Little Sunshine's holiday

by Dinah Maria Mulock Craik

What a funny figure she was, trotting about and examining everything, as she always does on entering a strange room! Her little waterproof cloak made her look as broad as she was long; and when she tossed off her hat, her curls tumbled about in disorder, and her face and hands were so dirty that mamma was quite ashamed. But nobody minded it, and everybody welcomed her, and the pretty lady carried her off again up-stairs into the most charming extempore nursery, next to her mamma’s room, where she could run in and out, and be as happy as a queen.

She was as happy as a queen, when she woke up next morning to all the wonders of the house. First there was a poll-parrot, who could say not only, “Pretty Poll!” but a great many other words: could bark like a dog, grunt like a pig, and do all sorts of wonderful things. He lived chiefly in the butler’s pantry, but was brought out on occasion for the amusement of visitors. Sunny was taken to see him directly; and there she stood, watching him intently, laughing sometimes in her sudden, ecstatic way, with her head thrown back, and her little nose all crumpled up, till, being only a button of a nose at best, it nearly disappeared altogether.

And then, in the breakfast-room there were two dogs,—Jack, a young rough Scotch terrier, and Bob, a smooth terrier, very ugly and old. Now Sunny’s dog at home, Rose, who was a puppy when she was a baby, so that the two were brought up together, is the gentlest creature imaginable. She will let Sunny roll over her, and pull her paws and tail, and even put her little fat hand into her mouth, without growling or biting. But these strange dogs were not used to children. Sunny tried to make friends with them, as she tries to do with every live creature she sees; even crying one day because she could not manage to kiss a spider, it ran away so fast. But Bob and Jack did not understand her affection at all. When she stroked and patted them, and vainly tried to carry them in her arms, by the legs, head, tail, or anywhere she could catch hold of, they escaped away, scampering off as fast as they could. The little girl looked after them with mournful eyes; it was hard to see them frolicking about, and not taking the least notice of her.

But very soon somebody much better than a little dog began to notice her,—a kind boy named Franky, who, though he was a schoolboy, home for the holidays, did not think it in the least beneath his dignity to be good to a little girl. She sat beside him at prayers, during which time she watched him carefully, and evidently made up her mind that he was a nice person, and one to be played with. So when he began playing with her, she responded eagerly, and they were soon the best of friends.

Presently Franky had to leave her and go with his big brother down to the bottom of a coal mine, about which he had told such wonderful stories, that Little Sunshine, had she been bigger, would certainly have liked to go too. “You jump into a basket, and are let down, down, several hundred feet, till you touch the bottom, and then you find a new world underground: long passages, so narrow that you cannot stand upright, and loftier rooms between, and men working—as black as the coal themselves—with lights in their caps. Also horses, dragging trucks full of coal,—horses that have never seen the daylight since they were taken down the pit, perhaps seven or ten years ago, and will never see daylight again as long as they live. Yet they live happily, are kindly treated, and have comfortable stables, all in the dark of the coal mine,—and no doubt are quite as content as the horses that work in the outside world, high above their heads.”

Sunshine heard all this. I cannot say that she understood it, being such a very little girl, you know; but whenever Franky opened his lips she watched him with intense admiration, and when he was gone she looked quite sad. However, she soon found another friend in the pretty lady, Franky’s mamma. Her own mamma was obliged to go out directly after breakfast, so this other mamma took Sunny under her especial protection, and showed her all about the house. First, they visited the parrot, who went through all his performances over again. Then they proceeded up-stairs to what used to be the nursery, only the little girls had grown into big girls, and were now far away at school. But their mamma showed Sunny their old toy-cupboard, where were arranged, in beautiful order, playthings so lovely that it was utterly impossible such very tiny fingers could safely be trusted with them.

So Little Sunshine was obliged to practise the lesson she has learnt with her mamma’s china cabinet at home,—“Look and not touch.” Ever since she was a baby, Wedgwood ware, Sèvres and Dresden china, all sorts of delicate and precious things, have been left within her reach on open shelves; but she was taught from the first that she must not touch them, and she never does. “The things that Sunny may play with,” such as a small plaster hand, a bronze angel, and a large agate seal, she takes carefully out from among the rest, and is content with them,—just as content as she was with one particular doll which the pretty lady chose out from among these countless treasures and gave to her to play with.

Now Sunny has had a good many dolls,—wooden dolls, gutta-percha dolls, dolls made of linen with faces of wax,—but none of them had ever lasted, entire, for more than twenty-four hours. They always met with some misfortune or other,—lost a leg or an arm; their heads dropped off, and the sawdust ran out of their bodies, leaving them mere empty bits of calico, not dolls at all. The wrecks she had left behind her at home—bodies without heads, heads without bodies, arms and legs sewed upon bodies that did not belong to them, or strewed about separately in all directions—would have been melancholy to think of, only that she loved them quite as well in that dismembered condition as when they were new.

But this was a dolly,—such a dolly as Sunny had never had before. Perfectly whole, with a pretty waxen face, a nose, and two eyes; also hair, real hair that could be combed. This she at once proceeded to do with her mamma’s comb, just as her Lizzie did her own hair every morning, until the comb became full of long flaxen hairs—certainly not mamma’s—and there grew a large bald place on the top of dolly’s head, which Sunny did not understand at all. Thereupon her Lizzie came to the rescue, and proposed tying up the poor remnant of curls with a blue ribbon, and dressing dolly, whose clothes took off and on beautifully, in her out-of-doors dress, so that Sunshine might take her a walk, in the garden.