“Here” was the hall, and they sat on a polished mahogany form, with a
little wooden roller at each end, exactly opposite a stuffed dancing
bear with his arms hungry for umbrellas. Upstairs they heard a door
open and a muttered conversation, and then the door shut and the butler
creaked slowly down again.
“Will you come this way?” he said, and creaked slowly up once more,
followed by the children, who had great difficulty in finding the
steps at that pace, and showed them into a room in which was sitting
an old lady in a high-backed arm-chair near the fire. On the hearthrug
were five cats, and there was one in her lap and one on the table.
“Oh!” thought Claire, “if only Betty was here!” For Betty not only
loved rank and grandeur but adored cats.
“Well,” said the old lady, “what is it?”
“If you please,” said Christopher, “we have come about the notice-board
outside, which says, ‘Organs and street cries prohibited.’”
“Yes,” Claire broke in; “you see, we have just moved to No. 23, and at
our old home--in Bloomsbury, you know--there was such a lot of music,
and a Punch and Judy, and there’s none here, and we wondered if it
really meant it.”
[Illustration: “WE HAD IT MADE ON PURPOSE.”]
“Because,” Christopher went on, “it seemed to us that this
notice-board”--and here he unwrapped the new one--“could just as
easily be put up as the one you have. We had it made on purpose.” And
he held it up before Miss Seaton’s astonished eyes.
“‘Organs and street cries _invited_!’” she exclaimed. “Why, I never
heard such a thing in my life. They drive me frantic.”
“Couldn’t you put cotton-wool in your ears?” Claire asked.
“Or ask them to move a little further on--nearer No. 23?” said
Christopher.
“But, my dear children,” said the old lady, “you really are very
wilful. I hope your father and mother don’t know what you are doing.”
“No,” said Christopher.
“Well, sit down, both of you,” said Miss Seaton, “and let us talk it
over.” So they sat down, and Claire took up one of the cats and stroked
it behind the ears, and Miss Seaton asked them a number of questions.
After a while she rang the bell for the butler, who creaked in and out
and then in again with cake and a rather good syrup to mix with water;
and they gradually became quite friendly, not only with Miss Seaton,
but with each of the cats in turn.
“Are there any more?” Claire asked.
“No, only seven,” said Miss Seaton. “I never have more and I never have
fewer.”
“Do you give them all names?” said Claire.
“Of course,” said Miss Seaton. “That is partly why there are only
seven. I name them after the days of the week.”
“Oh!” thought Claire again, “if only Betty were here!”
“The black one there, with the white front, is Sunday,” Miss Seaton
continued. “That all black one is Monday--black Monday, you know. The
tortoiseshell is Friday. The sandy one is Saturday.”
“It was on Saturday,” said Christopher, “that the best organ of all
used to come, the one with a new tune every week.”
“The blue Persian is Wednesday,” said Miss Seaton, not taking any
notice of his remark. “The white Persian is Tuesday, and the grey
Iceland cat is Thursday. And now,” she added, “you must go home, and I
will think over your request and let you have the answer.”
That evening, just after the children had finished their supper, a
ring came at the door, followed, after it was opened, by scuffling
feet and a mysterious thud. Then the front door banged, and Annie the
maid came in to say that there was a heavy box in the hall, addressed
to Master and Miss Morgan. The children tore out, and found a large
case with, just as Annie had said, Christopher and Claire’s name upon
it. Christopher rushed off for a hammer and screw-driver, and in a
few minutes the case was opened. Inside was a note and a very weighty
square thing in brown paper. Christopher began to undo the paper, while
Claire read the note aloud:
“1, WESTERHAM GARDENS, W.
“DEAR MISS AND MASTER MORGAN,
“I have been thinking about your request all the afternoon, as I
promised I would, and have been compelled to decide against it in the
interests not only of the property but of several of my old tenants,
whose nerves cannot bear noise. But as I feel that your father, when
he made inquiries about your new house, was not sufficiently informed
as to the want of entertainment in the neighbourhood, I wish to
make it up in so far as I can to you all for your disappointment,
and therefore beg your acceptance of a musical box which was a
great pleasure to me when I was much younger, and may, I trust, do
something to amuse you, although the tunes are, I fear, not of the
newest.
“Believe me yours sincerely,
“VICTORIA SEATON.”
“There, father,” said Christopher, “you see she wasn’t really cross at
all.”
“No,” said Mr. Morgan; “but, all the same, this must be the last of
such escapades.”
Then he opened the musical box, and they found from the piece of paper
inside the lid, written in violet ink in a thin, upright, rather curly
foreign hand, that it had twelve tunes. Mr. Morgan wound it up, and
they all stood round watching the great brass barrel, with the little
spikes on it, slowly revolve, while the teeth of the comb were caught
up one by one by the spikes to make the notes. There was also a little
drum and a peal of silver bells. Although old, it was in excellent
order, and very gentle and ripply in tone; and I wish I had been there
too, for it is a long time since I heard a musical box, every one now
having gramaphones with sore throats.
