The doings of the Dollivers

Front matter

THE DOINGS

OF THE

DOLLIVERS

Preface

I wouldn’t for the world have any one think that anything in these Dolliver stories is the least bit exaggerated. Please, my dear readers, understand that there actually were Dollivers, that they did live in a little doll-house in the nursery (I am afraid that eligible family residence of theirs was reconstructed out of a washstand, but that’s a detail), and as for their adventures and personal characteristics — why, at our house we fully believe in every single one of them.

You see the queen of the Dolliver country got a sort of rage for subjects; her appetite was omnivorous — that long word means that she took anything in the way of a doll or toy that was what she called, “the right size.” Mr. and Mrs. Dolliver’s family tree, one may as

PREFACE well admit, was a Christmas tree — you will find that Mrs. Dolliver alludes to that in speaking to her husband. With them began the fun; of course a Mr. and Mrs. and a house, meant servants, family, and as we found afterward, horse, cow, garden, and neighbours. Gradually the Dollivers drew about them a social circle; they created their own world; and that is what very, very philosophical people say every man really does.

It was about the time the Which-and-T’other twins appeared that the grown-ups began to notice and talk about the Dollivers. The family that inhabited the two-story washstand in the nursery did remarkable things. Truly their behaviour was often so amazing that the only way to account for it was to originate the theory that they came alive at night, and we felt rather proud of ourselves when we got this theory well a- working. We found it an ample and satisfactory one. It provided unfailing fun and interest; and as the small queen is almost as

PREFACE fond of stories as she is of dolls and toys, these Dolliver stories grew and throve mightily for her pleasure. That they may give as much delight to other children is the hope of

The Author.

Carmel-by-the-Sea,

California, July, 1910.

Contents

CHAPTER PAGE

I. Which and T’other 3

III. The Spotted Horse 30

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There was once a dear little girl who had a family of dolls, very much like your family of dolls, or those of the little girl next door. She called them the Dollivers. They had their home in a low cupboard with one shelf. This shelf made upstairs and downstairs for the Dolliver family; and the rooms were divided according to the furniture the little girl happened to have.

When we go to sleep, dolls wake up, you know, and live their little lives, have their little pleasures and their little troubles, as we do ; but as this is in the night-time, there is nobody to see them or to know it.

The country the Dollivers lived in was the nursery. It was a very flat country, and the land was rich or poor, according to the figures on the carpet. The faded ones were the poor soil; the rich soil was where the colours were bright. The nearest running water was the wash-stand, away over in the corner of the nursery, where, if nurse turned on the faucet, there was a raging cataract and a large lake. The Dollivers loved to picnic over near this natural curiosity.

The king — or rather the queen — of the country in which the Dollivers lived was Ethel, the dear little girl who owned them. They loved her, but she often did things which distressed them dreadfully.

The Dolliver family consisted, very properly, of Mr. and Mrs. Dolliver and their children. To begin with the head of the house (again very properly) , Mr. Dolliver was a doll about eight or ten inches long, whom Ethel’s mother had dressed in a suit of brownish grey cashmere. He 4 always alluded to it carelessly as “my tweeds,” and gave the impression that he had a dress suit, some black clothes, and other wear. But in point of fact, the grey cashmere clothes were as far as Mr. Dolliver’s wardrobe had ever gone. The masculinity of his appearance was much helped out by a cunning little hat, made of cardboard, and covered with cashmere like his suit. This being rather stiff, had a trick of slipping off, and Ethel finally glued it in place.

“It will be bad for your hair, I suppose, Mr. Dolliver,” she said. “My papa says wearing a hat too much is what makes so many gentlemen bald; but I can’t help that — you’re always dropping it; and if you don’t like to sleep in it, why, you can just stay awake all night.”

Ethel did not know how true this was, not having found out yet about dolls being really asleep in the daytime when children play with them, and only actually awake at night.

