The Dolls’ House (8 page)

Most of the people had taken notice of Tottie. ‘What a love of a doll,’ they had said. ‘But that is what they say about Apple,’ said Tottie. ‘Oh, Apple. I long to
see you again.’

Emily and Charlotte had been several times to visit her. ‘Dear possession,’ thought Tottie, ‘a great treasure.’ That was what Mrs Innisfree and the Queen had said. Tottie
could look them in the face now, happily. ‘She doesn’t look hurt any more,’ said Emily.

‘And we never found out why she did,’ said Charlotte. ‘That is the worst of dolls. They are such secret people.’

They showed Tottie a cutting from a newspaper. It gave an account of the Exhibition: ‘
. . . and the smallest doll is a hundred-year-old farthing doll, lent by Emily and Charlotte
Dane.
’ If anyone had listened, they might have heard a tiny gritting sound. It was Marchpane grinding her china teeth.

Emily and Charlotte had looked at Marchpane and admired her very much, especially Emily; they knew she had belonged to Great-Great-Aunt Laura, but they did not know she had lived with Tottie in
the dolls’ house.

Tottie was longing to go home, but the other dolls were, for the most part, sorry the Exhibition was over. They would be packed away again or sent back to their museums.

‘What is a museum like?’ asked Tottie.

‘It is cold dere,’ said the walking doll suddenly. She sounded quite unlike herself.

‘Nonsense. It is grand and fine,’ said Marchpane. ‘It is filled with precious and valuable things kept in glass cases.’

‘I shouldn’t enjoy that,’ said Tottie, looking at Queen Victoria’s dolls. ‘How can you be played with if you are in a glass case?’

‘One wouldn’t want to be played with,’ said Marchpane. ‘When I was at the cleaners, people said I ought to be in a museum.’

‘It is cold dere,’ said the walking doll again.

‘It is grand and fine,’ said Marchpane.

‘
C’est vrai mais
–’ said the walking doll, ‘
Mais –
’ Her voice sounded as if her works had quite run down.

‘I don’t want to go back in my box,’ said the wax doll. ‘It is too dark and quiet. I wish . . . ’ She was thinking of the caretaker’s child who still crept
out to look at her in the evenings when the people had gone. ‘I wish . . . ’

The last day came. Tottie, with every minute, grew more happy and excited.

‘You are lucky,’ sighed the wax doll.

‘Tell us about dis ’ouse you are in,’ said the walking doll.

‘Yes, tell us. Then I can think about it when I lie with my eyes shut in my box. I can think and pretend. Tell, Tottie. Tell us.’

All the dolls took up the cry. ‘Tell us, Tottie. Tell.’

Tottie had always thought it better not to talk about the house in front of Marchpane, but now she was so excited and happy herself and so sorry for the other dolls that she forgot to take care.
She began to tell about the dolls’ house.

She told them about its cream walls and the ivy and Darner’s kennel. She told about the red hall and the sitting room with the holly-green carpet and the struggle to get the chairs (though
she did not tell that she had thought that she herself had been sold to get them). She told about the rooms upstairs and the pink and blue carpets and the bath with the taps, and she told about
Birdie and Mr Plantaganet and Darner and Apple. She told them from the beginning to the end, from the bottom to the top. When she had done, there was a long soft silence, and then a-aahs and sighs
from the dolls.

‘If only . . . ’

‘I wish . . . ’

‘It might have been . . . ’

‘I wish . . . ’

‘If only . . . ’

‘If only . . . ’

‘Oh, lucky, lucky Tottie!’

‘Oh, Tottie, you are lucky!’

‘Don’t you believe her,’ cried Marchpane in a loud voice. ‘That isn’t her house. It’s mine.’

All the dolls looked at Marchpane. Then they all looked at Tottie.

‘It is in our nursery now,’ said Tottie.

‘You stole it while I was at the cleaners.’

‘It was sent to us, as you were sent to the cleaners. It needed cleaning and taking care of,’ said Tottie. ‘We cleaned it and took care of it.’

