“You talk to them, my dear,” said sensible Nannie; “they’ll like that better than all your salutin’s.”
This Jasper was most ready to do at great length in his little high voice that the poor enchanted ones came to recognize a long way off. But all the same he never failed to “t’lute and kiss his hand and kirtsey.” No signs of respect and affection could be too much, Barbara said.
“It’s the worst thing of all, so we must love them most.”
Fairies and angels were inextricably mixed up in Barbara’s mind, and when her mother came to kiss her good-night on Christmas Eve, she murmured sleepily: “I simply can’t ’astinguish between God and Father Christmas, so I mus’ just let it alone.”
Even the toys were much affected by the war. Jasper’s Teddy Bear wore an expression not unlike the pathetic puzzled look of his brethren in the Mappin Circle, now that nobody threw them buns, sat they on their tails never so pleadingly. Alison had made him the brassard of a special constable, and he always wore it when he went out with Jasper in the pram. The lady dolls had all become V.A.D.’s or bus conductors or window-cleaners, and one quite recent acquisition was a land girl.
As for the doll’s house, it wore a martial yet festive air, for the flags of all the allies were stuck in a tight band of string with which Alison had bound it thrice just under the roof.
It was not a new doll’s house. In fact as doll’s houses go it was almost venerable. It had belonged to grannie’s mother, and was built in the early part of Queen Victoria’s reign. Unlike modern doll’s houses, it did not open in front. In front it was square and solid, with two large windows on either side of the door, which had glass panels, and actually opened and shut, and there were three oblong windows on the next floor. The roof was made of real little slates, with chimneys at either end of it. The ground floor was a shop, with two black counters that could be taken out and dusted, and the walls were fitted with innumerable shelves and cupboards. It was a silversmith’s shop, and on the brass plates under the windows were, on one, “David Strachan, Silversmith and Jeweler,” on the other, “By Appointment to Her Majesty Queen Victoria.” By which it could be seen that it was a Scottish jeweler’s shop, for nobody called “Strachan” could be of any other nationality. Moreover, there were tiny toddy-ladles of various sizes among the stock-in-trade.
Daddy used to tell the children an entrancing serial story about the inhabitants of this wonderful house, whereof most of the plenishings remained in their original form, though Mr. and Mrs. Strachan, the two shop assistants, and the baby, had been renewed from time to time, but always as nearly as possible resembling their predecessors. Thus it came about that Mr. Strachan had side-whiskers—daddy painted them himself—a stock and peg-top trousers, and Mrs. Strachan a crinoline and an amazingly slender waist; while Jenny, the maid, who slept in a box-bed in the kitchen, had a mob-cap and always wore her sleeves rolled up. The bedroom of Mr. and Mrs. Strachan was much bemuslined, and the parlor had green rep chairs and a round table.
“It’s all of our doll’s house,” Barbara used to say. “It doesn’t belong to anyone partickler. Grannie said so.”
“George’s, too,” Jasper always added. He couldn’t bear George to be left out of anything.