Mr. Dolliver accepted his hat philosophically, as he did most of the things of this life, Mrs. 5

Dolliver included. The lady had been decreed him by Queen Ethel, not sought and courted; yet he gave her a devotion which was beautiful to behold; he would, without wrangling or protest, permit her to wait on him all day long, and if there were any hard or disagreeable tasks which he did not wish to perform, he never interfered with Mrs. Dolliver’s determination to be heroic and undertake them.

This state of affairs was rendered more appropriate by the fact that Mr. Dolliver was a lame man. To tell the truth, his body was stuffed with bran, and it had very early in his history attracted the attention of a marauding mouse. This fierce creature nibbled his ankle, and when Ethel found him (scaring away the mouse at the same time), a tiny, thin trail of bran was oozing out on the shelf beside his foot.

So his little mistress played that he was a wounded hero, and she carried him to Nurse 6

Anna, who was darning stockings over by the window, and played that Nurse was a great surgeon about to operate on Mr. Dolliver. Anna threaded a needle with heavy, white thread and operated quite successfully, but she sewed up the leg without putting in more bran, so it left that member quite flabby and waggly — and Mr. Dolliver was lame for life !

Ethel sewed a lead pencil to his hand, and let him forever after walk with a cane. Of course, the cane and hat gave Mr. Dolliver the air of being continually about to go out or of having just returned from a ramble; but as this is quite the proper attitude for the man of the house, it was never objected to.

Mrs. Dolliver was slightly larger than Mr. Dolliver; Ethel felt a little sorry about that, till after his accident. She used to apologise to the gentleman for the height of his wife; but from the time the mouse gnawed his ankle, she would say,

“It’s just as well, Mr. Dolliver. She can take a great deal better care of you, and she needs all her strength and size now.”

Mrs. Dolliver had a china head, not empty as you might suppose, but stuffed with scraps of newspaper. Nurse did this with the idea, which some old-fashioned people have, that it made it less liable to break. These scraps of newspaper in Mrs. Dolliver’s head seemed to have given her a number of quite unconnected and unrelated ideas and opinions. It was not her fault; the head was sewed fast to her shoulders, and there the scraps of paper were, torn by Nurse Anna’s fingers and thumb to about inch squares. If Mrs. Dolliver thought in inch squares for the rest of her days, and if her opinions broke off in the middle of a line, who could hold her responsible She wore a striped lawn dress. Tied over that was a white apron, and sewed in her arm was an infant doll with a nursing bottle such as may be purchased already prepared at most 8

I

. and Mrs. Dolliver.

of the toy shops. This sewing of the baby into Mrs. Dolliver’s arm was, to the lady’s thinking, a more serious matter than the stuffing of her head. The baby not only got in the way of most of the things she wished to do — or wished not to do — but it somehow penetrated and permeated Mrs. Dolliver’s disposition, so that you never quite got Mrs. Dolliver herself — it was always Mrs. Dolliver and the baby, you see.

The rest of the family, before the twins came, consisted of Dolly Dolliver, a really delightful little French doll, graceful, arch, with more practical common sense behind her dimples and long lashes than all the rest of the family; and Tommy Dolliver, a boy doll in a blue-and-white sailor suit. He was the oldest son of Mr. and Mrs. Dolliver, and he was born a sailor boy — he came ready-dressed, you know, in a sailor suit. Mrs. Dolliver did not want him to be a sailor. She was very much afraid of the water (and so was he) ; she said it had washed all the paint off every doll’s face that she ever saw go 9 about it. But poor Tommy Dolliver could not help himself; he came into the world a sailor, and a sailor he would have to remain, unless Ethel chose to make him some new clothes.

In the kitchen was Aunt Dinah, a black bisque doll with a gay turban on her head and a spotted calico frock on her plump body. Aunt Dinah cooked for the Dolliver family on the perfectly practical looking tin range, and rattled the pots and pans about at a great rate when she was getting the meals.

But the loudest and liveliest portion of the Dolliver family, if not the most important, was the twins. And this is how the twins came about : One day, as she was coming home from kindergarten, Ethel met her young uncle. She was very fond of Uncle Harry, and I think myself that a boy uncle is one of the most delightful things life can offer a small girl. This one promptly gave his niece a bright, shiny, silver dime; and as she was near to the Five-and-Ten- 10

Cent Store, she went promptly in to invest in more dolls.

