The Dolls’ House (5 page)

When Tottie heard these words she gave a little gasp, but no one heard her.

‘How much would you pay?’ Charlotte was saying. ‘Would you pay a whole pound?’

‘Charlotte!’ said Emily and tried to kick her gently on the ankle.

‘But we need a whole pound,’ said Charlotte.

‘We should pay a guinea,’ said Mrs Innisfree.

Tottie gave another sound and this time it was a groan, but Apple was tugging at her skirt.

‘How much is a guinea?’ whispered Apple.

‘A pound and a shilling,’ said Tottie faintly. ‘Mrs Innisfree is giving that for me. O-oh! Oh!’

‘That would be enough,’ said Charlotte, nodding her head.

‘After a hundred years!’ cried Tottie.

‘Then will you let me take Tottie and the sampler away?’ asked Mrs Innisfree.

‘Take Tottie away –’ cried Mr Plantaganet, and stopped.

‘Tottie? Going away?’ asked Birdie.

‘Tottie go away?’ asked little Apple, and he said firmly, ‘No.’

‘Now, Apple –’

‘No! No! No!’ cried Apple.

‘It is to get the chairs,’ said Mr Plantaganet.

‘Don’t want any chairs.’

‘Now, Apple!’

‘I don’t want any either. Bother the chairs,’ said Birdie. ‘Can’t we sit on cotton reels? They would do.’

‘We have to have elegant chairs,’ said Mr Plantaganet slowly. ‘Here is a good way of Tottie earning them. Isn’t it like Tottie,’ asked Mr Plantaganet, ‘to be
the one to earn us a couch and chairs, and the table with the runner, and the real lace curtains perhaps as well?’

Tottie said nothing at all. She stood as if, instead of being wood, she had turned to stone, and when Emily picked her up and wrapped her in white paper to give to Mrs Innisfree, Tottie lay cold
and heavy in her hand. Emily felt misery and reproach from Tottie, but she did not understand why. Can you guess why?

Tottie was wrapped up and packed in a box, the box laid on top of the sampler with the two notices, and they were all handed to Mrs Innisfree.

In the night Apple would not sleep without Tottie, Birdie had no wish to sleep, and even Mr Plantaganet did not feel quite comfortable.

‘Go to sleep, Apple, do,’ he said.

‘You go to sleep,’ said Apple.

But Mr Plantaganet could not. Emily and Charlotte were strangely restless too.

‘Emily,’ said Charlotte at last from her bed.

‘Yes, Charlotte.’

‘You will be cross,’ said Charlotte.

‘I don’t think I will,’ said Emily. ‘I-I think I know what you are thinking, Charlotte.’

‘Well,’ said Charlotte, and she lay on her back looking thoughtfully up at the ceiling. ‘Well, people usually do, don’t they?’

‘Do what?’

‘Lend, not be paid,’ said Charlotte.

‘Ye-es,’ said Emily miserably.

‘I mean, for an exhibition like that, which is to help people, people usually lend their things, don’t they, to help the other people?’

‘That’s what I was thinking-remembering,’ said Emily. ‘Do you remember the animal carving exhibition we went to see? It had labels:
Head of a deer, lent by Mr
So-and-So. Rabbit, lent by Mrs Somebody Else.
’

‘Ye-es,’ said Charlotte.

‘It didn’t say,
Hired from Mr So-and-So,
’ said Emily, ‘and that is what being paid means. We have hired out Tottie.’

‘That is what she didn’t like,’ said Charlotte, and she was near the truth though that was not the whole truth.

‘I felt her being miserable, but I didn’t take any notice – then,’ said Emily.

‘Nor I,’ said Charlotte. ‘But I wish I had.’

‘I believe Mrs Innisfree offered to pay us because she was sorry we couldn’t get the chairs,’ said Emily.

‘We shall go to Mrs Innisfree in the morning and tell her,’ said Emily. ‘I believe she knew we really ought not to have been paid.’

‘I believe we really knew that too,’ said Charlotte. ‘It was my fault,’ she added. ‘I said we needed a pound.’

