Racketty-Packetty House and Other Stories (3 page)

“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 manner—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.

Cynthia played nearly all day and the Duchess and Lady Gwendolen and Lady Muriel and Lady Doris and Lord Hubert and Lord Francis and Lord Rupert got worse and worse.

By evening they were all raging in delirium and Lord Francis and Lady Gwendolen had strong mustard plasters on their chests. And right in the middle of their agony Cynthia suddenly got up and went away and left them to their fate—just as if it didn't matter in the least. Well in the middle of the night Meg and Peg and Lady Patsy wakened all at once.

“Do you hear a noise?” said Meg, lifting her head from her ragged old pillow.

“Yes, I do,” said Peg, sitting up and holding her ragged old blanket up to her chin.

Lady Patsy jumped up with feathers sticking up all over her hair, because they had come out of the holes in the ragged old bed. She ran to the window and listened.

“Oh! Meg and Peg!” she cried out. “It comes from the Castle. Cynthia has left them all raving in delirium and they are all shouting and groaning and screaming.”

Meg and Peg jumped up too.

“Let's go and call Kilmanskeg and Ridiklis and Gustibus and Peter Piper,” they said, and they rushed to the staircase and met Kilmanskeg and Ridiklis and Gustibus and Peter Piper coming scrambling up panting because the noise had wakened them as well.

They were all over at Tidy Castle in a minute. They just tumbled over each other to get there—the kind-hearted things. The servants were every one fast asleep, though the noise was awful. The loudest groans came from Lady Gwendolen and Lord Francis because their mustard plasters were blistering them frightfully.

Ridiklis took charge, because she was the one who knew the most about illness. She sent Gustibus to waken the servants and then ordered hot water and cold water, and ice, and brandy, and poultices, and shook the trained nurse for not attending to her business—and took off the mustard plasters and gave gruel and broth and cough syrup and castor oil and ipecacuanha, and every one of the Racketty-Packettys massaged, and soothed, and patted, and put wet cloths on heads, until the fever was gone and the Castle dolls all lay back on their pillows pale and weak, but smiling faintly at every Racketty-Packetty they saw, instead of turning up their noses and tossing their heads and sniffing loudly, and just
scorning
them.

Lady Gwendolen spoke first and instead of being haughty and disdainful, she was as humble as a newborn kitten.

“Oh! You dear, shabby, disrespectable darling things!” she said. “Never, never, will I scorn you again. Never, never!”

“That's right!” said Peter Piper in his cheerful, rather slangy way. “You take my tip—never you scorn any one again. It's a mistake. Just you watch me stand on my head. It'll cheer you up.”

And he turned six somersaults—just like lightning—and stood on his head and wiggled his ragged legs at them until suddenly they heard a snort from one of the beds and it was Lord Hubert beginning to laugh and then Lord Francis laughed and then Lord Hubert shouted, and then Lady Doris squealed, and Lady Muriel screamed, and Lady Gwendolen and the Duchess rolled over and over in their beds, laughing as if they would have fits.

“Oh! You delightful, funny, shabby old loves!” Lady Gwendolen kept saying. “To think that we scorned you.”

“They'll be all right after this,” said Peter Piper. “There's nothing cures scarlet fever like cheering up. Let's all join hands and dance 'round and 'round once for them before we go back to bed. It'll throw them into a nice light perspiration and they'll drop off and sleep like tops.” And they did it, and before they had finished, the whole lot of them were perspiring gently and snoring as softly as lambs.

When they went back to Racketty-Packetty House they talked a good deal about Cynthia and wondered and wondered why she had left her scarlet fever so suddenly. And at last Ridiklis made up her mind to tell them something she had heard.

“The Duchess told me,” she said, rather slowly because it was bad news—“The Duchess said that Cynthia went away because her Mama had sent for her—and her Mama had sent for her to tell her that a little girl princess is coming to see her tomorrow. Cynthia's Mama used to be a maid of honor to the Queen and that's why the little girl Princess is coming. The Duchess said—” and here Ridiklis spoke very slowly indeed, “that the nurse was so excited she said she did not know whether she stood on her head or her heels, and she must tidy up the nursery and have that Racketty-Packetty old dolls' house carried downstairs and burned, early tomorrow morning. That's what the Duchess
said—
”

Meg and Peg and Kilmanskeg clutched at their hearts and gasped and Gustibus groaned and Lady Patsy caught Peter Piper by the arm to keep from falling. Peter Piper gulped—and then he had a sudden cheerful thought.

“Perhaps she was raving in delirium,” he said.

“No, she wasn't,” said Ridiklis shaking her head. “I had just given her hot water and cold, and gruel, and broth, and castor oil, and ipecacuanha and put ice almost all over her. She was as sensible as any of us. Tomorrow morning we shall not have a house over our heads,” and she put her ragged old apron over her face and cried.

“If she wasn't raving in delirium,” said Peter Piper, “we shall not have any heads. You had better go back to the Castle tonight, Patsy. Racketty-Packetty House is no place for you.”

Then Lady Patsy drew herself up so straight that she nearly fell over backwards.

“I—will—
never
—leave you!” she said, and Peter Piper couldn't make her.

You can just imagine what a doleful night it was. They went all over the house together and looked at every hole in the carpet and every piece of stuffing sticking out of the dear old shabby sofas, and every broken window and chairleg and table and ragged blanket—and the tears ran down their faces for the first time in their lives. About six o'clock in the morning Peter Piper made a last effort.

“Let's all join hands in a circle,” he said quite faintly, “and dance ‘round and 'round once more.”

But it was no use. When they joined hands they could not dance, and when they found they could not dance they all tumbled down in a heap and cried instead of laughing and Lady Patsy lay with her arms 'round Peter Piper's neck.

Now here is where I come in again—Queen Crosspatch-who is telling you this story. I always come in just at the nick of time when people like the Racketty-Packettys are in trouble. I walked in at seven o'clock.

“Get up off the floor,” I said to them all and they got up and stared at me. They actually thought I did not know what had happened.

“A little girl Princess is coming this morning,” said Peter Piper, “and our house is going to be burned over our heads. This is the end of Racketty-Packetty House.”

“No, it isn't!” I said. “You leave this to me. I told the Princess to come here, though she doesn't know it in the least.”

A whole army of my Working Fairies began to swarm in at the nursery window. The nurse was working very hard to put things in order and she had not sense enough to see Fairies at all. So she did not see mine, though there were hundreds of them. As soon as she made one corner tidy, they ran after her and made it untidy. They held her back by her dress and hung and swung on her apron until she could scarcely move and kept wondering why she was so slow. She could not make the nursery tidy and she was so flurried she forgot all about Racketty-Packetty House again—especially as my Working Fairies pushed the armchair close up to it so that it was quite hidden. And there it was when the little girl Princess came with her Ladies in Waiting. My Fairies had only just allowed the nurse to finish the nursery.

Meg and Peg and Kilmanskeg and Ridiklis and Gustibus and Peter Piper and Lady Patsy were huddled up together looking out of one window. They could not bear to be parted. I sat on the arm of the big chair and ordered my Working Fairies to stand ready to obey me the instant I spoke.

The Princess was a nice child and was very polite to Cynthia when she showed her all her dolls, and last but not least, Tidy Castle itself. She looked at all the rooms and the furniture and said polite and admiring things about each of them. But Cynthia realized that she was not so much interested in it as she had thought she would be. The fact was that the Princess had so many grand dolls' houses in her palace that Tidy Castle did not surprise her at all. It was just when Cynthia was finding this out that I gave the order to my Working Fairies.