Down to the five-cent counter she trotted, and looked it over very seriously. There was one tray which had some dolls nearly four inches long, with furry hair at the top of the hard, spare-looking jointed bodies. They wore a single white garment with a strip of red cloth around the middle to serve as a sash, and this frock — or shirt, as one chose to regard it — was fastened by a small tack driven directly into the spine between the shoulder blades. (Ethel afterwards played that the head of this tack was a button, and you may do so very nicely if you get a doll which is inconsiderately dressed in this way.)

“I’ll take two of these,” Ethel said at last, indicating these bodies with a plump forefinger.

“Two of them — for yourself*?” asked the young woman behind the counter. “Why, they’re just exactly alike, dearie. You won’t 11 know which from t’other.” And she smiled a very sparkling sort of smile.

“Oh, yes, I shall,” Ethel assured her, gravely, examining the dolls for some little mark which she alone could see. “This one is Which, and that one is T’other.”

The little girl was not at all sure as to why the saleswoman laughed so, or what it was she told to another person behind the counter there ; but the words stuck in her mind all the way home, and worried her a bit. She was to stop at Grandma’s for the afternoon, and it was growing dusk when she reached home. She had had her dinner, and Mamma was promising to read a delightful new story book; so Ethel merely opened the door of the Dolliver house and tossed the little packet in with the remark,

“There are some more children for you, Mrs. Dolliver. They’re twins, and their names are Which and T’other.”

Then she went on into Mamma’s room, and, in the darkness, the nursery was very still for a 12 while. The first thing that stirred in it was the bundle Ethel had bought; this crackled like a dry leaf as the hard little legs of the twins kicked free of it. First one scrambled out and looked about him with funny china eyes, then the other. Mrs. Dolliver was just beginning to realise that she could now move about and attend to the new purchase, when she heard a terrific shouting.

“I’m Which,” came a squeaky little voice.

“I’m T’other,” answered another, so like it that nobody in the world could have told which from t’other, quite as the young lady in the store had said.

“Oh, dear!” groaned Mrs. Dolliver. “Wake up, Mr. Dolliver — this is one of the times when you have to give me the support of your firm, manly character. — You’ve got one, haven’t you^ Didn’t you hear what Queen Ethel said*? Now, do you hear what the twins themselves are saying*?”

“Yes — yes,” agreed Mr. Dolliver quite ami- 13 ably, blinking at his wife as though he found himself something of a marvel in the way of understanding. “I heard both of those things, my dear, — all three, I should say. My hearing is excellent. It was my leg that was injured — ,you have got things a little mixed — which, after all, is not to be wondered at under the circumstances. No doubt you are excited.’’

“Excited!” echoed Mrs. Dolliver, with a sort of moan. “Who wouldn’t be^ I always heard it was perfectly terrible to have twins, but I never dreamed it was anything like this.”

“Did you ever dream about it at allT’ asked Mr. Dolliver, in that patient voice of his which always made Mrs. Dolliver want to scream. “Now, tell me the truth, love, did you ever dream about this particular happening Why should you^”

When Mr. Dolliver got onto this track, his wife prudently gave up before she began, and returned to an earlier stage of the conversation.

“Excited!” she repeated his former expression. “Excited — the word is tame!”

“Oh, yes, my dear — I assure you, quite tame and gentle. You may use it — or ab-use it in any way you see fit, and it will never turn upon you.”

“Hush,” said Mrs. Dolliver. “Listen!”

Up-stairs and down, all through the Dolliver house, there was a pattering, clattering racket as of a Waterbury watch run mad — the twins chasing each other over their new abode to see how they liked it.

“I’m Which,” one yelled.

“I’m T’other,” his mate shouted back like an echo.

“We’re twins,” they howled in concert.

“We’ve come here to be your twins,” one of them said, but nobody could have told which one it was.

