The Dolls’ House (9 page)

‘I like “Peace and Goodwill”,’ said Tottie.

‘I like “The Holly and the Ivy”,’ said Mr Plantaganet. ‘They are like the colours in this house. I like “Prince of Peace”; that suits it too. I know
about peace now,’ said Mr Plantaganet. ‘In the days of the toy cupboard –’ he began and his eyes looked darker and he did not go on. ‘Yes, I like “The Prince of
Peace”, but the one that I like best of all is “God Bless the Master of This House”, because I am the Master,’ said Mr Plantaganet.

Birdie liked the rocking carol, only she mixed it with ‘Rock-a-Bye Baby’, but after all it was nearly the same thing.

‘
Peace and goodwill,
’ sang the carol singers.

The dolls’ house, that Christmas, looked very pleasant. Emily and Charlotte had decorated it; they made wreaths of moss on curtain rings, that looked like holly wreaths, and they had
strung holly berries for garlands. Emily had even made a paper chain with very small links. Birdie liked the paper chain best of anything. The new chairs and couch looked handsome in the drawing
room, and there was a Christmas tree, six inches high, standing in a wooden pot. It was the kind of Christmas tree you have on Christmas cakes; it was just right for the Plantaganets.

‘Would you like to give one of the Plantaganets this for Christmas?’ asked the children’s mother, coming into the room. ‘I must have had it at a party long ago.’
She showed them a parasol made of white paper printed with a pattern of purple and scarlet feathers. It could be put up and down, and had once fitted into a cracker.

‘Oh! For Birdie,’ cried Emily at once.

‘How odd,’ thought Tottie. ‘How lovely and how odd.’

‘And for Apple, a marble. Wouldn’t a marble make a ball for Apple?’

‘More and more odd,’ thought Tottie, ‘and still more lovely.’

‘Darner might have a new plate,’ said Charlotte, looking in the toy cupboard. ‘This big tiddlywinks would do. The rest are all lost. It’s a purple one. That would suit
him nicely.’

‘More and more odd,’ thought Tottie again, ‘and more and more lovely.’

For Mr Plantaganet they hung a buttonhole on the tree. It was made of woollen flowers. ‘I don’t much like that,’ thought Tottie.

Mr Plantaganet did not much like it either. ‘Is my Christmas spoilt?’ he whispered to Tottie.

‘No.
No,
’ said Tottie. ‘But I wish I could make it better.’

‘I wish that too,’ said Mr Plantaganet. He suspected it was spoilt.

At that moment the postman’s knock sounded from the front door. Emily and Charlotte ran to open it. He had brought two parcels, a light thin one, the shape of a flat cardboard box, and a
small one, the shape of a child’s shoe-box. It was very heavy.

Emily opened the flat light one first.

‘What is it?’ asked Charlotte. ‘What is it? Oh!’ she cried as Emily set up a cardboard counter painted with netting. ‘Oh! It’s a post office. A toy post
office.’

‘Oh!’ cried Tottie, and she caught Mr Plantaganet’s eye.

‘Look at the stamps,’ said Emily, ‘and the stamper.’

‘Let me look at the stamps,’ cried Mr Plantaganet.

‘Let me look at the stamper,’ cried Apple.

The toy post office was complete. It even had two letter boxes labelled PACKETS AND NEWSPAPERS and LETTERS. It had stamps and certificates and postal orders and telegraph forms and letter paper
and postcards and stamped envelopes. It had a red tin telephone and a purple inkpad for the stamper.

‘But what shall we do with it exactly?’ asked Charlotte.

‘We can tell you,’ wished Tottie and Mr Plantaganet together, and Emily, as if she had felt them wishing, looked at them. Then she looked only at Mr Plantaganet. ‘I
know,’ said Emily slowly. ‘I know, Charlotte. It shall be Mr Plantaganet’s office. He shall go there to business every day.’

‘As a postman?’ asked Charlotte.

‘As a postmaster,’ said Emily.

‘A postmaster!’ said Mr Plantaganet, and his waistcoat seemed to swell and grow bigger. ‘Did you hear, Tottie? I am a
postmaster.
Did you hear, Birdie dear? Now I have
nothing left to wish for. Did you hear, Apple? Oh, how happy I am. Did you hear –’ He was about to say, ‘Did you hear, Darner?’ when he remembered that Darner was a dog and
could not be expected to recognize the difference between Mr Plantaganet, Postmaster, and plain Mr Plantaganet. He stopped. His attention was caught by Darner.

