Chapter V: Introduction: BY (5)

Inside, the little abode was as gay as its exterior, and far more tidy. The stove and its tins were polished “to the nines,” the strips of rag carpet were bright and clean, the table was scoured white, the bed was neatly made, and under it the family wardrobe was out of sight in a long, black, brass-nailed box. A gaudy clock ticked noisily from a shelf; a tall lamp, in a rainbow-paper shade, the pride and glory of the home, sat by its side. The wall was covered with bright posters; everywhere were gay colors and shining cleanliness.

And they were a satisfied family,—before the serpent came,—Father Wing being a sturdy, silent fisherman, who could always be counted upon to make a living, catching it on water and spending it on land, and finding comfort in his gentle wife and ten-year-old daughter.

To-day he was off fishing, and Mrs. Wing sat inside the sill of the plaid doorway, sewing on a high-necked, long-sleeved gingham apron, her head turned in a listening attitude that was habitual. Outside on the little deck piazza, in a starched mate to the apron her mother was making, little Almira sat, hugging Botsey and feeling rather lonely; for although her father had left the skiff and taken Wally Jim away, Sweepins had surreptitiously followed.

Almira was barelegged and towheaded, but she had a fair skin that defied exposure, and her face had never lost its baby curves. Her eyes were as blue as the river on a clear day, and her mouth had a tender droop, as if she were always feeling sorry for something or some one. She was tilting her little stool, humming a song to Botsey, when her mother said:

“I hear voices. Who’s on shore, Almira?”

Almira looked. “They’s two of ’em, ma. They’re beck’ning me to come for ’em. One’s Miss May, and the other’s got lace on her petticoat and fuzzy things round her neck.”

“I reckon Miss May’s coming about school again. I’m going to show her that last copy of yours. I wish I could spare you to get an education like my mother gave me, but I can’t. Still, it ain’t every child with eyes can read raised point.”

Almira was untying the boat. “I wouldn’t let you spare me. You’d catch afire or you’d fall into the river. We’d rather stay here, wouldn’t we?” She was talking to Botsey now. “No, you can’t go with me.” Jumping nimbly into the skiff, she began to cross the narrow strip of water.

“That baby row us?” she heard the lace lady ask. So she ran the boat in skilfully.

Miss May stepped lightly in; the lace lady hesitated, then followed with a laugh. Almira could hardly work the oars for looking at her soft brown eyes and the little brown curl that fluttered on her cheek.

A few strokes brought the skiff to the boat. “Good morning, Mrs. Wing!” called Miss May. “Here’s somebody you want to meet. Guess!”

“Is it Mrs. Lenox, who sends the raised point books in the travelling library?”

“You’re a witch!” cried the girl.

The woman smiled brightly. Her blue eyes, with the white, sightless pupils, turned toward the stranger. “I’m glad to see you at last. We heard you were coming. Almira, have you brought seats for the ladies?”

The child, keeping her eyes on the beautiful stranger, brought forward two soap-boxes upholstered in gay calico. If Botsey only had something like that for her neck! And she caught up the bottle in its crude skirt and blue crocheted shawl with an emphatic hug.

“Is that your doll?” asked Mrs. Lenox·

“No, ma’am. It’s Botsey.”

“It’s the bottle I’ve fixed up for her. I don’t know how she’d pass the time if it wasn’t for Botsey. You see, being so helpless, I try to make her enjoy staying with me. You know how helpless I am without her, Miss May.”

“I know how helpful you are and what a good housekeeper,” said Miss May, looking about at the tidy interior.

Then she told her errand. Almira was invited to the schoolhouse reception party the next Wednesday. Wally Jim had offered to fish near _The Wing_, if Mr. Wing should have to be filling orders in town.

Almira, her eyes still fixed on the beautiful lady’s face, said, “I went once. Miss May had an Easter just after we first come here. May I bring Botsey?”

But Miss May said no. A new library was due, and if it reached the village in time Almira would have books to bring her mother.

Mrs. Wing smiled softly. “How good of you! The last one was about little Nell. Why is it our books are so much better than books for people that can see? Jack thinks so, and so does Almira. How I bless you, ma’am!”