“This is the mother doll,” chirped one of the little wretches, drawing up in front of the horrified and exasperated Mrs. Dolliver.

“You mustn’t call me a doll — it is a bad word,” Mrs. Dolliver told them in hasty parenthesis. “I’ll spank you for saying bad words — at least, I would if I could get the baby unsewed from my arm.”

“This is the father doll,” squeaked the other, popping up at Mr. Dolliver’s knee, and paying no attention to the caution which had been addressed to his brother.

“Didn’t you hear what your mother said*?” inquired Mr. Dolliver in a tone which was meant to be quite fierce. “I haven’t got any baby sewed into my arm; but I’ve got a cane sewed — or rather clutched — in my strong right hand, and I shall cane either one of you children which does not attend strictly to what its mother says — do you understand T’

Mr. Dolliver always said, “Do you understand*?” very grandly. The twins stood and stared quite a while. Then, they answered in a most curious fashion, scrambling at the words together, and one saying part of the sentence while i6 the other finished out. It was a little like a couple of puppies or kittens playing with a shoe and snatching it back and forth from mouth to mouth.

“Yes, we understand,” they replied in this curious fashion. “You’ve got a cane sewed onto your hand — but it isn’t a real cane — it’s nothing but a lead-pencil.”

Mr. Dolliver looked very dignified. He had not yet learned that looking dignified at the twins was scarcely worth while.

“It’s a great convenience,” he said gravely, “that pencil cane. Few gentlemen have the same.” And there he spoke the truth.

“Gracious !” exclaimed a musical little voice at the doorway, and all the dolls turned to see Dolly Dolliver standing there, dimples in her pink cheeks, her eyes very bright. “Ma’s got twins — and such awfully cheap, common looking ones — I don’t believe they ever cost more than a nickel apiece.”

“Don’t reproach them with their humble origin, my daughter,” said Mrs. Dolliver, using her best maternal manner. “In the fostering atmosphere of this home they will, no doubt, grow up to be noble men and women — as I hope you all will.”

She wound up rather lamely, because Dolly had begun to giggle.

“How many men and women do you suppose those two creatures will grow up to be^” the eldest child of the Dolliver family inquired. “Besides, they’re both supposed to be boys, I should say, in spite of those ridiculous little frocks they’ve got on.”

Which and T’other turned and regarded their nice big sister hopefully. Here was sensible talk. They ran and flung themselves upon her, and she received them good-humouredly, if not with enthusiasm.

“Won’t you make us some boy clothes — real boy pants?” they howled. “We don’t like to look so girly. We think we’re old enough for pants.”

“No — no,” chuckled Dolly — and that was a “no” for each one of the twins. “Queen Ethel may do that some time, if you’re very good; but generally she lets us stay the same age, and that’s one of the advantages of toyland — you don’t have to grow up. You just be good little boys, and don’t torment mother.”

Dinah was in the kitchen getting breakfast (you must remember that night is morning with the dolls) when tl>i^ twins rushed shrieking in and through.

“I’m Which,” shouted one.

“I’m T’other,” shrieked the next one. And so they went all over the house.

“Which — T’other ! T’other — Which !” it echoed from end to end of the Dolliver mansion.

“Oh,” sighed Mrs. Dolliver, “here is the end of peace, I fear.”

“The end, my dear,” Mr. Dolliver checked her, “which end?”

For once, Mrs. Dolliver was ready for him.

'‘1 said the end — not the beginning/’ she snapped, and ran hastily up-stairs to investigate the meaning of a terrible crash and shriek which sounded from one of the upper rooms.

II

When we say ‘"day,” or “morning,” you must always understand that the doll’s day begins when your day ends, and your midnight is their noon. Well, one evening the Dolliver family had the paper doll to tea with them. The paper doll lived over in Ethel’s desk, and she had an elegant summer home in the table drawer. Indeed she was a most elegant sort of person, with poor health, which proved that she must be very superior indeed. She was so frail that she did not dare go near the water for fear of getting wet, and the slightest excitement made her rustle and flutter like a dry leaf.

