A Little Maid in Toyland

by Adah Louise Sutton

CHAPTER I
THE WALKING HOUSE

THE doll’s house stood in the most convenient corner of the nursery, having, like Noah’s dove, found rest only after a somewhat varied and tempestuous experience. Sally had not been at all able to make up her mind just what location suited her best, and the house had patiently traveled, or, in other words, had been propelled by the united efforts of Bob and Sally—“The corporal pushed and the sergeant pulled”—the one dragging, the other pushing, from corner to corner and from side to side of the spacious room. Not a piece of furniture but had been moved out of the way that the doll’s house might stand in its place, and was as methodically moved back again when the building resumed its travels. Never did it remain in one place for longer than twenty-four hours, much to the disgust and terror of its inmates, who were frequently joggled from their chairs and tilted out of bed as their domicile renewed its pilgrimage. They concluded by naming it the Walking House, which certainly seemed appropriate enough under existing circumstances.

Finally, when the Walking House had traveled around the nursery, Sally decided that the very best position was the one it had at first occupied, a sunny spot between two windows, and at night lighted from above by a bracket from which depended four electric bulbs. To be sure, the dresser, to which this post of vantage had originally belonged, became very sulky at being deprived of her rights, and purposely twisted off one of her castors while in transit to the other side of the room. But as nothing in the world was easier than for John, the man of all work, to screw another castor in its place, nobody really minded it the least little bit.

A great man by the name of Ruskin once said that “Architecture is frozen music.” Now the architecture of the Walking House was no description of music at all, and I have no doubt that the gentleman who admired Grecian architecture would have held up both hands in dismay at mentioning architecture and the Walking House in the same breath. Truth to tell, the building had been designed by Sally herself, and had been elaborated by John’s handy fingers from a number of good-sized boxes procured from the grocery man. The boxes diminished in size as the house soared upward, the whole terminating in a peaked roof under whose roomy gable Sally had planned and consummated an attic for her beloved dollies that would have put to shame the garret of many a grown-up housekeeper.

All the rest of the rooms had been papered by the children’s deft fingers in neat little designs procured from Mr. Brouse, the gentleman with a wooden leg who lived three blocks away and then around the corner and up one flight, as he himself was wont to describe it. And although he really did live up one flight as far as eating and drinking and sleeping were concerned, the shop was in reality only up one step—that most fascinating shop, from whose mysterious recesses might be procured rolls of the most delightful wall paper, which was surely invented and designed simply and solely for the decoration of doll houses.

Mr. Brouse was an old soldier, according to his own account, and indeed was familiarly addressed as “Captain” by his intimate cronies. He had lost a limb in a mysterious battle, the name of which, as spoken by himself, Sally had never been able to discover in any one of several histories of the United States through which the little girl had patiently toiled in search of it. However, Sally had unbounded faith in her hero, for such she considered him to be; and her admiration was returned with interest by the retired “Captain” who, with his own hands—that, as Bob seriously remarked, had once wielded a sword—carried to the nursery a large pail of paste and assisted in hanging the wall paper, and many a difficult corner he had arranged with neatness and despatch. He had even tacked up tiny mouldings made from the slender strips of which wee gilt frames are fashioned. In fact, his work was a masterpiece of art, and Sally appreciated it hugely, making a shy return in the way of fat pin-cushions and sprawling penwipers, and even a gorgeous silk needlebook, mysterious of design and most difficult of access as regarding certain wabbly strings and buttons, which, when once fastened, could never be persuaded to open themselves again, and behind whose secret fastnesses the needles comfortably and aimlessly rusted.

So much for the papering of the rooms. When it came to finishing the attic, why, that was quite another thing. Sally calmly but firmly declared that it must be plastered, and plastered it was, but altogether without the assistance of Mr. Brouse, who declared that matters were growing altogether too complicated for him. And he politely retired, forgetting his pail of paste, however, into which nurse presently fell, much to the detriment of her best gloves which she had put on in order to appear unusually fine on her afternoon out. Nothing daunted, Sally flew to the cellar and routed out John, who was taking a bit of a nap in a cosy little den he had fixed for himself in the furnace room. John was surely an exception to most people, who are usually cranky at being wakened. He bobbed up smiling, and readily agreed to attend to plastering the attic of the Walking House. And in a much shorter time than Sally had really expected, the whole job was finished and the little room with its peaked ceiling looked exactly like a really truly attic.

The “Captain” assisted in hanging the wall paper.