Racketty-Packetty House and Other Stories Read online

  “Oh! Scrump!” said Peter Piper, who sometimes invented doll slang—though there wasn’t really a bit of harm in him. “I wouldn’t have them move away for anything. They are meat and drink to me.”

  “They are going to have a dinner of ten courses,” sighed Ridiklis. “I can see them cooking it from my scullery window. And I have nothing but turnips to give you.”

  “Who cares!” said Peter Piper. “Let’s have ten courses of turnips and pretend each course is exactly like the one they are having at the Castle.”

  “I like turnips almost better than anything—almost—perhaps not quite,” said Gustibus. “I can eat ten courses of turnips like a shot.”

  “Let’s go and find out what their courses are,” said Meg and Peg and Kilmanskeg, “and then we will write a menu on a piece of pink tissue paper.”

  And if you’ll believe it, that was what they did. They divided their turnips into ten courses and they called the first one “Hors d’œuvres,” and the last one “Ices,” with a French name, and Peter Piper kept jumping up from the table and pretending he was a footman and flourishing about in his flapping rags of trousers and announcing the names of the dishes in such a grand way that they laughed till they nearly died, and said they never had had such a splendid dinner in their lives, and that they would rather live behind the door and watch the Tidy Castle people than be the Tidy Castle people themselves.

  And then of course they all joined hands and danced ’round and ’round and kicked up their heels for joy, because they always did that whenever there was the least excuse for it—and quite often when there wasn’t any at all, just because it was such good exercise and worked off their high spirits so that they could settle down for a while.

  This was the way things went on day after day. They almost lived at their windows. They watched the Tidy Castle family get up and be dressed by their maids and valets in different clothes almost every day. They saw them drive out in their carriages, and have parties, and go to balls. They all nearly had brain fever with delight the day they watched Lady Gwendolen and Lady Muriel and Lady Doris, dressed in their Court trains and feathers, going to be presented at the first Drawing Room.

  After the lovely creatures had gone the whole family sat down in a circle ’round the Racketty-Packetty House library fire, and Ridiklis read aloud to them about Drawing Rooms, out of a scrap of the Lady’s Pictorial she had found, and after that they had a Court Drawing Room of their own, and they made tissue paper trains and glass bead crowns for diamond tiaras, and sometimes Gustibus pretended to be the Royal family, and the others were presented to him and kissed his hand, and then the others took turns and he was presented. And suddenly the most delightful thing occurred to Peter Piper. He thought it would be rather nice to make them all into lords and ladies and he did it by touching them on the shoulder with the drawing room poker which he straightened because it was so crooked that it was almost bent double. It is not exactly the way such things are done at Court, but Peter Piper thought it would do—and at any rate it was great fun. So he made them all kneel down in a row and he touched each on the shoulder with the poker and said:

  “Rise up, Lady Meg and Lady Peg and Lady Kilmanskeg and Lady Ridiklis of Racketty-Packetty House—and also the Right Honorable Lord Gustibus Rags!” And they all jumped up at once and made bows and curtsied to each other. But they made Peter Piper into a Duke, and he was called the Duke of Tags. He knelt down on the big hole in the carpet and each one of them gave him a little thump . on the shoulder with the poker, because it took more thumps to make a Duke than a common or garden Lord.

  The day after this another much more exciting thing took place. The nurse was in a bad temper and when she was tidying the nursery she pushed the easy chair aside and saw Racketty-Packetty House.

  “Oh!” she said. “There is that Racketty-Packetty old thing still. I had forgotten it. It must be carried downstairs and burned. I will go and tell one of the footmen to come for it.”

  Meg and Peg and Kilmanskeg were in their attic and they all rushed out in such a hurry to get downstairs that they rolled all the way down the staircase, and Peter Piper and Gustibus had to dart out of the drawing room and pick them up. Ridiklis came staggering up from the kitchen quite out of breath.

  “Oh! Our house is going to be burned! Our house is going to be burned!” cried Meg and Peg clutching their brothers.

  “Let us go and throw ourselves out of the window!” cried Kilmanskeg.