‘How dare you!’ cried Marchpane. ‘You think because the Queen noticed you, you can do anything. Wait and see. Wait and see,’ cried Marchpane. ‘I shall have that
house back.’

‘How can you?’ asked Tottie. ‘It’s in our nursery.’

‘Wait and see,’ said Marchpane. ‘Wait and see.’

The Exhibition was closed. The dolls had been taken away, the room was empty, and when the caretaker’s child came in the evening there were only long blank tables where Tottie and
Marchpane and Queen Victoria’s dolls and the walking doll and the wax doll and the other dolls had been.

Did the caretaker’s child think of the wax doll? And the wax doll, in her lonely box, think of the caretaker’s child and of the finger that had touched her satin dress? Did the dolls
think of Tottie’s welcome home by Emily, Charlotte, Birdie, Mr Plantaganet, Apple, and Darner?

I think they did.

It was winter when Tottie came back to the dolls’ house. If you would like to know how winter looks to a doll imagine yourself as looking into a crystal ball, a ball of
glass, in which a Christmas-frost snowstorm is being shaken down on little splinter trees and cardboard houses. Children were given those snowstorm balls when Great-Great-Aunt Laura and Emily and
Charlotte’s great-grandmother were young. Winter looks like that to dolls because they are not often taken out in the winter, and they see the snow and snowflakes through the windowpanes of
glass.

Tottie came back and it was winter, but so far there was no snow.

Emily and Charlotte took her with them when they went to Mrs Innisfree’s house to fetch the couch and chairs.

‘Tottie ought to go, because it was Tottie who really got the chairs for us,’ said Emily.

‘Are the couch and chairs really coming, Tottie?’ asked Mr Plantaganet. ‘We have been wishing and wishing. I have never really stopped wishing,’ said Mr Plantaganet.
‘But it was you who got them for us, Tottie,’ he said.

‘Dear Tottie, but I should have been quite content with cotton reels,’ said Birdie.

‘Oh, Birdie dear!’ said Mr Plantaganet impatiently. Sometimes he found it hard to be patient with Birdie.

Apple was not there. He had a plan, unknown to Tottie, that he might climb up to the dolls’ house chimney. He thought he might climb up the ivy, it looked so real, but of course it was
painted too flat and the paint was far too slippery.

Emily made Tottie a cotton-wool cap and a cotton-wool muff to go out in, as it was beginning to be bitterly cold. ‘But we are cosy in the dolls’ house,’ said Mr Plantaganet.
The whiteness of the cotton wool looked pretty with Tottie’s glossy black hair and painted cheeks; she shone with happiness. Birdie did not want a cap or a muff. She wanted a feather boa.

‘What’s a boa?’ asked Apple, forgetting the ivy.

‘It’s a long scarf, but made out of feathers, and it is round all the way down,’ explained Tottie.

‘Like a caterpillar?’ asked Apple, who had seen a caterpillar in the park.

‘Yes, a caterpillar would make a very good boa for Birdie,’ said Tottie.

‘If it were made out of feathers,’ said Birdie. ‘But it’s not.’

Tottie was carried along to Mrs Innisfree’s on the palm of Charlotte’s hand. Charlotte had on a red woollen glove, Tottie had on her red woollen cloak, her cap and muff. They went
well together.

It was a clear, pale, cold sunny day; the bare branches of the trees in the Park stood out against a clear pale sky. The cold touched Tottie’s cheeks and the sunlight made them
glisten.

Emily and Charlotte were talking of Christmas, and Tottie was suddenly reminded of a little sunshade, a parasol, not made, like the walking doll’s parasol, from satin, but of paper from a
cracker. ‘I saw one long ago,’ said Tottie. ‘It was gay as a little paper wheel. How Birdie would love that,’ thought Tottie. ‘How I should like to give her one for
Christmas. She would like it better than the feather boa, but you don’t see them nowadays. I wish . . . ’ said Tottie, sitting on Charlotte’s hand; ‘and for Apple a marble.
A marble would make him a good ball, and for Darner a tiddlywinks plate, a nice big purple one. And for Mr Plantaganet? I wish they would think of getting him a toy post office,’ thought
Tottie. ‘Then he could go to business; if he went to business every day he would be very happy. I wish and wish they would get him a toy post office.’