The first tune was “The Last Rose of Summer” and the second the
beautiful prison song from “Il Trovatore.” When it came to the seventh
the children looked at each other and smiled.
“Why,” said Betty, “that’s the tune the nice man with the wooden leg on
Tuesdays and Fridays always played.”
And what do you think it was? It was “Home, sweet Home.”
THE MISS BANNISTERS’ BROTHER
THE MISS BANNISTERS’ BROTHER
I
Christina’s father was as good as his word--the doll came, by post, in
a long wooden box, only three days after he had left for Paris. All the
best dolls come from Paris, but you have to call them “poupées” there
when you ask the young ladies in the shops for them.
Christina had been in the garden ever since she got up, waiting for
the postman--there was a little gap in the trees where you could see
him coming up the road--and she and Roy had run to meet him across the
hay-field directly they spied him in the distance. Running across the
hay-field was forbidden until after hay-making; but when a doll is
expected from Paris...!
Christina’s father was better than his word, for it was the most
beautiful doll ever made, with a whole wardrobe of clothes, too.
Also a tiny tortoiseshell comb and a powder puff. Also an extra pair
of bronzed boots. Her eyes opened and shut, and even her eyebrows were
real hair. This, as you know, is unusual in dolls, their hair, as a
rule, being made of other materials and far too yellow, and their
eyebrows being just paint. “She shall be called Diana,” said Christina,
who had always loved the name from afar.
Christina took Diana to her mother at once, Roy running behind her
with the box and the brown paper and the string and the wardrobe,
and Chrissie calling back every minute, “Don’t drop the powder puff
whatever you do!” “Hold tight to the hand-glass!” and things like that.
“It’s splendid!” Mrs. Tiverton said. “There isn’t a better doll in the
world; only, Chrissie dear, be very careful with it. I don’t know but
that father would have done better to have got something stronger--this
is so very fragile. I think perhaps you had better have it only
indoors. Yes, that’s the best way; after to-day you must play with
Diana only indoors.”
It was thus that Diana came to Mapleton.
How Christina loved her that first day! She carried her everywhere
and showed her everything--all over the house, right into the attics;
all over the garden, right into the little black stove-place under
the greenhouse, where Pedder, the gardener, read last Sunday’s paper
over his lunch; into the village, to the general shop, to introduce
her to the postmistress, who lived behind a brass railing in the odour
of bacon and calico; into the stables, to kiss Lord Roberts, the old
white horse. Jim, who groomed the General, was the only person who did
not admire the doll properly; but how could you expect a nice feeling
from a boy who sets dogs on rats?
II
It was two or three days after this that Roy went down to the river to
fish. He had to go alone, because Christina wanted to play with Diana
in the nursery; but not more than half an hour had passed when he heard
feet swishing through the long grass behind him, and, looking up,
there was Christina. Now, as Christina had refused so bluntly to have
anything to do with his fishing, Roy was surprised to see her, but more
surprised still to see that Diana had come too.
“Why, surely mother never said you might bring Diana?” he exclaimed.
[Illustration: THERE WAS CHRISTINA.]
“No,” said Christina, rather sulkily, “but I didn’t think she’d
mind. Besides, she’s gone to the village, and I couldn’t ask her.”
Roy looked troubled; his mother did not often make rules to interfere
with their play, and when she did she liked to be obeyed. She had
certainly forbidden Christina to take Diana out of the house. He did
not say anything. Christina sat down and began to play. She was not
really at all happy, because she knew it was wrong of her to have
disobeyed, and she was really a very good girl. Roy went on fishing.
“Oh, do do something else,” Christina cried pettishly, after a few
minutes. “It’s so cold sitting here waiting for you to catch stupid
fish that never come. Let’s go to the cave.” The cave was an old
disused lime-kiln, where robbers might easily have lived.
“All right,” Roy said.
“I’ll get there first,” Christina called out, beginning to run.
“Bah!” said Roy, and ran after. They had raced for a hundred yards,
when, with a cry, Christina fell. Roy, who was still some distance
behind, having had to pack up his rod, hastened to Christina’s side. He
found her looking anxiously into Diana’s face.
“Oh, Roy,” she wailed, “her eyes have gone!”
It was too true. Diana, lately so radiantly observant, now turned to
the world the blankest of empty sockets. Roy took her poor head in
his hand and shook it. A melancholy rattle told that a pair of once
serviceable blue eyes were now at large. Christina sank on the grass in
an agony of grief--due partly, also, to the knowledge that if she had
not been naughty this would never have happened. Roy stood by, feeling
hardly less unhappy. After a while he took her arm. “Come along,” he
said; “let’s see if Jim can mend her.”
