother doll, who wore a trailing
house dress of light blue satin trimmed with lace. The aunt, too, was
resplendent in crimson velvet, and the children were in the daintiest of
white or light frocks.
The father-doll had been difficult to dress, but though a professional
tailor might have taken exception to the cut, the aunties had made his
neat suit fit him very well indeed.
Dick was interested in the new family, and admired them duly, but he was
already thinking of how he could build a yard around the house itself,
and he confided his plans to Dolly.
“We’ll fence off a space all round the house,” he said. “I’ll make a
little picket fence with splints. It’s just as e-easy! Then we’ll get
green velvet carpet for the grass.”
“Oh, carpet isn’t a bit like grass,” objected Dolly. “It’s so thick and
dusty. Let’s have real dirt,—or sand.”
“I think sand is messy.”
“Yes, so do I. Oh, I tell you what, Dick! Let’s cut green tissue paper
into fine fringe, and put it round where we want grass,—paste it to
something, you know,—like we made fairies’ wings,—only green.”
“Yes, that’s the ticket!” exclaimed Dick. “Then we’ll make little paths
of,—of brown paper, I guess,—pasted down.”
“Yes; take a big sheet of pasteboard first, and then stick everything on
it.”
“Yes, that’s what I mean. Then bits of evergreen for trees, and perhaps
real flowers, growing in little bits of pots.”
“Oh, it will be lovely! Dick, you’re splendid to think of it all!”
The twins joined hands and jumped up and down, as was their custom when
greatly pleased with each other. Then the aunties came in, and they all
went to breakfast.
The children told their plan for the yard around the house, and the
ladies agreed that it would be lovely.
“I’ll help you to make a pond, Dickie,” said Aunt Penninah, “like one I
had when _I_ was a little girl. That dates farther back than Aunt
Rachel’s childhood.”
“How do you make a pond?” asked Dick, not much interested in comparative
dates of past Danas.
“We must get a piece of mirror,—without a frame, you know,—and put it
in the middle of your grass plot, and then put pretty stones or shells
round the edge of the mirror, and it looks just like water.”
“And little tin ducks on it,” shouted Dick, “like a real pond! Oh,
Auntie, that will be tip-top!”
“And I’ll make you a pond on the other side of your house,” put in Aunt
Abbie, “of real water. In a big flat pan, you know; and little sprigs of
fern all round the edge.”
“All right; we’ll have both,” declared Dick. “I don’t know which’ll be
nicest, they’re both so splendid. And I’ll make a little boat to sail on
the water. I can whittle it out of a stick.”
“And I’ll make a sail for it.” said Aunt Abbie, “and we’ll rig up a
sail-boat.”
Such interest did the aunts take in the cottage yard, it was almost as
if they were children too, and Dick and Dolly became more and more
enraptured with the wonderful things they made.
Aunt Abbie fashioned a little hammock with her crochet needle and some
green and white cord. When she put fringe along its edges, and suspended
it from two evergreen trees in the “yard,” Dolly thought she had never
seen anything so cunning. Two little dolls were put into it, and the
nurse doll was set to swing them until they fell asleep. Michael, who
was greatly pleased with the whole affair, fashioned a tiny arbour just
like their own in their playground outside. It was made of tiny twigs,
and when the gardener brought it in, as his offering to the general
gaiety, it was accepted with hilarious thanks. Very small green vines
were twisted about it, and tiny blossoms of forget-me-not or
lilies-of-the-valley were entwined. But the little flowerets faded so
soon that Aunt Abbie made some diminutive roses of pink tissue paper,
which would stay fresh all summer.
Many plans were made for future additional beauties, and the little
estate grew rapidly to an elaborate country place, when Michael declared
that he should build a barn for it. This announcement was heralded with
delight, and for many days, Michael spent all his spare time in the
tool-house, Dick and Dolly bobbing about him, and helping or hindering
as best they could.
The barn, when done, was a grand affair indeed. Not of very elaborate
architecture, but provided with stables, carriage house, feed bins, and
even a chicken coop.
Again Aunt Nine took the twins to town on a shopping expedition, and
this time they returned with all the four-legged and two-legged toys
necessary to complete the barn’s use and beauty. Also there were
carriages for the dolls to drive in, and sleighs, too, for in doll land
the lack of snow makes no difference in the sleighing season.
Aunt Penninah’s visit of a week lengthened out to a fortnight, but not
until the last tiny carriage robe was finished, and the last hat and
cape made for the smallest doll, did Aunt Nine make her farewells to
Dana Dene.
And, then, she went away, promising to return for another visit as soon
as possible, and insisting on a promise that the twins should some day
visit her in her own home.