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 crownless 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 favorite 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.
Fiorinda'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 a 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."
[Illustration: "'Suddenly the ground split and opened with a fearful
yawn.'"--_Page_ 5.]
"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 every one 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,
whilst 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's the matter? It's
splendid fun. Things must be broken sometime, 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.