“Jim!” Christina cried in a fury, shaking off his hand.
“But come along, anyway,” Roy said.
Christina continued sobbing. After a while she moved to rise, but
suddenly fell back again. Her sobbing as suddenly ceased. “Roy!” she
exclaimed fearfully, “I can’t walk.”
Christina had sprained her ankle.
Roy ran to the house as fast as he could to find help, and very soon
old Pedder, the gardener, and Jim were carrying Christina between
them, with mother, who had just come back, and nurse, walking by her
side. Christina was put to bed and her foot wrapped in bandages, but
she cried almost incessantly, no matter how often she was assured that
she was forgiven. “Her sobs,” the cook said, coming downstairs after
her twentieth visit to the nursery--“her sobs are that heartrending I
couldn’t stand it; and all the while she asks for that blessed doll,
which its eyes is rattling in its head like marbles, through falling
on the ground, and Master Roy and Jim’s trying to catch them with a
skewer.”
Cook was quite right. Roy and Jim, with Diana between them, were
seated in the harness-room, probing tenderly the depths of that poor
Parisienne’s skull. A housemaid was looking on without enthusiasm. “You
won’t do it,” she said every now and then; “you can’t catch dolls’ eyes
with skewers. No one can. It’s impossible. The King himself couldn’t.
The Primest Minister couldn’t. No,” she went on, “no one could do
it. No one but the Miss Bannisters’ Brother near where I live at
Dormstaple. He could. You ought to take it to him. He’d mend it in a
jiffy--there’s nothing he can’t do in that way.”
Roy said nothing, but went on prodding and probing. At last he gave up
in despair. “All right, I’ll take it to the Miss Bannisters’ Brother,”
he said. “Dormstaple’s only six miles.” But a sudden swoop from a
figure in the doorway interrupted his bold plan.
“You’ll do nothing of the kind,” cried nurse, seizing the doll, “with
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 Diana 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.
III
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; besides,
there was now no one to bowl to him, and also it seemed so silly not to
be able to mend a doll’s eyes. He moped in 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 Diana 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 Diana 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, he
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 Dormstaple, to the Miss
Bannisters’ Brother.”
IV
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 doorsteps in the middle.
A china cockatoo hung in the window. The door knocker was of the
brightest brass; it was a pleasure to knock it.
Behind the house was a very large garden, with a cedar in the midst,
and a very soft lawn, on which the same birds settled 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. In September button mushrooms grew on
the lawn--enough for breakfast every morning. 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 this workshop brings us to the Miss Bannisters’
Brother.
The Miss Bannisters’ Brother was an invalid, and he was also what is
called 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.
Rumour 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 and his pigeons
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 was some one 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 gas-stove put in it,” said Miss Selina.
“An oil-stove,” said Miss Sarah; “it’s more economical.”
“A gas-stove,” said Miss Selina; “it’s more trustworthy.”
“And put up a bench,” said Miss Sarah.
“And some cocoa-nut-matting on the floor,” said Miss Selina.
“Linoleum,” said Miss Sarah; “it’s cheaper.”
“Cocoa-nut-matting,” said Miss Selina; “it’s better and warmer for his
feet.”
“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.
V
Roy walked into Dormstaple at about one o’clock, very tired and hot and
dusty and hungry. With the exception of a lift for a mile and a half
in the baker’s cart, he had had to walk or run all the way. 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 Eliza, and as
the flavour 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, “and it’s the wrong door. Come
to-morrow morning, and go to the Hinfirmary. Mr. Theodore never sees
children in the afternoon.”
“Oh, but I must,” Roy almost sobbed.
“Chut, chut!” said old Eliza, “little boys shouldn’t say must.”
“But when they must, what else is there for them to say?” Roy asked.
“Chut, chut!” said old Eliza again. “That’s himperent! 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
coloured 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?” the Miss Bannisters’ Brother 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,” the Miss Bannisters’ Brother replied.
When the Miss Bannisters’ Brother came back, Miss Selina came with him.
“Come and get tidy. You are just in time for dinner,” she said, “and
afterwards we are going to drive home with you.”
“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.”
“Dinner will only take a little while,” said Miss Selina, “and the
horses 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.”
“Besides,” said the Miss Bannisters’ Brother, “I’m much too hungry to
give lessons. I need heaps of food--chicken and things--before I can
give a lesson.”
“But Christina----” Roy gasped again.
“And, as a matter of fact, we’ve thought of a better way than the
lesson,” Miss Selina said. “Mr. Bannister is going with you; but he
must eat first, mustn’t he?”
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.
VI
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 him, 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 the Miss Bannisters’ Brother had not driven out these twenty years;
but their surprise was nothing to that of old Eliza, who wandered about
the rooms all the rest of the day muttering “Little himperent 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!”