Mrs. Lenox could say nothing. May had told her the story of the young mother, attacked by the scarlet fever that left her sightless ten years before.

“I’ll let her come on Wednesday,” pursued Mrs. Wing, “but I’ll never budge from this chair till she gits back. It’s not as if I’d never seen how dangerous things are.”

* * * * *

With the school party this tale has naught to do. The child reached home betimes, carrying a package of books and a pasteboard box that seemed almost as long as herself. She was trembling with excitement.

“The library’s come, ma! And here’s two books and some cake and candy and—O ma, just guess what’s in the box?”

The mother felt, smiled, and shook her head.

“A little girl—a live little girl-baby doll!” And she lifted it from its shell. “And Miss May—she’s sometimes so funny!—she said at first she believed she’d rather I wouldn’t have her, but the lady said she wanted me to.”

The mother held out her arms for the doll, almost as excited as the child.

Almira expounded, “Its dress is blue, with buttons and buttonholes, and her hair’s real; put your hand here. It’s brown, and these teenty brown curls slant on her cheeks, and her eyes are brown, and she can shut them and go to sleep just like you and me.”

“Well, I never!” said the mother, feeling. “And what is this paper pinned on her dress?”

“It’s a letter,” answered Almira, sagely. “It begins in print and ends in writing, but I can’t make it all out. It says, ‘Patent, unbreakable, celluloid. Made in France.’ I’ll ask daddy the rest when he comes. And feel the petticoat, ma! Lace!”

“And tucks,” added the mother. “And see how fine the stuff is. Are these slippers?”

“With heels, real heels!” gurgled Almira. “And stockin’s! And in the box here’s a hat and feather and a white nightgown!” Almira’s emotion got the better of her, and she flung herself into her mother’s arms and rocked in ecstasy.

Then came a familiar bark, and Sweepins preceded the husband and fell to sniffing the doll immediately. “It’s mine, Sweepins,” cried the child. “Look, daddy!”

But the fisherman was too hungry to notice dolls, so the trio prepared the supper of frizzled bacon, corn, hoe-cakes and weak coffee. Afterward was bedtime, and the little feather bed was pulled from the big one to the floor, and made up with clean quilts for the child. But first she undressed the doll, carefully plaiting its hair in two nice plaits, putting the front in curl-papers, and robing it in the night-dress fine enough for day. Mrs. Lenox had cautioned her to teach her child tidy ways like its grandmother’s. Poor Botsey, hitherto her constant bedfellow, stood motionless outside the door.

When morning came, and she was helping, her mother asked, “What are you going to name her?”

“It ought to be something pretty. I thought of Queeny.”

“Queeny’ll be fine,” agreed Mrs. Wing. “But where’s the paper? Maybe she’s already named.”

Outside “daddy” was mending a net when Almira brought him the paper. He read:

“‘Patent, unbreakable, celluloid. Made in France.’ That’s in print, and here in writing is, ‘This travelling doll goes with Travelling Library Number Ten to any child selected by persons responsible for the distribution of the books. It is the reward for good behavior or special merit in the place of a medal, and is to belong to the child until the library is ready to go on, when the dolly in neat condition and clean, her hair combed, her clothing washed and ironed, must be put back in her box and packed for the next child on the circuit.’”

Almira snatched at the paper and ran into the boat. She laid Queeny on her mother’s lap and crept out to the little deck. Botsey, again on guard, stood by the door. Almira seized her fiercely, tore off the blue shawl, dragged at the soiled skirt. An old greasy bottle! How could it ever be taken back as her very own child when Queeny had to go?

“Almira,” called the mother, scenting tragedy, “don’t you want me to play grandmother with you and Queeny?”

“What’s the use? She’s like your books. She ain’t mine, and I never had a real child before. The paper says she must travel with the books.”

But the placid cheeriness of the blind woman smoothed matters: “But she’s yours now, and sometimes the books stay for weeks and weeks.”

Here was some comfort. One week was a long time; a month so long that Almira could hardly remember it. And Queeny was beautiful. Why not love her and be happy?