When they arrived in Mrs Innisfree’s house, Tottie forgot even about Christmas and Christmas presents. There, on the table in Mrs Innisfree’s drawing room, were the couch and
chairs.

Emily did not recognize them.

Charlotte did not recognize them.

Tottie did not recognize them.

Their wood, having been carefully sandpapered, had been polished by Mrs Innisfree’s French polisher until it shone with a real furniture dark wood shine of its own. Then the
petit-point
seats and arms and backs had been fastened over new cushions. Mrs Innisfree had worked the cream background and the tiny roses and leaves; she had even worked their shadings,
though the flowers were scarcely bigger than knots or dots.

‘Oh!’ cried Emily.

‘Oh!’ cried Charlotte.

‘Oh!’ cried Tottie. ‘Oh! It was worth going to the Exhibition.’

‘Even the Queen’s dolls’ house,’ said Emily, ‘hasn’t a better set than that.’

‘Yes, that is perfectly right,’ said Tottie. She felt now she knew something about queens.

Mrs Innisfree put down on the table two pairs of fine white lace curtains, each curtain six inches long. ‘I saw the piece of lace,’ she said. ‘It was the right width and just
the right length, and there is a piece, three inches, over, so I made an apron for Tottie. Do you see, Emily, the lace is worked with ferns? Your great-grandmother’s drawing room might easily
have had lace curtains worked with ferns. They were very fashionable then.’

‘We shall keep them always, we shall never change them,’ said Emily solemnly. ‘Nor will our children’s children.’

‘Do you suppose Tottie will see them?’ asked Charlotte. ‘I mean our children’s children, not the chairs.’

‘She may,’ said Emily.

‘That makes me think,’ said Charlotte, and she added, ‘I seem to have been thinking a great deal of thinking lately.

It was a solemn morning. Mrs Innisfree and Emily did an account and it seemed that the cost of the lace curtains, of Mrs Innisfree’s French polisher and upholsterer, and of the silks and
canvas for the chairs, came to eight and tenpence, which was just the money they had had in their money boxes, though Charlotte now had the sixpence for her tooth and Emily had saved another
half-crown.

‘I believe you are saying eight and tenpence,’ said Emily, looking hard at Mrs Innisfree, ‘because you knew it was eight and tenpence that we had,’ said Emily.

‘And if I am?’ said Mrs Innisfree. ‘If I enjoy it?’

‘And we can’t pay you for the time,’ said Charlotte, ‘nor for the thinking. I wonder what makes thinking,’ said Charlotte. ‘It is funny how one thing begins
another.’

‘And how it all leads on,’ said Emily.

‘Yes, it joins,’ said Charlotte, wrinkling her forehead. ‘I have been thinking of thinking. And there is no knowing where it leads to, or when it will end, or where.’

On Christmas morning the Plantaganets woke to hear real carol singers in the street outside.

‘
Peace and goodwill among men
,’ sang the carol singers.

‘And among dolls,’ said Mr Plantaganet. ‘I hope among dolls.’

‘
Peace and goodwill.
’ The voices brought Christmas into the dolls’ house. ‘Can such a large thing as Christmas be in a dolls’ house?’ asked Mr
Plantaganet. ‘It is so large. See, it has spread over the whole world, and for so many years, nearly two thousand years,’ said Mr Plantaganet, the dark brown of his eyes looking large
too. ‘How large it is,’ said Mr Plantaganet.

‘It is beautifully small too,’ said Tottie. ‘Perfectly small.’

You might think that, to a doll, many things would seem too large, but no. A doll is not as small as a beetle, for instance, and a beetle’s world is just right for a beetle. When, too, you
have lived as long as Tottie, you will learn that small things are not as small as they seem, nor large things as large; nothing is small and nothing is large when you have become accustomed to the
world. Now the carols brought the spirit of Christmas into the dolls’ house.