  “I don’t see how they can have the heart to burn a person’s home!” said Ridiklis, wiping her eyes with her kitchen duster.

  Peter Piper was rather pale, but he was extremely brave and remembered that he was the head of the family.

  “Now, Lady Meg and Lady Peg and Lady Kilmanskeg,” he said, “let us all keep cool.”

  “We shan’t keep cool when they set our house on fire,” said Gustibus. Peter Piper just snapped his fingers.

  “Pooh!” he said. “We are only made of wood and it won’t hurt a bit. We shall just snap and crackle and go off almost like fireworks and then we shall be ashes and fly away into the air and see all sorts of things. Perhaps it may be more fun than anything we have done yet.”

  “But our nice old house! Our nice old Racketty-Packetty House,” said Ridiklis. “I do so love it. The kitchen is so convenient—even though the oven won’t bake any more.”

  And things looked most serious because the nurse really was beginning to push the armchair away. But it would not move and I will tell you why. One of my Fairies, who had come down the chimney when they were talking, had called me and I had come in a second with a whole army of my Workers, and though the nurse couldn’t see them, they were all holding the chair tight down on the carpet so that it would not stir.

  And I—Queen Crosspatch—myself—flew downstairs and made the footman remember that minute that a box had come for Cynthia and that he must take it upstairs to her nursery. If I had not been on the spot he would have forgotten it until it was too late. But just in the very nick of time up he came, and Cynthia sprang up as soon as she saw him.

  “Oh!” she cried out. “It must be the doll who broke her little leg and was sent to the hospital. It must be Lady Patsy.”

  And she opened the box and gave a little scream of joy for there lay Lady Patsy (her whole name was Patricia) in a lace-frilled nightgown, with her lovely leg in bandages and a pair of tiny crutches and a trained nurse by her side.

  That was how I saved them that time. There was such excitement over Lady Patsy and her little crutches and her nurse that nothing else was thought of and my Fairies pushed the armchair back and Racketty-Packetty House was hidden and forgotten once more.

  The whole Racketty-Packetty family gave a great gasp of joy and sat down in a ring all at once, on the floor, mopping their foreheads with anything they could get hold of. Peter Piper used an antimacassar.

  “Oh! We are obliged to you, Queen B-bell—Patch,” he panted out, “but these alarms of fire are upsetting.”

  “You leave them to me,” I said, “and I’ll attend to them. Tip!” I commanded the Fairy nearest me. “You will have to stay about here and be ready to give the alarm when anything threatens to happen.” And I flew away, feeling I had done a good morning’s work. Well, that was the beginning of a great many things, and many of them were connected with Lady Patsy; and but for me there might have been unpleasantness.

  Of course the Racketty-Packetty dolls forgot about their fright directly, and began to enjoy themselves again as usual. That was their way. They never sat up all night with Trouble, Peter Piper used to say. And I told him they were quite right. If you make a fuss over trouble and put it to bed and nurse it and give it beef tea and gruel, you can never get rid of it.

  Their great delight now was Lady Patsy. They thought she was prettier than any of the other Tidy Castle dolls. She neither turned her nose up, nor looked down the bridge of it, nor laughed mockingly. She had dimples in the corners of her mouth and long curly las
hes and her nose was saucy and her eyes were bright and full of laughs.

  “She’s the clever one of the family,” said Peter Piper. “I am sure of that.”

  She was treated as an invalid at first, of course, and kept in her room; but they could see her sitting up in her frilled nightgown. After a few days she was carried to a soft chair by the window and there she used to sit and look out; and the Racketty-Packetty House dolls crowded ’round their window and adored her.

  After a few days, they noticed that Peter Piper was often missing and one morning Ridiklis went up into the attic and found him sitting at a window all by himself and staring and staring.

  “Oh! Duke,” she said (you see they always tried to remember each other’s titles). “Dear me, Duke, what are you doing here?”

  “I am looking at her,” he answered. “I’m in love. I fell in love with her the minute Cynthia took her out of her box. I am going to marry her.”

  “But she’s a lady of high degree,” said Ridiklis quite alarmed.