And she was, for weeks and weeks that went by like a dream. She quite forgot what had to happen until one day Wally Jim stopped with a note from Miss May—in printing writing that Almira could read. It said:

“Will you let Queeny go on to-morrow? There’s a dear little
girl just your age up in the mountains who may have to walk on
crutches all her life. She is expecting the doll every day now,
so have it looking clean and pretty.”

“Almira?” questioned the mother. But the child did not answer. Fortunately no one was near but Wally Jim to see her screwed-up face as she gulped once or twice. She handed him the paper to read, making a sign of silence. Whatever her emotions, she always instinctively spared her sympathetic mother.

“I wouldn’t let her go!” blurted Wally Jim, kicking one cowhide boot so hard against the tying-post that he rocked the house.

Almira’s head shook in mournful dissent. “When I took her I knew I had to let her travel with the books,” she said, with wonderful logic.

Wally Jim would not look at her. “You take my advice—kick about it. ’Twon’t do any harm.” He got into his skiff, with head turned from Almira’s drawn face. “But if you’re bound to send her, I’ll be round to-morrow for her and the books.”

“What’s that he said about the books?” called the mother. “Are some more coming?”

“I suppose so. These have to go back.”

“And the doll? O baby!”

“Of course,” answered Almira, shortly. “We’ll wash her clothes to-day, for it says, ‘Returned clean and neat.’”

It was all right while the work went on. Queeny was washed, combed, braided and dressed. Almira touched her as little as possible.

When Queeny was laid in her box, wearing a blue hood knitted by the mother, and tied with the tapes that had held her still on her former journey, Almira thought she looked as if she were in her coffin. Then Almira caught sight of Botsey, as usual on guard outside the door. Before Queeny came Botsey was ever so much sweeter. If she had never seen Queeny! Why could not the little girl in the mountains on crutches have a Botsey? They do all right until you’ve seen the other kind.

Almira’s character was one of quick decision. With a furtive look at her mother, she took Queeny from her nest and removed her hood, dress, shoes, stockings. Then she stripped Botsey of her old skirt and blue shawl, putting Queeny’s clothes on Botsey after a painful fashion, put the blue woolen hood over Botsey’s green glass countenance, and folded Queeny’s freshly starched nightgown on Botsey’s chest. She viewed her work critically, and with an access of turpitude, stuffed empty sleeves and stockings with paper, putting on the slippers so that they stuck quite naturally from beneath the blue frock: and right over the place where Queeny’s face should have looked from the hood, she pinned the paper. Then she tied the tapes, tied them with a vicious screw of her mouth in hard, hard knots, put the lid on the box, and brought all to her mother, saying, in the evenest of tones:

“I want you to help me wrap her up.”

“Poor baby!” said the mother. “Maybe some day Mrs. Lenox will send another.”

“Never want another!” said the child, sullenly.

Going out to her stool in front, she dressed Queeny in the old skirt, put the shawl over her head, and tried to stand her on guard, Botsey fashion. But Queeny doubled up, and refused. So she held her in her arms with a savage satisfaction, thinking, “Queeny isn’t any bottle doll.”

Once the mother brushed the wool of the little shawl as the child passed her on some household task.

“You’ve done gone back to Botsey? That’s right. You’ve the sense of a grown-up.”

The afternoon brought a scare. Miss May herself came for the packages. Suppose! Oh, suppose! Almira barely had time to plump Queeny between the feather beds before Miss May landed in Wally Jim’s skiff. Almira was glad that she had been prompt, and that the string was tied in hard knots. Miss May praised her for being a good little girl, and made her wince by depicting the gladness of that lame child in the mountains when Queeny should arrive.

But Almira did not repent for a minute. She even said, “Poor little girl!” with a hard-hearted irony. Miss May puckered her forehead, as she always did when she was thinking.

That night Almira tossed and tumbled, unable to sleep. Then the moon rose and sent a straight shaft of light through one of the little square windows on the doll’s face. Almira smothered a scream. One of Queeny’s eyes was asleep, the other wide open, staring at her. She shook her hard, but that eye would not sleep. She held her up, but although the shut eye opened, the open eye shut, giving the effect of a wicked wink.