Darner was looking at the other parcel. All his wool stood on end. ‘Prrickckckck,’ said Darner at the parcel. ‘Prrick. Prrick. Prrick! Prrick! Prrrrrrickckckck!’

At the moment Darner barked at the parcel the Plantaganet family were all in the post office that Emily had set up on the table. Apple was playing with the scales, Birdie was
tinkling the telephone; it had a bell and Birdie liked the sound of it. She wondered if a musical box sounded like that. Tottie had told her about musical boxes and she often longed to hear one.
Tottie was looking at the postcards. Mr Plantaganet was trying not to wish that they would all go away and leave him alone with it.

As Darner barked, Tottie remembered the other parcel, and for no reason that she could put a name to, she found herself wishing and wishing and wishing that Emily would put them all back in the
house. She must have wished very purposively, as Emily raised her head and said, ‘I think they must all go back into the dolls’ house now.’

‘In the house, and behind the door. Shut the door,’ wished Tottie.

‘After all, Mr Plantaganet wouldn’t go to the office on Christmas Day,’ said Emily.

‘Wouldn’t he?’ asked Mr Plantaganet.

‘Wouldn’t a postmaster? The postman does,’ said Charlotte.

‘A postman doesn’t go the office,’ said Emily, ‘he goes on his rounds. You can’t send parcels on Christmas Day, you only get them.’

‘I wish you didn’t,’ said Tottie. She felt worried, a little frightened and a little angry; she felt as if her wood had gone stiff.

Charlotte put the Plantaganets tidily back in the house: Apple on the stairs, ready to somersault; Birdie in her bedroom, with the pink carpet, taking off her hat with the feather; Mr
Plantaganet on one of the new chairs in the sitting room; and Tottie in the kitchen. ‘Now you are all in your happy little house,’ said Charlotte. She did not close the front.

‘Our happy little house,’ sang Apple as he began his somersaults. He reached the bottom and to his great joy Charlotte looked up and said, ‘Oh, he has fallen downstairs, poor
little Apple,’ and put him up again.

‘Our happy little house,’ sang Birdie, twirling her feather.

‘Our happy little house,’ hummed Mr Plantaganet, ‘and office,’ he hummed as he read his paper. He went on humming: sometimes ‘The Holly and the Ivy’,
sometimes ‘Peace and Goodwill among Men’.

Charlotte had given Tottie the pudding basin tied in a scrap of white muslin and said she was turning out the Christmas pudding, but Tottie felt too nervous to think about puddings. She could
hear Darner in his kennel still saying ‘Prrick,’ and Darner never said ‘Prrickck’ except for danger.

Through the open front of the dolls’ house Tottie watched Emily undo that parcel.

Emily undid the string and then carefully she unwrapped the paper. It was a small shoe-box. Tottie shivered all through her wood. ‘Shoe-boxes are unlucky for this family,’ she said.
‘The last shoe-box made Mr Plantaganet awfully unhappy.’

The shoe-box was padded with cotton wool and paper. Emily and Charlotte lifted it out, piece by piece, and then Emily gave a cry of admiration and pleasure. ‘Look, Charlotte. Look.
It’s a doll. That doll. That lovely doll.’ And she lifted Marchpane from the box.

There was a sudden light clatter in the dolls’ house kitchen, but nobody heard.

‘Oh! I loved her at the Exhibition,’ cried Emily. ‘You remember her, Charlotte. She has been sent to us because she was Great-Great-Aunt Laura’s doll. Look, the letter
says she would have come before only she was sent to the cleaners and the Exhibition. She goes with the dolls’ house, you see.’

‘Does she?’ asked Charlotte doubtfully. She looked at Marchpane and then at the Plantaganets so happily settled in the dolls’ house. Emily had no eyes for anyone but Marchpane.
‘Look at her clothes,’ said Emily.

‘My clothes,’ said Marchpane in a complacent voice.

‘They take off and on. Look at the tiny buttons and the lace edgings.’

‘The lace edgings,’ said Marchpane still more complacently.

