Miss Happiness and Miss Flower (5 page)

When they had finished, Mother took out her sewing. The fire was warm, the sound of the needle going in and out was quiet and calm. Nona felt tired but she did not cry any more. She sat on the
rug and leant against Mother’s knee.

‘You’ll have to go again tomorrow,’ said Belinda.

Then Mother said, ‘Why not take Miss Happiness and Miss Flower to school?’

‘They wouldn’t be allowed,’ said Belinda at once.

‘How could I take them?’ asked Nona. ‘In my pocket?’

‘No, in your head,’ said Mother, and before they could argue she said, ‘If you took them in your pocket that would be breaking the rules, and you mustn’t do that, but you
could take them in your head.’

‘How?’ but a watery smile came on Nona’s face.

‘You say Japanese pictures are scrolls, with painting and writing?’

Nona nodded.

‘In school you can learn how to write beautifully and to paint.’

‘Can I?’

‘You read to us that in Japanese houses they have matting on the floors. You could learn to weave mats on a loom.’

‘Like Anne?’

‘Certainly Anne learned to weave at school. Then you can learn to sew. There are all those quilts and cushions to make and the dolls need new kimonos. Miss Lane teaches you to sew nicely.
Even Belinda is learning to make tiny careful stitches.’

‘I’m not,’ said Belinda.

‘Do you hear the honourable lady?’ whispered Miss Flower.

‘Kimonos, quilts, cushions,’ said Miss Happiness, her eyes shining.

‘Tiny careful stitches!’ and together they both sent a fresh wish to Nona: ‘O Honourable little Miss Nona, please go to school. Oh, go to school!’ And Nona began to think
that perhaps school might not be so very dreadful, particularly as Tom said, ‘I’ll work for you every Saturday until the house is finished.’

It took a long time. ‘Saturday after Saturday,’ grumbled Tom. Half-term came and went and still the house was not done. ‘Children are so slow!’ groaned
Miss Flower.

That was the first and only time Miss Happiness got cross. ‘Slow? They are wonderfully quick,’ she cried. ‘Quick and kind and clever. Don’t you ever let me hear you say
things like that again,’ cried Miss Happiness, and her little glass eyes flashed.

‘We must do the roof,’ said Tom one Saturday, and he said, ‘In a real house when that is done a bough is put in the chimney and the builders are given beer.’

‘Do you like beer?’ asked Nona.

‘Ginger beer,’ said Tom.

‘When the roof is made,’ said Nona, ‘I’ll buy you a bottle of ginger beer.’ But how was the roof to be made?

‘It should be tiles,’ said Tom. He had drawn tiles in the plan, tiles like little scallops in rows; now he had to think how he could make them.

There was an old tea chest in the garage. It was stamped in big black letters. Tom looked at it. ‘It’s the right thickness,’ he said. He took it to pieces and from two of the
sides he cut panels and glued them into place against a ridgepole.

Nona looked at the great black letters. ‘But . . .’ she began in dismay.

‘But what?’ asked Tom, as if he could not see anything wrong.

‘It looks
horrid
!’ said Nona. ‘Not a bit like tiles. And why have you put the lettering outside?’

‘Why not?’ asked Tom.

‘It shows.’

‘It won’t show,’ said Tom.

‘But it does,’ said Nona, almost tearfully.

‘Wait and see,’ said Tom.

He sounded as if he knew exactly what he was doing, but Miss Flower could not help being anxious too. ‘Will it be all right?’ she whispered to Miss Happiness. ‘Will
it?’

‘I think it will,’ said Miss Happiness.

‘Are you sure?’

‘Mr Tom has made the house beautifully. He will make a beautiful roof as well. We should trust Mr Tom,’ said Miss Happiness.

Miss Flower wanted to trust Tom but she thought it wise to do some wishing as well. ‘I wish the house could have a pretty roof. I don’t see how it can but I wish it could,’ she
wished.

‘How much money have you got?’ Tom asked Nona.

She had four shillings, and Tom went with her to the bookshop, where they bought a large sheet of stiff drawing-paper. Then they bought a pot of dark blue poster paint. Mr Twilfit did up the
paper in a roll. ‘It’s for the dolls’ house,’ Nona told him.

‘It’s getting on, hey?’ asked Mr Twilfit.

