E. V. Lucas

“ 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.” ”

“ Poor Clara didn’t know what to do, and so she simply sat down with the doll [85] in her arms and cried again; but this was a totally different kind of crying from that which had gone before. And when Kate Woodley came to take her to bed she cried too.
And the funny thing is that, though the little old gentleman’s present looks much more like a reward for being naughty than a punishment, Clara has hardly ever since said a quick unkind thing that she could be sorry for, and Miss Hobbs’s three questions are never wanted at all, and Kate Woodley has entirely given up clicking. ”

“ Several came to the Bayeses’ compartment, but, seeing that it was all one family in their best clothes, they had consideration and passed on.
Gradually every one found a seat, either in the thirds or the seconds, and even the first—all except a poor shabby old woman in a shawl, with a big basket, who tottered piteously up and down trying in vain to find a place. Anne saw her pass and peer into their carriage with an anxious and [10] even tearful look, but Mr. Bayes frowned so forbiddingly that she hurried on. ”

“ Mr. Verney said, “you’re making a mistake. We’re not housebreaking.”
The policeman laughed. “Now, that’s a good’un,” he said. “Dark lantern, screw-driver, hammer, eleven o’clock at night, Thomas Barnes’ shed—and you’re not housebreaking! Perhaps you’ll tell me what you are doing, you and your audacious female accomplice here. Playing hide-and-seek, I suppose?”
“Well,” said Mr. Verney, suddenly striking a match with his free hand, and holding it up so that the light fell full on his own and on Mary’s face, “we’ll tell you the whole story.”
“Miss Stavely!” cried the policeman, “and Mr. Verney. ”

“ 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. ”

“ He was in the midst of the romance of a very giddy tortoiseshell comb whom he had once loved, when the gentleman got up and began to brush his hair, and when he set the brush down again it was too far off for conversation. These are the little things that human beings do not think of, but which mean so much to us. ”

“ 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 [118] its head like marbles, through falling on the ground, and Master Roy and Jim’s trying to catch them with a skewer.” ”

“ 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. ”

“ Sir Franklin went on, “I want to give all the children in your street and in several other streets near it a Christmas present, and it is thought that the best way is to open a toy-shop for the purpose. But it is necessary that the toy-shop keeper should know most of the children and should be a capable woman of business, and that is why I ask you. The salary will be a sovereign; the hours will be from two to eight, with an interval for tea; and you shall have Mr. Pembroke to help you.” ”

“ Every now and then another penny would come tumbling in among us with a crash, sometimes bruising us horribly, but never any real gentlefolk, not even a sixpence. Luckily, however, this little girl’s mother had the sense to have a birthday, and so at last I was taken out, to be exchanged at a flower-shop for a pot of musk. ”

“ 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. ”

“ To explore that stream would be fairly easy, and it is not difficult to explore the Thames. But in order to realize quite what Speke did you must think for a moment of what it means to travel in unexplored countries. There are no maps: you have no notion what is before you; the natives may be suspicious of you and make war at once, or they may at first pretend to be friendly and then suddenly attempt a massacre; fever is always on your track; wild beasts may be in such numbers as to be a continual danger. ”

“ Then they went to a china-shop and bought a hot-water bottle for a shilling. “That,” said Matilda, “is for the old woman next door to us, who nursed mother when she was ill. She can’t sleep at night because her feet are so cold.”
“And now,” said Pembroke, “it’s my turn,” and he took the children into a greengrocer’s shop and bought a shilling’s worth of holly and mistletoe for each of them. ”

“ I have been in many persons’ possession, but I see nothing of life, because I change hands only at night. When it is light the people won’t have me. They call out, “Hi, this shilling won’t do!” and push me back again. I can’t buy anything by day at all, but at night I am slipped into cabmen’s hands. It is very uncomfortable for me, for not only am I condemned to a kind of furtive, dishonest life, but I have to hear the dreadful things the cabmen say when they discover me. ”

“ It was into this shop that Mrs. Platts and Clara went, wondering whether they would buy just one thing that cost seven-and-six [80] all at once, or a lot of smaller things that came to seven-and-six altogether; which is one of the pleasantest problems to ponder over that this life holds. Well, everything was going splendidly, and Clara, after many changings of her mind, had just decided on a beautiful wax doll with cheeks like tulips and real black hair, when she chanced to look up and saw a funny little old gentleman come in at the door ”