How she longed for dear, blind Botsey! Where was Botsey now? Could she feel, and did she know what had been done? No, Botsey was only a bottle.

But _Queeny knew_! And Queeny was watching her with one eye to see what other wicked things were going to happen; and there was Miss May praising her and trusting her, and that little lame girl in the mountains expecting a doll, and getting—

Almira could not have called this a protest of conscience, but she knew she was utterly miserable. Furthermore, she realized that Queeny’s ability to bring pride and happiness was gone, and that she herself would always have this something gnawing her inside.

But must she? Perhaps it was not too late. Jim would help her. To-morrow she would get him to stay near her mother while she went ashore with Queeny, the glaring Queeny, to Miss May, telling her how bad she had been. Perhaps Number Ten had not gone on, and Botsey could be stopped on her deceitful way.

This resolve so comforted Almira that as the moon went down and darkness hid the staring eye, she fell asleep.

She was awakened by voices and a motion she knew well. The daylight came broadly through the windows. She heard a clanging and creaking.

A sick realization overwhelmed her. They had left the island, they were in the broad bed of the river, skimming away who knew where?—away from Miss May and the chance of making things all right.

She dressed herself, asking no questions; but her mother, holding to the arms of her chair, explained:

“Your pa thinks he’ll do better off a larger town, so he came in before day and raised sail to get into the current while this good wind’s blowing.”

Almira sat limply on her little stool. Queeny could not go back to Miss May, but she should not glare at her with her one eye for the rest of her life. Botsey could swim, but Queeny—Queeny could drown! And this time there was no deliberation. She snatched at the doll, and going to the back of the boat, hurled it as far as she could into the river!

Then she fell to helping her mother assiduously, being extra loving and attentive, giving little pats and squeezes as she passed her in her morning tasks, even running to hug her whenever the boat rocked in the waves made by passing craft. Mrs. Wing did the washing, Almira hung the clothes to dry in the bright, breezy sunshine. She scoured the already bright tins, she shook up the beds, hung the quilts to air, washed the floor, the deck. It was work she wanted, hard work. She made the discovery that work brought forgetfulness. She would have liked to scrub the floor of the world.

Day was all right, but for all her bodily fatigue she slept but fitfully that night. She wished people could work at night.

Although they soon reached a place that her father called the Point, and anchored a little way up a creek, where things stopped shaking and were quiet, her eyes would not close.

This Point place was not like the green island. There were smells. They were far enough inland to see a street with people walking; indeed, they were almost under a bridge that let the street-cars go by. “Daddy” left early. After putting the cabbage on to boil, her mother sat down to her seams and hems in the checked blue gingham. Almira, empty-handed, moped on her little three-legged stool at the door. Sweepins, wringing wet, snored on the sunny deck.

A skiff came up the stream; in it Wally Jim. “I’ve brought you something!” he called. “Miss May got to thinking after she got home, and she says she’ll get another doll for that mountain kid, and you can have Queeny back.” He reached under the seat, and with dramatic effect drew out the long box.

At the sight of it Almira’s self-control gave way. Here was punishment, indeed! To her mother’s arms she rushed, blurting out the truth with sobs.

“Wally Jim,” asked Mrs. Wing, “how far is Miss May’s from here?”

“Not so very far, and she’s down in town to-day—said she was coming.”

“Take the box back to her, Wally Jim!” sobbed Almira. “Let her see it just as it is, because she hasn’t opened it, and she thinks she’s sending me Queeny. And I’ll write a letter besides.”

“I’ll take all the letters you want, but I won’t take the box, because whatever’s in it, it’s yours.” There was something different and set about Wally Jim this morning. Almira sighed resignedly, and with painstaking labor proceeded to print her letter of repentance.

“You have got back Botsey, dear,” said the mother, “so try to forget.”

“I’ll never play with Botsey again. I’ll give her away first.”

In an incredibly short time they heard Jim’s oars again, and Miss May stepped on deck. She was holding out her arms to Almira, and there were tears in her eyes.