‘Very well, thank you,’ said Tom coldly, and Mr Twilfit’s eyebrows went up and down as he watched Tom walk away out of the shop.

When they got home Tom stretched the paper on his work-table and he and Nona painted it evenly, a deep blue. In the afternoon when it was dry he sat Nona down at the playroom table and told her
to cut the paper into long strips, two inches wide. ‘Measure carefully,’ and he said cheerfully, ‘You can manage it.’

Nona looked at the beautiful paper and was not at all sure she could manage it. ‘W-won’t you do it, Tom?’ she asked.

‘You must do
some
of the work,’ said Tom severely. ‘I have to bike down to the wood shop. I need a piece of wood.’ He took some more money from Nona and went
off.

Nona sat and looked at the paper – she was very afraid she would spoil it. Very carefully she measured off two inches at each side, making dots to mark the width . . . But how can I keep
the cutting straight? thought Nona. Still very carefully, with the big scissors, she started to cut across from dot to dot and, sure enough, the strip was uneven and wandered up and down.

‘Silly billy! You’ll never do it like that.’ Anne had come quietly into the playroom to practise.

‘Then
how
?’ asked Nona desperately, looking at the dreadful jagged strip she had made. ‘Oh, Tom will be so cross,’ and she looked as if she were going to cry.

‘Look. Fold it,’ said Anne, putting down her music.

‘Oh, Anne, please help me.’

‘You must measure,’ said Anne.

‘But I
did.
Two inches.’

‘Right,’ said Anne. ‘But you need a knife, not scissors.’ She took a knife from Tom’s work-table and cut off the uneven piece Nona had left, then measured two
inches again, marking with dots as Nona had done, folded the paper, and then slit along the fold; a smooth two-inch strip came off. ‘Now try,’ said Anne.

‘Oh, Anne. You do it.’

‘I haven’t time.’

‘P-please, Anne. I don’t want to make Tom cross.’

‘Well, I’ll fold it. Then you try,’ said Anne. ‘Come on. It’s easy.’

It was easy – ‘when you know how,’ said Nona. With Anne folding the paper and holding it steady, Nona was able to cut off an even strip.

‘And strip after strip,’ said Miss Happiness in pride.

‘Anne, you have such very clever, neat hands,’ Nona was saying.

‘So have you, Miss Nona,’ said Miss Flower.

When Tom came back the strips were laid out on his table, even and smoothly cut, and he was pleased. ‘But now we have to scallop them,’ he said. ‘Anne, you’re the neatest
one. You do them.’ He did not beg Anne, he ordered her. ‘I wish I were a boy,’ thought Nona.

‘What about my piano practice?’ Anne said it as if she would far rather make the scallops.

‘Practise afterwards,’ said Tom. ‘Get the scissors, Nona.’

‘They’re here,’ said Nona, hoping Tom would not look in the wastepaper basket and see the strip she had spoiled.

Anne folded each strip four times and with the scissors cut one edge into even scallops. As soon as they were cut, Nona unfolded the strip and, with a deeper blue pencil, Tom marked a line
between each scallop: scallop after scallop, strip after strip. It took longer to mark the lines than to cut the scallops, and when Anne went to the piano to practise, Tom, with Nona to wait on
him, was still at work.

After tea Anne helped again. Nona brushed the back of the strips with glue, making them really sticky, and Anne and Tom stuck them one at a time on to the roof panels; they began at the bottom
and glued them each a little above the first so that the scallops overlapped. As one row of scallops rose above the other, they began to look very like tiles, and when the roof was covered bottom
to top, back and front, Nona and Anne clapped.

‘I told you we could trust Mr Tom,’ said Miss Happiness.

As Anne and Tom started to make a tiny tiled roof for the niche, Nona slipped out and all by herself went to the grocer. She had to cross the road but, holding her purse very tightly, she
crossed it. She was not nearly as afraid now as she had been that first day when she set out for Mr Twilfit’s shop. At the grocer’s she spent two of her last three ninepences on two
bottles of ginger beer; the grocer gave her coloured straws for nothing. On her way home, as she was not sure Anne liked ginger beer, she stopped at a flower barrow and bought a spray of white
blossom; she had no money to buy any more.