Mrs. Dolliver had made things as fine as possible to entertain the paper doll. In addition to the china dishes, with the china food fas- 21 tened to them, she had a little lump of cheese and a bit of cracker which were left over from Ethel’s tea party. The Dollivers and the paper doll were all sitting around the table being as elegant as they could — considering that Mr. Dolliver was a lame man, with a hat and cane firmly attached to him, and Mrs. Dolliver had the baby sewed into her arm, and Which and T’other never would behave anyhow — when they heard a little squeaking and a little rustling, and in came slipping a mouse, and hopped up on the table.

Now of course a mouse looked about as big to the Dolliver family as a very large kangaroo would look to you or me. And since the dreadful, dreadful time when a mouse gnawed Mr. Dolliver’s leg and made him a lame man, he fainted if anybody merely said “mouse” — and he didn’t even like to hear of other things that began with M.

The mouse had been attracted by the smell of the cheese. He paid no attention to the Dol- 22 liver family-^he thought they were “just dolls, anyhow/’ Mr. Dolliver fainted, as I told you he was sure to do, and fell under the table.

Mrs. Dolliver rose up, with the baby sewed into her arm, and shrieked, “My husband ! He will be killed again!”

Of course nobody can ever be killed again. If a person — even a doll — has been killed once, that settles it. Indeed, nobody had ever heard till that minute that Mr. Dolliver had been killed once; but Mrs. Dolliver was very much excited, and then she had the baby sewed into her arm, and that interfered with her doing anything but shriek.

At first. Which and T’other had thought that the mouse was going to be great fun; but when they heard their mother shrieking thus, they decided they were frightened — and Which and T’other were perfectly terrific when they were frightened.

Tommy Dolliver picked up the china dish with the china roast chicken on it, and was for throw- 23 ing it at the mouse; but his mother cried out:

‘‘Do not madden him! I am certain that we shall all be killed before he leaves this house — but do not madden him, my son !”

Down on the hearth rug in front of the fire, there lived a white kitten. Mr. Dolliver’s dislike for mice extended to cats; for he understood that cats had something to do with mice. So he wanted all his family to keep away from the white kitten, as he considered it “a roaring, ravening wild beast.’’

Then one day (a sure enough day when Ethel was in the room and the dolls could only move as she moved them) the white kitten got hold of Tommy Dolliver and played with him. It dragged him all around over the floor, and nearly tore his clothes off of him. None of the Dolliver family, except Dolly Dolliver, would ever have thought of going near the white kitten for anything. As soon as the mouse made its appearance in the Dolliver dining-room, Dolly hopped up from the table, skipped down to the hearth rug. She bent over the kitten where it lay asleep — and blew in its ear!

This made the white kitten sneeze. Then he looked around and said,

“Why, it’s a little girl! No, it.fsn’t — it’s a little doll! No, it isn’t — it’s a little girl-doll!”

“Well, you got it right at last,” Dolly Dolliver said. “Please come up to our house ; there’s a mouse up there. Don’t kittens catch mice*?”

Don’t kittens catch mice! Dolly was almost frightened at the fierce look that came into the white kitten’s eyes when she said, “Mouse.”

“Come along,” he purred, jumping up. “Come along quick! Prrr! — mice!” And he ran after Dolly, switching his tail.

When they got to the Dolliver house, the mouse had eaten the cheese and gone.

“Never mind,” said the white kitten, “he’ll come back and hunt around to see if he can find anything more. You must all sit down, and let me hide behind the corner of the house.”

Everything happened as the white kitten had said. The mouse did come stealing back to hunt for crumbs. Then, when he was on the table with his long, co-o-old tail dangling down and tickling poor Mrs. Dolliver’s toes, the white kitten gave a spring. He knocked Mrs. Dolliver over, and the mere wind of his going blew the paper doll clear across the room; but nobody cared for that. For there was a pounce, and a rattle and a ‘'squee — squee — squee!’’ and the white kitten walked off, growling, with the mouse in its mouth, that long co-o-old tail trailing miserably on the ground.