“Dear child, I didn’t like the idea from the very first, but Mrs. Lenox does so much for us. You’ll be all the better for the sharp experience, and you have really shown your repentance. Now let’s open the box and see exactly what you did.”

Quite cheerfully, all the miserable feeling gone, Almira brought scissors, cut strings, pointing out the while the iniquities of hard knots and covered features.

What! Queeny! From the bottom of the river, dry, clothed, and with her two eyes shut! Almira looked at Miss May and at Wally Jim, grinning over Miss May’s shoulder.

“What has happened now?” asked Mrs. Wing.

“Tell your story, Jim,” said Miss May.

“I was drifting some way off behind you all,” said Jim, “and maybe sleeping some, when who should swim up to the skiff with something in his mouth but Sweepins. It was Queeny, but as she’s cellyloid, only her clothes were wet. I puzzled out that somehow she hadn’t gone back to Miss May, and that she ought to. So I took her, and Miss May says, ‘If this is Queeny, what’s in Almira’s box?’ And we looked, and there was Botsey.”

“And oh, I was so sorry,” said Miss May, taking up the tale, “though I’d known all along that a travelling doll would cause heartache—and this proved it would do worse. I sent Queeny back, after having her doctored, knowing that my little Almira was good before temptation came, and wishing to know what it had made of her. I’m satisfied,” and Miss May hugged the child once more.

The blind mother was smiling. “Miss May, she’s only a child, you know, but she suffered like a grown-up, and with it all, helped me just the same as ever.”

Almira dug her bare toes into the rag carpet. “Where’d Botsey go to?” she asked, without looking up.

“If I were you, I’d look under the seat of my boat,” said Wally Jim.

THE DOLL DOCTOR

By E. V. Lucas

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 her eyebrows were real hair. This is very unusual in a doll. “She shall be called Joan Shoesmith,” said Christina, who had always loved the name, it had been her first nurse’s.

Christina took Joan 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.

“But 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 it only indoors.”

Thus Joan Shoesmith came to Mapleton.

How Christina loved her doll that first day! She carried it everywhere and showed it everything—all over the house, right into the attics; all over the garden, right into the little black stove place under the greenhouse; into the village, to introduce her to the postmistress, who lived behind a brass railing in the grocer’s shop; into the stables, to kiss General Gordon, 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?

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 Joan Shoesmith in the nursery; but not more than half an hour had passed when he heard footsteps in 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 Joan Shoesmith had come too.

“Why, did mother say you might bring Joan?” he asked.

“No,” said Christina, rather sulkily, “but I didn’t think she’d mind.”

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 Joan Shoesmith 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 that she had scrambled to her knees, and was looking anxiously into Joan Shoesmith’s face.

“Oh, Roy,” she wailed, “her eyes have gone!”

It was too true. Joan Shoesmith, 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 Stedder, the gardener, and Jim were carrying Christina between them, with mother and nurse walking by her side. Christina was put to bed at once 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 heart-rending 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 Joan Shoesmith between them, were seated in the harness-room, probing tenderly the depths of that luckless creature’s skull. A housemaid was looking on without enthusiasm. “You won’t do it,” she said every now and then; “you can’t mend dolls’ eyes with skewers. No one can. It’s impossible. The king himself couldn’t. You ought to take it to the Miss Bannisters’ brother at Dormstaple. He’d mend it in a jiffy—there’s nothing he can’t do in that way.”

Roy at last gave up in despair. “I’ll take it to the Miss Bannisters’ brother,” he said, rising with Joan Shoesmith in his arms; “it’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 Joan Shoesmith 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.

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; and, also, it seemed so silly not to be able to mend a doll’s eyes. He moped in and out of 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 Joan Shoesmith 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 Joan Shoesmith 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, the doctor 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 the Miss Bannisters’ brother.”

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 door steps in the middle. The blinds were of that kind through which no one who is outside can see anything, and all who are inside can see everything. The door knocker was of the brightest brass. Behind the house was a very large garden, with a cedar in the midst; and a very soft lawn on which hundreds of birds used to settle 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. 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 his workshop brings us to the Miss Bannisters’ brother.