‘And her hair! We can really brush it and comb it.’

‘It’s real hair,’ said Marchpane.

‘And her eyes. Look. They open and shut. None of the others’ can open and shut.’

‘Mine open and shut. They are the best blue glass,’ said Marchpane.

‘She doesn’t smell very nice,’ said Charlotte.

‘Oh, Charlotte. I loved her at the Exhibition,’ said Emily ‘and now she is ours.’

‘I don’t remember her very well at the Exhibition,’ said Charlotte slowly. ‘She wasn’t ours then and we went there to see Tottie.’

‘Yes, but we looked at her.’

‘I didn’t. I looked at Tottie.’

‘Don’t be such a little silly, Charlotte,’ said Emily. ‘What is the matter with you?’

‘I don’t know,’ said Charlotte. ‘I have a funny feeling.’

‘Well, you are very silly. She is perfectly beautiful. She must be our best doll.’

‘But –’ began Charlotte, and then she said in a low voice, ‘Do you think we ought to have a best doll, Emily? Do you think it is kind to the others? They were here
first.’

‘No, they were not,’ said Emily. ‘Marchpane was Great-Great-Aunt Laura’s doll.’

‘Well, Tottie was our great-grandmother’s doll,’ said Charlotte, and then she gave a cry. ‘Oh, Emily, look! Tottie has dropped the Christmas pudding bowl down on the
floor and it has rolled right under the kitchen table.’

They brought Marchpane into the dolls’ house.

Tottie stood by the kitchen table, stiff and hard. ‘It was nearly I, and not the pudding, that fell,’ thought Tottie. ‘I fell once, for joy, but I shall not fall for fear of
Marchpane. Trees, good trees, don’t fall down in storms,’ said Tottie.

Charlotte picked up the pudding basin and, as it was lunch time, she untied the muslin and turned out a morsel of real plum pudding onto a plate. ‘I wish I could give you a sprig of holly
small enough to stick in it,’ said Charlotte kindly.

Emily brought Marchpane into the kitchen first. ‘You should remember each other,’ she said to Tottie.

‘We remember each other,’ said Marchpane and Tottie. Tottie had never looked more wooden. Marchpane’s eyeballs gave a sudden click.

‘You jerked her,’ said Emily to Charlotte.

‘No I didn’t,’ said Charlotte.

‘Of course, they first knew each other years and years ago,’ said Emily. ‘They must know secrets about each other that we don’t know.’

‘We do,’ said Tottie. Marchpane said nothing at all.

Presently Emily took her into the sitting room and sat her on the couch by Mr Plantaganet, and then she shut the front of the dolls’ house and went away to lunch.

When Mr Plantaganet saw Marchpane sitting opposite him with her golden hair and blue eyes and white clothes, he was quite dazzled. He dropped his newspaper and stared with both his dark glass
eyes.

‘Don’t do that,’ said Marchpane sharply.

‘Don’t do what?’

‘Stare and stare and stare,’ said Marchpane. ‘It’s very rude.’

‘I am sorry,’ said Mr Plantaganet politely ‘but I can’t help staring.’

‘I suppose they are fixed,’ said Marchpane, looking at him.

‘Fixed?’

‘They don’t open and shut?’

‘Open and shut?’

‘Your eyes,’ said Marchpane. ‘Take them off me at once.’

‘Excuse me,’ said Mr Plantaganet still more politely ‘my eyes are not on you. They are in me.’

‘Faugh!’ said Marchpane. ‘You should be in the hall, not sitting in a chair. If you sit at all, it should be in the kitchen.’

‘Excuse me,’ said Mr Plantaganet again as he grew more and more bewildered. ‘Why should I be in the hall and kitchen? Why shouldn’t I sit? I’m jointed.’

‘Are you not the butler?’ asked Marchpane. ‘There used to be a butler, I’m sure.’

‘The figure of a butler,’ Mr Plantaganet corrected her. ‘He is gone to dust. I don’t know what a butler is,’ said Mr Plantaganet, ‘but I know I am not one. I
am a postmaster, and, besides, I am the master of this house. Do you know that carol?’ he asked,
‘“God bless the Master of this House, God bless the Mistress too”?
Well, I am the master and Birdie is the mistress.’