It was in the schoolroom that Philomène kept her toys. There was the dolls’ house and the dolls’ kitchen, and the musical box, and the paint-box with its palettes and saucers and brushes. Last, but by no means least, came the book-shelf. It held all Mrs Ewing’s stories, and all Mrs Molesworth’s, Grimm, and Hans Andersen, and many more besides. Philomène used to act all the stories out of these books, but it is dull work to be both players and audience yourself, and it needs an imagination bordering on genius to ride alone upon a bed, and persuade your heart of hearts that it is Pegasus, the wonderful winged horse.
“And nothing ever happens to me,” mused Philomène, “as it happens to people in books. I do not live in a chateau with a terrace and a raven, like Jeanne in ‘The Tapestry-Room,’ and when I play with the reels in Nurse’s work-box they do not behave in the least like Louisa’s reels in ‘Tell Me a Story.’ I suppose it is because I am just ordinary.”
It was a depressing thought, but facts could not be shelved. Philomène’s cuckoo clock certainly acted very differently from Griselda’s. So far from inviting her to climb up by the two long dangling chains, and take a seat opposite to him on a red velvet arm-chair, this disobliging bird uttered his “cuckoos” in a hasty, perfunctory manner, and then shut to the door of his house with a snap, as who should say, “That’s over till next time.”
In the schoolroom window hung a cage with a canary in it; he was of a bright yellow, all but his head, which was green, and Philomène had christened him Master Mustardseed, after one of the fairy pages in “Midsummer Night’s Dream.” Now this canary had something of a history. To begin with, he had had a predecessor, a canary that had been yellow all over, and so tame that he would perch upon Philomène’s needle when she sewed, or upon her book when she read. Then one day the old maidservant, Lilian Augusta, had left the schoolroom window open and the cage-door ajar, and the canary flew out, never to return, and there was lamentation at Sideview. But a few days later a strange thing happened. Through the open window, into the empty cage, flew another canary, this time with a little head as green and velvety as moss; Master Mustardseed, in short, who had remained with his new mistress ever since.
Besides her canary, Philomène had another pet, a white cat called Queen Mab, with paws as soft as pussy-willow and a footfall as light as any snowflake. Now this was how Queen Mab had first come to Sideview:—It was Christmas Eve, and Philomène stood at the dining-room window, listening to the waits, who were singing a Christmas carol:
“He lies ’mid the beasts of the stall,
Who is Maker and Lord of us all.
The winter wind blows cold and dreary;
See, he weeps, the world is weary,
Lord, have pity and mercy on me.