The Miss Bannisters’ brother was an invalid, and he was also what is called an 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.

Rumor 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 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 were someone 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 stove put in it,” said Miss Selina.

“And put up a bench,” said Miss Sarah.

“And some cocoa-nut matting on the floor,” said Miss Selina.

“Linoleum,” said Miss Sarah.

“Cocoa-nut matting,” said Miss Selina.

“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.

Roy walked into Dormstaple at about one o’clock, very tired and hot and dusty and hungry; and 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 Mary, and as the flavor 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. “Come to-morrow morning. Mr. Theodore never sees children in the afternoon.”

“Oh, but I must,” Roy almost sobbed.

“Chut, chut!” said old Mary, “little boys shouldn’t say must.”

“But when they must, what else is there for them to say?” Roy asked.

“Chut, chut!” said old Mary again. “That’s imperent! 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 colored 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?” Mr. Theodore 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,” Mr. Theodore replied.

When the Miss Bannisters’ brother came back, Miss Selina came with him. “Come and get tidy for dinner,” she said, “and afterwards we’ll drive home.”

“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.”

_From the drawing by Carton Moorepark_]

“Dinner will only take a little while,” said Miss Selina, “and the horse 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.”

“But the lesson—?” Roy gasped again.

“Oh, we’ve thought of a better way than the lesson,” Miss Selina said. “Mr. Bannister is going with you.”

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.

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 their brother, 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 Mr. Theodore had not driven out these twenty years; but their surprise was nothing to that of old Mary, who wandered about the rooms all the rest of the day muttering, “Little imperent 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!”

At this moment the carriage reached the door; but Mrs. Tiverton’s perplexities were not removed by it. On the contrary, they were increased, for she saw before her three total strangers. Miss Selina, however, hastily stepped out and took Mrs. Tiverton’s hand and explained the whole story, adding, “We are not coming in; my sister and I have a call to pay a little further on. We shall come back in less than an hour for our brother, carry him off, and be no trouble at all. I know how little you must want even people that you know just now.” In spite of Mrs. Tiverton’s protest, Miss Selina had her way, and the sisters drove off.

While this conversation had been in progress, Roy had been speaking to the Miss Bannisters’ brother. He had been preparing the speech ever since they had started, for it was very important. “Please,” he said, “please how much will this visit be, because I want to pay for it myself?”

The Miss Bannisters’ brother smiled. “But suppose you haven’t enough,” he said.

“Oh, but I think I have,” Roy told him. “I’ve got seven-and-six, and when the vet. came to see General Gordon it was only five shillings.”

The Miss Bannisters’ brother smiled again. “Our infirmary is rather peculiar,” he said. “We don’t take money at all; we take promises; different kinds of promises from different people, according to their means. We ask rich parents’ friends to promise to give away old toys or story-books, or scrap-books, or something of that kind, to real hospitals—children’s hospitals. We find that much better than money. Money’s such a nuisance. One is always losing the key to the money-box.”

Roy was a little disappointed. “Oh, yes,” he said, however, “I’ll do that. Won’t I just? But, you know,” he added, “you can always break open a money-box if it comes to the worst. Pokers aren’t bad.”

It was just then that the Miss Bannisters drove off, and Mrs. Tiverton asked their brother to come to Christina’s room with her. Roy would have given anything to have been allowed upstairs; but as it was forbidden he went to see Jim and tell him the news.

Christina was moaning in the bed with Joan Shoesmith in her arms as the Miss Bannisters’ brother sat down beside her. “Come,” he said gently, “let me feel your pulse.”

Christina pushed her wrist towards him wearily·

“Oh, no, not yours,” he said, with a little laugh. “I mean your little lady’s. I’m not your doctor. I’m a doll’s doctor.”

Christina turned her poor flushed face towards him for the first time. A doll’s doctor—it was a new idea. And he really seemed to be all right—not anyone dressed up to make her feel foolish or coax her into taking horrid medicine. “Was it your carriage I heard?” she asked.

“Yes,” he said. “I have come on purpose. But so many dolls are ill just now that I must be getting away soon. It’s quite a bad time for dolls, especially—oddly enough—French ones.”