Miss Happiness and Miss Flower were puzzled when they saw Nona arranging the ginger beer on a tray. ‘We should have served tea,’ said Miss Flower, and she said longingly, ‘In
the tea ceremony.’ ‘Ceremony’ is a word Japanese dolls use a lot; it means doing something in a very respectful and special way.

‘In England it is the ginger beer ceremony,’ said Miss Happiness, and she comforted Miss Flower. ‘See, our Miss Nona knows how to arrange flowers almost as we do; she does not
put too many in the vase.’ Miss Happiness did not know that there had been only one ninepence left.

‘And plum blossom means hope,’ said Miss Flower.

‘It
is
hope,’ said Miss Happiness. ‘Look, Flower, look!’

Nona had put the dolls on the pretty tray she was carrying to the playroom. She had stopped just inside the door, looking. Now Miss Flower looked too, and ‘Aaah!’ whispered Miss
Flower.

On Tom’s work-bench stood the little house with its tiled roof, its tiny hall and the screen walls that slid, its two side walls and the niche. There was, of course, no chimney, but where
the chimney might have been Tom had put a twig of green leaves for a bough.

‘How happy and gay they all are!’ said Miss Happiness.

‘One person isn’t happy,’ said Miss Flower, and suddenly she had a doll shiver. ‘Listen,’ said Miss Flower.

‘Belinda, have some ginger beer.’

‘I’m busy.’

‘Belinda, come and see the Japanese house with its new roof.’

‘I’m very busy.’

Belinda was still feeling left out. The next time she went into the playroom she gave Tom’s work-table a good shake, but Tom had made the house so well that nothing moved or broke.
‘I wish Japan were at the bottom of the sea!’ said Belinda; but it was not Japan that made her miserable, for as soon as she heard the story of Peach Boy again or thought about Little
Peach she felt warm and comfortable; it was when she thought about the Japanese dolls’ house – ‘and Nona!’ said Belinda, gritting her teeth – she felt so jealous and
cold and hard that she might have been a small iron Belinda.

Nona was still not very happy about going to school. ‘Why, Nona?’ asked Mother. ‘Belinda doesn’t mind and she is younger than you.’

‘It’s all right for Belinda,’ said Nona. ‘She has lots of friends.’

‘You can have friends.’

‘No I can’t,’ said Nona tearfully.

‘Why not?’

The tears overflowed. ‘There’s only one girl I like and she sits next to me,’ sobbed Nona.

‘If you like her why should you mind?’ asked Mother, mystified, which means she could not understand at all; it certainly was difficult to understand. ‘Why should you
mind?’ asked Mother.

‘She’s too pretty and stuck-up to speak to me.’

‘She means Melly,’ said Belinda. ‘Melanie Ashton. You know, her mother keeps the hat shop.’

‘But Melly’s a nice little girl.’

‘She won’t speak to me.’

‘Perhaps she’s shy.’

‘No, I’m the one who’s shy,’ wept Nona.

Except for Melly, school was not really so dreadful now. Nona was learning to write and paint and sew, as Mother had said. When she read aloud now it was not in a sing-song, and nobody laughed
at her English. Then one day, on the new page of her reading book, she came across a tiny poem. It was so small it might have been made for a dolls’ house:

Underneath was written: ‘Haiku. Japanese poem.’
⁴

‘Are all Japanese poems as little as that?’ Nona asked Miss
Lane. ‘Are they all as little?’

‘Not all, but a great many,’ said Miss Lane.

‘Could I copy it?’ asked Nona, and began to tell Miss Lane about Miss Happiness and Miss Flower.

‘Is the house finished?’ asked Miss Happiness.

‘Oh no!’ cried Miss Flower, and ‘Now I have to make the steps,’ said Tom.

The steps were four pieces of wood, the same length but different widths. Glued one on top of the other, they made a set of steps leading up to the front door. ‘You can put
dolls’-house tubs of flowers each side,’ said Tom.

‘Is the house finished now?’ asked Miss Happiness. No, it was not finished yet.

Tom stained the frames and the angle pieces a beautiful dark brown. He had painted the walls and the underside of the roof an ivory colour, but the niche he painted pale jade green. Last of all
the house was dusted and cleaned, carried into Nona’s room from the playroom, and put on the window-sill. ‘Now show that to Mr Twilfit!’ said Tom.