  “That’s why she’ll have me,” said Peter Piper in his most cheerful manner. “Ladies of high degree always marry the good-looking ones in rags and tatters. If I had a whole suit of clothes on, she wouldn’t look at me. I’m very good-looking, you know,” and he turned round and winked at Ridiklis in such a delightful saucy way that she suddenly felt as if he was very good-looking, though she had not thought of it before.

  “Hello,” he said all at once. “I’ve just thought of something to attract her attention. Where’s the ball of string?”

  Cynthia’s kitten had made them a present of a ball of string which had been most useful. Ridiklis ran and got it, and all the others came running upstairs to see what Peter Piper was going to do. They all were delighted to hear he had fallen in love with the lovely, funny Lady Patsy. They found him standing in the middle of the attic unrolling the ball of string.

  “What are you going to do, Duke?” they all shouted.

  “Just you watch,” he said, and he began to make the string into a rope ladder—as fast as lightning. When he had finished it, he fastened one end of it to a beam and swung the other end out of the window.

  “From her window,” he said, “she can see Racketty-Packetty House and I’ll tell you something. She’s always looking at it. She watches us as much as we watch her, and I have seen her giggling and giggling when we were having fun. Yesterday when I chased Lady Meg and Lady Peg and Lady Kilmanskeg ’round and ’round the front of the house and turned somersaults every five steps, she laughed until she had to stuff her handkerchief into her mouth. When we joined hands and danced and laughed until we fell in heaps I thought she was going to have a kind of rosy-dimpled, lovely little fit, she giggled so. If I run down the side of the house on this rope ladder it will attract her attention and then I shall begin to do things.”

  He ran down the ladder and that very minute they saw Lady Patsy at her window give a start and lean forward to look. They all crowded ’round their window and chuckled and chuckled as they watched him.

  He turned three stately somersaults and stood on his feet and made a cheerful bow. The Racketty-Packettys saw Lady Patsy begin to giggle that minute. Then he took an antimacassar out of his pocket and fastened it ’round the edge of his torn trousers leg, as if it were lace trimming and began to walk about like a Duke—with his arms folded on his chest and his ragged old hat cocked on one side over his ear. Then the Racketty-Packettys saw Lady Patsy begin to laugh. Then Peter Piper stood on his head and kissed his hand and Lady Patsy covered her face and rocked backwards and forwards in her chair laughing and laughing.

  Then he struck an attitude with his tattered leg put forward gracefully and he pretended he had a guitar and he sang—right up at her window.

  “From Racketty-Packetty House I come,

  It stands, dear Lady, in a slum,

  A low, low slum behind the door

  The stout armchair is placed before,

  (Just take a look at it, my Lady).

  “The house itself is a perfect sight,

  And everybody’s dressed like a perfect fright,

  But no one cares a single jot

  And each one giggles over his lot,

  (And as for me, I’m in love with you).

  “I can’t make up another verse,

  And if I did it would be worse,

  But I could stand and sing all day,

  If I could think of things to say,

  (But the fact is I just wanted to make

  you look at me).”

  And then he danced such a lively jig that his rags and tags flew about him, and then he made another bow and kissed his hand again and ran up the ladder like a flash and jumped into the attic.

  After that Lady Patsy sat at her window all the time and would not let the trained nurse put her to bed at all; and Lady Gwendolen and Lady Muriel and Lady Doris could not understand it. Once Lady Gwendolen said haughtily and disdainfully and scornfully and scathingly:

  “If you sit there so much, those low Racketty-Packetty House people will think you are looking at them.”

  “I am,” said Lady Patsy, showing all her dimples at once. “They are such fun.”

  And Lady Gwendolen swooned haughtily away, and the trained nurse could scarcely restore her.

  When the castle dolls drove out or walked in their garden, the instant they caught sight of one of the Racketty-Packettys they turned up their noses and sniffed aloud, and several times the Duchess said she would remove because the neighborhood was absolutely low. They all scorned the Racketty-Packetty’s—they just scorned them.

  One moonlight night Lady Patsy was sitting at her window and she heard a whistle in the garden. When she peeped out carefully, there stood Peter Piper waving his ragged cap at her, and he had his rope ladder under his arm.