“Mine is French,” Christina said, growing really interested.

“Ah, how very curious!” he answered. “And now for the pulse,” and he drew out a large gold watch.

Mrs. Tiverton was looking on with tears in her eyes. Christina had not taken this quiet interest in anything or kept so still in bed for many hours. Not even the sleeping draught had had any effect.

The Miss Bannisters’ brother held Joan Shoesmith’s tiny wrist and looked very grave. “Dear, dear!” he said, “I ought to have been sent for before, and then I could have cured her here in your arms. As it is, I must take her to the light. Won’t you have that nice jelly while I am treating Miss ——? Let me see, what was the name?”

“Joan,” Christina said: “Joan Shoesmith.”

“Ah, yes—Miss Shoesmith. By the time you have finished the jelly I ought to have finished my visit.” So saying he rose and carried Joan Shoesmith to the window seat behind the curtains, while Mrs. Tiverton gave Christina the jelly. Christina took it, nurse said afterwards, like a lamb—though I never saw a lamb take jelly.

Meanwhile, the Miss Bannisters’ brother had taken some tools and a tube of seccotine from his pocket, and he had lifted up Joan Shoesmith’s hair, cut a hole in her head, and was busily readjusting the machinery of her eyes. It was all done in five minutes, just as Christina was eating the last mouthful. “There,” he said, returning to the bedside, “that’s all right. I think our patient can see now as well as ever.”

Christina peered into Joan Shoesmith’s face with a cry of joy, and sank back on the pillow in an ecstasy of content.

Neither Mrs. Tiverton nor the Miss Bannisters’ brother dared to move for some minutes. While they sat there the doctor tiptoed in. He crossed to the bed and looked at Christina. “She’s asleep,” he said. “Splendid! She’s all right now. It was sleep she wanted more than anything. Don’t let her hear a sound, nurse, for hours.”

They found Roy waiting for the news. When he heard it he jumped for joy. His mother caught him up and hugged him. “You thoughtful little imp,” she cried—and, turning to the doctor, told him the story. He went off, laughing. “I shall take my door-plate down when I get home,” he called out as he drove off, “and send it round to you, Bannister. You’re the real doctor.”

When the Miss Bannisters drove back they found tea all ready, and Mrs. Tiverton would not hear of their leaving without it. And when they did leave, an hour later, they were all fast friends.

Roy and Christina never think of going to Dormstaple now without calling at the red house.

THE IDEA THAT WENT ASTRAY

By Pauline Carrington Bouvé

It was Danny’s idea. Danny always had a great many ideas, and sometimes they were good, sometimes they were not, as is apt to be the case with people who have a great many of anything—especially ideas.

“It will be such fun!” said Amy.

“And something new,” agreed Janie.

“Who’ll cut the face?” asked Fred, who always wanted to know how things were going to be done.

“Can’t you, Milly?” asked all the children at once. “Can’t you?” and they all gathered round a little girl who was dressing a doll in an automobile suit.

“What are you talking about?” she asked. “What kind of a face, and what for?” She was fastening the odd lenses from two pairs of Aunt Mildred’s spectacles into a wire frame for goggles for the doll.

“Why, a pumpkin face, to scare Uncle Ned! He always laughs at us if we are afraid of anything.”

“If you will get the pumpkin—a nice large one—and will lend me your new jack-knife, why, I’ll see what I can do,” she said.

Fred promised, and the rest of that day and the next the children spent in preparation for Hallowe’en. Uncle Ned was a young lawyer in Boston, but he came home Saturday nights to spend Sundays with Aunt Mildred, and Hallowe’en happened to come on Saturday, which just suited.

Milly succeeded in making a very ugly face making enormous eyes and a monstrous mouth, in which she managed to fasten two rows of corn grains for teeth. Then, when the rest of the children were out playing, she took her pumpkin head up into the attic, and hunted for other things to complete its make-up. In an old trunk she found a heavy wig, and this she fastened firmly on the head with some glue. When at last she showed it, with its great shock of black hair, everybody agreed that it was ugly enough to frighten anybody.