“ All the Little Mothers, as I have said, had each a doll and a work-basket; but the younger children might make their choice of two things each, and take two things for any little brother or sister who could not come—Clerkenwell being full [194] of little boys and girls who are not very well.
When they were chosen, Artie Gillam wrapped them up, and off the children went to make room for others.
Matilda was a splendid shopkeeper. She helped the smaller children to choose things in a way that might be a real lesson to real keepers of toy-shops, who always seem tired. ”

“ Christopher Morgan, Claire Morgan, and Betty Morgan, with the dog and the bullfinch, had gone to Sandgate to stay with their grandmother, who, with extraordinary good sense, lived in a house with a garden that ran actually to the beach, so that, although in stormy weather the lawn was covered with pebbles, in fine summer weather you could run from your bedroom into the sea in nothing but a bath-towel or a dressing-gown, or one of those bath-towels which are dressing-gowns. ”

“ If we, who are new-comers, set up notice-boards to a contrary effect, we are doing a very rude and improper thing. I quite understand that you miss the organs that we used to have, but the only way to get them back would be to obtain the permission of every one in the Gardens; and that, of course, is absurd.” With these words, which he afterwards wished he had never used, Mr. Morgan hurried off to the nearest Tube to make money in the city, which was how he spent his days.
Christopher carried the news to Claire, who at once said, “Then we must go to every house to get leave.” ”

“ Once upon a time there was a little girl named Alison Muirhead, and she had a doll named Rosamund and a dog named Thomson. The dog was an Aberdeen terrier, and he came from Aberdeen by train in the care of the guard, and he rarely did what he was told, which is the way of Aberdeens, as you have perhaps discovered.
Alison used to take her doll and Thomson every day into Kensington Gardens, and when they were well inside the Gardens, opposite the tulips and the new statue of William III., she used to unclasp the catch of Thomson’s lead and let him run, doing her best to keep an eye on him. ”

“ And the particular children I mean are the little girls who take care of their younger brothers and sisters while their parents are busy, and who go to the shops and stalls and do the marketing. Whenever I see one I always say to myself, ‘There goes a Little Mother!’ and it is the Little Mothers whom this Christmas we must particularly help. ”

“ After much consideration she sent four threepenny bits to each of these children, a shilling pipe, with real silver on it, to Jack and Willy, and a pound of two-shilling tea to Mrs. Jack and Mrs. Willy. That made sixteen shillings, or sixty-four threepenny bits.
Just then Alison had an unexpected piece of luck, for as she was passing a shop in Westbourne Grove she saw a window full of mittens at threepence a pair, sale price. Now, mittens are just the thing for cabmen in winter—cabmen and crossing-sweepers and errand-boys. ”

“ Me he put in his left-hand trouser pocket with the half-crown and the florin; the pennies in his right, and the sovereign in his waistcoat. And here let me say that it is much more comfortable to be a man’s money than a woman’s. Men put us in their pockets and keep us cosy: women put us in purses, where we can hardly breathe.
“Directly after breakfast my gentleman hurried off to the Notting Hill Gate Tube station, and pushed me through a pigeon-hole to the ticket-seller, who laid me on the counter before him with a great many other coins all spread out. ”

“ It grew no better as the time went on, although she rubbed the tooth with medicine which her mother sent for; and afterwards she held a clove in her mouth, according to the advice of a charwoman who happened to be working in the house that day; and then lay down with a piece of brown paper against her cheek, soaked in vinegar and then peppered, according to the advice of the cook; and later sat close to the fire with the heat on the toothache side, according to the advice of the housemaid; and finally sponged her cheek with almost boiling water, according to the advice of the nurse. ”

“ The tickets were Pembroke’s idea, [192] because one difficulty about opening a free toy-shop in a poor district of London for one day only is that even the invited children, not having had your opportunities of being brought up nicely and learning good manners, are apt to push and struggle to get in out of their turn, and perhaps even to try to get in twice, while there would be trouble, too, from the children who did not belong to the district. ”

“ Life isn’t worth living after that. It’s not so much that it hurts as that no one will take you. I had a hole bored in me when I was quite new, and a blue ribbon was threaded through me, and I was hung round a little girl’s neck. ”