  “Hello,” he whispered as loud as he could. “Could you catch a bit of rope if I threw it up to you?”

  “Yes,” she whispered back.

  “Then catch this,” he whispered again and threw up the end of a string and she caught it the first throw. It was fastened to the rope ladder.

  “Now pull,” he said.

  She pulled and pulled until the rope ladder reached her window and then she fastened that to a hook under the sill and the first thing that happened—just like lightning—was that Peter Piper ran up the ladder and leaned over her window ledge.

  “Will you marry me,” he said. “I haven’t anything to give you to eat and I am as ragged as a scarecrow, but will you?”

  She clapped her hands.

  “I eat very little,” she said. “And I would do without anything at all, if I could live in your funny old shabby house.”

  “It is a ridiculous, tumbled-down old barn, isn’t it?” he said. “But every one of us is as nice as we can be. We are perfect Turkish Delights. It’s laughing that does it. Would you like to come down the ladder and see what a jolly, shabby old hole the place is?”

  “Oh! Do take me,” said Lady Patsy.

  So he helped her down the ladder and took her under the armchair and into Racketty-Packetty House and Meg and Peg and Kilmanskeg and Ridiklis and Gustibus all crowded ’round her and gave little screams of joy at the sight of her.

  They were afraid to kiss her at first, even though she was engaged to Peter Piper. She was so pretty and her frock had so much lace on it that they were afraid their old rags might spoil her. But she did not care about her lace and flew at them and kissed and hugged them every one.

  “I have so wanted to come here,” she said. “It’s so dull at the Castle I had to break my leg just to get a change. The Duchess sits reading near the fire with her gold eyeglasses on her nose and Lady Gwendolen plays haughtily on the harp and Lady Muriel coldly listens to her, and Lady Doris is always laughing mockingly, and Lord Hubert reads the newspaper with a high-bred air, and Lord Francis writes letters to noblemen of his acquaintance, and Lord Rupert glances over his love letters from ladies of title, in an aristocratic mann
er—until I could scream. Just to see you dears dancing about in your rags and tags and laughing and inventing games as if you didn’t mind anything, is such a relief.”

  She nearly laughed her little curly head off when they all went ’round the house with her, and Peter Piper showed her the holes in the carpet and the stuffing coming out of the sofas, and the feathers out of the beds, and the legs tumbling off the chairs. She had never seen anything like it before.

  “At the Castle, nothing is funny at all,” she said. “And nothing ever sticks out or hangs down or tumbles off. It is so plain and new.”

  “But I think we ought to tell her, Duke,” Ridiklis said. “We may have our house burned over our heads any day.” She really stopped laughing for a whole minute when she heard that, but she was rather like Peter Piper in disposition and she said almost immediately:

  “Oh! They’ll never do it. They’ve forgotten you.” And Peter Piper said:

  “Don’t let’s think of it. Let’s all join hands and dance ’round and ’round and kick up our heels and laugh as hard as ever we can.”

  And they did—and Lady Patsy laughed harder than any one else. After that she was always stealing away from Tidy Castle and coming in and having fun. Sometimes she stayed all night and slept with Meg and Peg and everybody invented new games and stories and they really never went to bed until daylight. But the Castle dolls grew more and more scornful every day, and tossed their heads higher and higher and sniffed louder and louder until it sounded as if they all had influenza. They never lost an opportunity of saying disdainful things and once the Duchess wrote a letter to Cynthia, saying that she insisted on removing to a decent neighborhood. She laid the letter in her desk but the gentleman mouse came in the night and carried it away. So Cynthia never saw it and I don’t believe she could have read it if she had seen it because the Duchess wrote very badly—even for a doll.

  And then what do you suppose happened? One morning Cynthia began to play that all the Tidy Castle dolls had scarlet fever. She said it had broken out in the night and she undressed them all and put them into bed and gave them medicine. She could not find Lady Patsy, so she escaped the contagion. The truth was that Lady Patsy had stayed all night at Racketty-Packetty House, where they were giving an imitation Court Ball with Peter Piper in a tin crown, and shavings for supper—because they had nothing else, and in fact the gentleman mouse had brought the shavings from his nest as a present.