The roast chicken platter had been knocked off the table, and the chicken was broken right through its breast bone. Nurse said in the morning that there must have been a mouse in the doll house, which was drawn there by the cheese that Ethel left, and that the white kitten must have caught it. She called Ethel a very careless little girl; but never guessed how eventful that cheese had made things for the Dollivers.

“Whoop!” yelled Captain Jack

M

“I am a lame man, said Mr. Dolliver sadly

When the fainting Mr. Dolliver had been dragged from under the table and some water poured in his face, he opened his eyes and sat up. They told him about the mouse and the white kitten. He looked over to the hearth rug, to where the kitten lay — it had eaten the mouse by this time, and was feeling pretty comfortable, thank you.

“I am a lame man,’’ said Mr. Dolliver, sadly. “For that reason, some people may doubt my courage. I have called the white kitten a raving, ravening wild beast; but I am brave enough to go and apologise to it and thank it for saving my other foot, if not my life.”

“Mr. Dolliver,” said Mrs. Dolliver, “it is true that you are a lame man. It is also true that I have the baby sewed into my arm, and that hampers me a little. But you shall not go alone. If you go — I go.”

And Mrs. Dolliver looked so heroic that all the Dolliver family shed tears. Well, all but

Dolly Dolliver; and she had been over to visit the white kitten, and didn’t see what they were making such a fuss about.

The whole Dolliver family and the paper doll announced an intention of going with Mr. Dolliver; so they set off in a procession. First came Mr. Dolliver, leaning on his cane, because he was a lame man. Next came Mrs. Dolliver, carrying the baby, because the baby was sewed into her arm. Next came Aunt Dinah, dreadfully frightened, with a piece of catnip in her hand to try to please the white kitten. After her was the paper doll, rustling and fluttering and blowing back every few steps. T ommy Dolliver and Which and T’other brought up the rear ; they were behind all the others, and they were boys, anyhow, and were not so much frightened.

Mr. Dolliver had a speech all ready which began, “My noble preserver,” and ended with something about “the eternal gratitude of all my family.”

But what do you think they found that white 28 kitten doing? He and Dolly Dolliver had struck up a great friendship; so the little doll was riding about on the kitten’s back, very much as the lady with the short fluffy skirts does on the flat back of the fat white horse in the circus.

Mr. Dolliver would make his speech — because he had it ready. (And what use would that have been if he hadn’t made it?) But nobody listened to it much; for Tommy and Which and T’other all flew to that white kitten and climbed up its sides and hung to its tail, and had the merriest, merriest romp, all over the hearth-rug, that was ever seen.

It made the white kitten sneeze to be called “a noble preserver” — perhaps sneezing is a cat’s way of laughing — and he told Mr. Dolliver that he thought he was a pretty good mouse preserver, and that any time the Dolliver family had any mice to be preserved he should be glad to be called in.

Ill

You must remember that Mr. Dolliver was a lame man — it was an awful thing that a mouse should have nibbled his foot because he was stuffed with bran, and made him lame for life. Well, then, Mr. Dolliver was a lame man and had to limp about leaning on his pencil cane; and the ambition of his life was to have a horse to ride.

He was born with a penny in his pocket — dolls are born grown-up, you know, and dressed, too, for that matter. One day Tommy Dolliver found a penny on the nursery floor and carried it home. Maybe sometime when your pennies disappear, and you wonder where they have gone, some of the dolls have carried them off just this way.

Mr. Dolliver thought that perhaps for two pennies he could buy him a horse. There was a man on the mantel — I really forgot to tell you about the mantel ; it was a sort of high cliff that overhung all the nursery country, and on it lived some very aristocratic people. There was this gentleman who owned the horse and was made of bisque. I could never begin to tell you how beautifully this gentleman was dressed, in blue knee-breeches and a flowered waistcoat and a three-cornered hat. Nor could I describe the clothing of his wife, who stood on the other end of the mantel and smiled at him all day long. But alas and alas! one day, while she was dusting, the housemaid broke the wife, and the pieces were thrown away.