“He’ll think it’s a goblin,” said Milly, who had read a great many fairy-stories.

“There aren’t any goblins,” said Fred, who was always practical.

In the evening, soon after supper, they all went out and stuck it up on the end of a stray bean-pole, which they leaned up against the post of the garden gate. Dave Peters gave them a candle, which they lighted and thrust inside of the hollow head.

“Ugh, how ugly!” they said, and then went in the house to wait.

After a while Fred proposed going out to see how it looked again, and every one of the children followed him. What if the candle should have burned out or been blown out?

Fred gave a low whistle and stopped before he reached the gate, and all the children called, “What’s the matter?”

There the ugly thing hung, the light shining through the big empty eyes and grinning corn teeth, and just behind there was certainly a great white something that looked like wings!

“What’s that white thing?” said Milly, in a frightened whisper, as she clutched Fred’s arm.

“Let’s go back!” begged Amy and Janie.

“There’s nothing to be afraid of,” said Fred, boldly; but he did not move a step nearer to the gate. “You are always so ’fraid of things!”

“Oh, go see what it is! I’m scared, scared!” wailed Milly, who scarcely recognized her own handiwork in the darkness, so strange it looked.

In the excitement they did not hear the car whistle nor the sound of footsteps on the gravel walk.

Just then a breeze sprang up, flaring the candle, which sent out a long tongue of flame from the pumpkin head’s mouth, and the white something behind began to wave. Like a flock of frightened birds the children, Fred, Amy, Janie and Milly, turned and ran as fast as they could, stumbling over each other in their flight.

A man’s figure darkened the doorway. “Hello!” said Uncle Ned. “What’s happened?”

“Oh, the pumpkin—there’s something there behind it—we thought we’d scare you!”

They were all talking together, so Uncle Ned did not understand at first.

“And you scared yourselves?” he said, at last. “Come, let us see what the ‘something white’ is,” and he went straight up to the garden fence and pulled down Aunt Mildred’s white crocheted shawl.

“Milly forgot to take it in, as I asked her,” remarked Aunt Mildred, “and it’s lucky you found it.”

Uncle Ned laughed so loud that everybody else laughed, too.

Then he put his hand down into his overcoat pocket and brought forth two big brown parcels of nuts and candy, and Aunt Mildred brought in a basket of big red apples, and after all, it was a jolly Hallowe’en, although, as Milly remarked, the “getting scared part got mixed up.”

GRAVITY GREGG

By Isaac Ogden Rankin

John Paul Gregg had a hobby. Nobody could doubt it who was with him, even though he did not happen to hear one of the other boys call him “Specific Gravity,” or “Fic,” for short. Gravity Gregg it was and continued to be until it got into the newspapers, and now it is probably settled upon him for life.

When he was a baby he was always investigating the why and the wherefore and more particularly the how of everything he could get his chubby hands on. If he saw anything moving, especially, he always wanted to know why it moved—a curiosity which cost him a finger before he was ten years old.

He was a pretty good all-round student, but it was in the natural philosophy class that he shone. He had picked up somewhere an old copy of a standard book on physics, and his use of the information he had gathered from it caused terror to the good lady who had charge of the department in the village school.

He was apt, for instance, to complicate her mild and innocent experiments by suggesting new applications of the principle involved; and the amount of broken apparatus which went down to his account in the laboratory where the boys were sometimes allowed to work made his mother sigh.

His devotion to physics seemed very unpractical to quiet Mrs. Gregg, who had set her heart on making a minister of her eldest son. She had named him John Paul, by way of having the names of two apostles ready for the future, and she had day-dreams of sitting in the front pew in church to hear him preach, while she looked up to him with wondering delight.

It was a trial to be thinking of the Rev. John Paul Gregg, a tall, dignified and grave man, who was respected by everybody and had, perhaps, published a book of sermons, and then to have a freckled lad, round-faced and brown as a berry, with a scar across his forehead where an exploding crucible had just missed the eye, burst in upon her to beg her best preserving-kettle for an experiment. And to hear the future clergyman called “Fic” Gregg all over her end of the town made her shudder.