‘No, it was mine,’ said Emily. ‘I wanted the chairs more than you did. How funny. I want things so hard, Charlotte, that I don’t think what I am doing. I don’t want
them so much now,’ said Emily.

‘Then we shall have ordinary ones?’ asked Charlotte.

‘No,’ said Emily firmly and shortly.

‘Then what will you do?’

‘I don’t know what I shall do,’ said Emily, ‘but not this,’ she said.

Mrs Innisfree was surprised to see them when they called at her house next morning. She seemed more surprised and pleased when Emily laid the pound note and the shilling on the table.

‘After all,’ said Charlotte, ‘we are not blind and if we don’t get paid for Tottie, the children who are blind will get more money.’

‘Certainly they will,’ said Mrs Innisfree, and she looked at Emily who had put down the pound note and the shilling and who could not trust herself to speak.

‘Emily,’ said Mrs Innisfree, ‘you wanted those chairs badly didn’t you?’

‘Yes,’ said Emily ‘but Charlotte likes the dolls’ house just as much as I do.’

‘It was your idea to get those chairs?’

‘And the couch and the table and the runner,’ put in Charlotte.

‘Well – I saw them first,’ said Emily.

‘Emilys usually see things first,’ said Mrs Innisfree gently. ‘And it is usually they who have the ideas. I am like Emily; it was my idea to pay you for Tottie, but of course
it is far nicer that you yourselves have decided to lend her to me. Now I have another idea,’ said Mrs Innisfree.

(You must remember that while this was happening Tottie was packed away in her box under her paper and had no idea of it at all. You must keep remembering that.)

‘I want,’ said Mrs Innisfree, ‘to see those old chairs and that old couch. The ones that were in the dolls’ house when it came.’

‘But – they are all torn and unstuffed.’

‘But the wooden part, the legs and arms and frames?’

‘That is still there,’ said Charlotte.

‘They should be as good as new, if they were as good in the first place as I think they were. As good as the Wigmore Street ones,’ said Mrs Innisfree. ‘Go and get them
now,’ she said.

‘What now? Straight away?’ asked Charlotte, but Emily’s eyes gleamed.

‘Straight away,’ said Mrs Innisfree. ‘I might be able to do something with them if they are as I hope.’

‘Are they?’ asked Charlotte an hour later when she and Emily had come back.

‘Are they what?’

‘As you hoped?’

‘Yes, they are,’ said Mrs Innisfree.

The sofa and chairs stood on the table in her drawing room. ‘Look,’ she said, and with her scissors she ripped off what Emily had left of the stuffing, the torn bits, and dirty old
cotton; soon the chairs and sofa were bare down to their seats. ‘Look,’ said Mrs Innisfree, ‘the wood is good, quite solid. Do you see, Emily, the little legs are turned. They are
scratched and discoloured, but the good work is there. Do you see that when things are beautifully made, how beautifully they last?’

‘These don’t look as if they had lasted,’ objected Charlotte. ‘They look fit to throw away.’

‘That is because you haven’t looked into them. Wait and see,’ said Mrs Innisfree. She opened a drawer and took out two pieces of sandpaper and rubbed them against each other.
‘That’s to smooth them a little because they are too rough – they must not scratch the wood too deeply’ She picked up a little chair and began to rub its leg.

‘But – you are taking all its polish off.’

‘And the dirt and scratches. Now you and Charlotte rub them, and when they are quite clean and smooth we shall take them to a man I know who is a French polisher, and we shall ask him if
he will help us. I think he will,’ said Mrs Innisfree.

‘But – would a real French polisher polish them?’

‘He might, if we can make him interested,’ said Mrs Innisfree. ‘People will do anything if they are interested.’

‘But what about the seats and arms and backs? They were all cushioned before.’

‘They can be cushioned again.’

‘But with what? Mother says that nowhere, anymore, anywhere, can you buy stuff like that they were cushioned with,’ said Emily.

‘Have you seen this?’ asked Mrs Innisfree, and she picked up a footstool that was standing by the table and showed it to them. Its top was of embroidery, flowers, worked very finely,
in the same mice stitches that Tottie had talked about, stitches like the sampler, only finer.

‘This is called
petit-point.
Have you ever seen a chair like it?’ asked Mrs Innisfree. ‘A tapestry chair?’

‘Oh!’ said Emily. ‘Oh! You mean—’

‘Yes. What could be better than tiny tapestry chairs and couch?’ asked Mrs Innisfree.

‘Dolls’ tapestry would have to be very, very fine,’ said Emily slowly. ‘Could anybody work it?’ she asked doubtfully.

‘I have worked it so that it was very fine indeed.’

‘It would be beautiful,’ breathed Charlotte. ‘But we couldn’t do it, not Emily, nor I. It would take us years and years to learn. Our great-grandmother could have done
it. Perhaps there was some use in working samplers,’ said Charlotte mournfully. ‘Now who – who – who –’

Mrs Innisfree had not answered. She had opened a drawer and was taking out a roll of fine canvas and a box of silks.

‘You!’ said Emily and Charlotte together. ‘You! You mean you would work it for us?’

‘It would not take me very long,’ said Mrs Innisfree. ‘I think I could do it. Anyway I could try. Suppose you stay to lunch with me and then we could choose patterns and
colours. Of course we shall need an upholsterer as well as a French polisher,’ said Mrs Innisfree, ‘but I have another friend who would do that for us. I think it will be far nicer and
of course far cheaper,’ she said with a sideways look at the children, ‘than the little set in Wigmore Street that you wanted to buy.’

‘What a great deal we are learning about things,’ said Emily, ‘all these beautiful old things.’

‘But you mustn’t think it is only the old things that are beautiful,’ said Mrs Innisfree. ‘We can do as good work nowadays if we have the same patience.’

‘Yes – patience!’ said Charlotte. Truth to tell, her hand was aching very much from the sandpapering, but she went on rubbing.

They had lunch with Mrs Innisfree. What did they have? They had plaice, which is fish, and green peas and mashed potatoes, and a cherry tart from Mrs Innisfree’s bottled cherries.

After lunch they looked through the patterns and silk and chose a small pattern that was part of a larger pattern; it was moss rosebuds in crimson and pink, with green leaves, on a cream
background. ‘And we must have this copper colour for the stems,’ said Mrs Innisfree, ‘and I shall use this peacock blue for the shading.’

‘Can you shade so tiny?’ asked Emily.

‘I think I can,’ said Mrs Innisfree.

‘I think you can do anything,’ said Charlotte, and that evening she said to Emily, ‘Do you know, Emily, Mrs Innisfree reminds me of Tottie.’

‘Of Tottie?’

‘Yes.’

‘Can a real person remind you of a doll?’

‘I don’t know,’ said Charlotte, ‘but Mrs Innisfree does.’ She thought for a moment. ‘Perhaps it’s because Tottie never breaks or gets spoilt. I miss
Tottie,’ said Charlotte.

They had asked to peep at Tottie before they left Mrs Innisfree, and how surprised Tottie was to see their faces bending over her.

‘Is this all a bad dream?’ asked Tottie of herself. ‘Am I at home again?’ But as soon as Charlotte lifted her up she saw that she was in a strange room and that the box
still lay on the table. ‘It isn’t a dream,’ cried Tottie in Charlotte’s hand. ‘Oh! Oh! Oh!’

‘Why does she look so unhappy?’ asked Charlotte.

‘A pound and a shilling! A guinea. After a hundred years,’ said Tottie.

‘She looks – angry,’ said Emily. Both of them could feel Tottie wishing, but they could not understand why she should wish, and they put her back into the box and covered her
up with tissue paper.

‘When does she go to the Exhibition?’ she heard Emily ask, just before they put on the lid.

‘To the Exhibition! To the Exhibition!’ said Tottie in a cry so loud that every knot and grain of her felt twisted, but, of course, not a sound came out of the box.

Marchpane had been seen by someone at the cleaners who had taken her address and written to the great-aunt’s relations to ask if Marchpane too might not come to the
Exhibition.