peggy was just eight years old. she had very long rather straight hair, blue eyes, a dear little pudgy nose, and a small mouth. she lived with her father and mother in a nice house in the country with a big garden round it. it was about five miles from the sea, and she was sometimes taken there in the motor-car, to paddle and to play on the sands.
the place she used to go to had only one house near it. this was a large bungalow belonging to some friends of peggy’s father and mother. it was built right on the beach, but there was a little lawn beside it, and on the edge of the lawn were two wooden figures that had been once figure-heads of ships. they were both ladies, and it was difficult to tell whether they were old or young, because one of them had had her nose broken off, and the other had lost every bit of paint[pg 2] off her face. but there was something agreeable in the appearance of both of them, and peggy used to think she would have liked to know them when they were leading a more active life, perched up in the very front of the ships to which they belonged, and travelling over the sea to all sorts of strange places. but they still looked over the sea, which was better than being broken up and burnt, with the rest of the ships; and of course they always looked in one direction, straight across the water to the big island on the other side of it.
peggy had never been to the island, and when she was playing on the sands she would sometimes look at it, and wonder what it was like there. she could see a little town and a little church, and a few houses scattered about among the hills; and she wondered what sort of people lived in them.
well, when she was eight years old she found out, and she also got to know a good deal more about the two wooden ladies of the bungalow. what she found out was so remarkable that it is doubtful if any little girl has ever seen anything like it before, and i am going to tell you the story of it.
but before i begin i must say this: that if peggy had not had a kind heart she would never have found out[pg 3] anything. i do not mean to say that she was never naughty; but she was never naughty in that most horrid of all ways, by being cruel or unkind. she had several pets—two rabbits and four guinea-pigs, a bantam cock and hen, two white pigeons, and a kitten, which she liked best of them all. if she had once been cruel to any of these pets, just to see what they would do, it is quite certain that she would never have been taken to the island. and if she had made fun of old people or poor people, she would never have gone either, because that is an extremely unkind and horrid thing to do. but peggy had never done any of these things, because she was a really kind little girl, and if something horrid inside her whispered: “now, just be a little bit cruel,” she was almost as much ashamed of it as if she had really been cruel, and she never listened to the whisper for a moment. so when she was eight years old she was taken to the island in the extraordinary way i am going to tell you about.
peggy had a good number of toys, and amongst them two dolls, which will now engage our attention.
the elder of the two was a wooden doll, which she had had for some time, and the story of this doll is rather interesting.
when peggy was five years old she had a doll given[pg 4] her called rose. rose was well-dressed, in clothes that would come on and off; and rather a nice hat came with her. but somehow peggy could not get to like her much. she took her about everywhere for quite a week, undressed her every night and dressed her again every morning, and sometimes gave her a bath,[pg 5] but not with water in it, because her body was stuffed, although her head was composition. she also took her out in the new pram that had been given to her at the same time, and put up the hood if it was sunny. in fact she did everything that a nice little girl could to make rose feel that she had come to a kind and loving home.
but at the end of a week she didn’t feel that rose really loved her. most little girls know dolls like that. you may do all you can for them, and they don’t seem to appreciate it at all. well, rose was one of those dolls.
one morning peggy went out with her nurse, and took rose with her in the pram. they went down through the village, and along the road on the other side, and presently they came to a cottage where a lot of children lived. their mother was not very kind to them, and so they were not very kind to each other, but were always fighting and squabbling.
one of these children was a girl a year older than peggy, called mabel, and just as peggy and her nurse came up to the cottage they saw mabel banging the head of an old wooden doll on the hard road.
now children and dolls are sometimes naughty, and must be corrected, but their heads should never be[pg 6] banged against anything hard. there are plenty of ways of correcting them without doing that, and every nice mother knows it. peggy knew it as well as anybody, although she was a year younger than mabel;[pg 7] so directly she saw what was being done she cried out to her nurse how cruel it was.
mabel stopped beating the wooden doll’s head against the road, and stared at peggy, and at rose, who was sitting in the pram; and she must have fallen in love with rose at first sight, because her face became quite different when she looked at her.
while mabel was looking at rose, peggy was looking at the wooden doll; and the more she looked the more her heart went out to her. she was not what you would call a beautiful doll, and perhaps never had been. one of her legs had been amputated at the knee, one of her arms at the shoulder, and the other at the elbow. her face was round and open; so were her eyes. her nose was gone. the less said about her hair the better; she would never need another shampoo. she was dressed in a loose frock of spotted red flannel, tied round the waist with an old piece of black hair-ribbon.
such was this doll, who was destined to play so large a part in peggy’s life, as she first saw her; and it may seem odd to some people that she should instantly have loved her. perhaps being such a kind little girl, and feeling so dreadfully sorry to see the doll so badly treated, had something to do with it; but[pg 8] it could not have been only that. no, there was something about this wooden doll which made peggy love her at once, and when you have read this story, perhaps you will be able to understand what it was.
peggy told mabel that she ought not to knock her doll’s head on the road, and mabel pointed at rose, and said: “if i had a doll like that, i wouldn’t want to knock ’er ’ead on the road.”
it was then that the idea first came to peggy that she would much rather have the wooden doll than rose; and she asked her nurse if she might give rose to mabel, and ask mabel to give her the wooden doll instead.
nurse said: “the idea of such a thing!” and told peggy to come on. of course she was right not to let peggy exchange dolls there and then, because she didn’t know whether peggy’s mother would like it. but where she was wrong was when she said, “fancy wanting to exchange a beautiful doll like rose for an ugly old wooden thing like that!” she didn’t understand that what she called beauty had nothing to do with it at all. you don’t love a person for their looks, but just because you can’t help loving them. and peggy was quite right to love the wooden doll more than rose, as afterwards turned out.
[pg 9]
fortunately, peggy’s mother understood these things better than the nurse. the end of it was that peggy was allowed to give rose to mabel, with all her clothes except the hat, which had come on the same birthday as she had, but had not belonged especially to her. and mabel gave peggy the wooden doll, but without its red flannel dress, which peggy’s mother thought might contain germs.
now that the wooden doll belonged to peggy she had to give her a name. she called her daffodil, because the daffodils were out in the garden when she came. but the name never stuck to her. she was always called wooden in the family circle; and presently it was forgotten that she had ever had any other name.
the first thing that happened to her was that she underwent an operation for restoring the limbs that were lost. it was a serious operation, and she was under chloroform for about a week. the chauffeur, whose name was herbert, performed the operation, and when it was over wooden had two arms and two legs just like everybody else. one of the legs sometimes came off at the knee, and both arms at the elbows. but herbert, accustomed to making quick repairs, was always ready to perform other minor[pg 10] operations, and wooden was seldom without her full number of limbs for long together.
wooden went through the usual illnesses, and was carefully nursed by peggy. perhaps she suffered rather more than most dolls, but peggy’s father was a doctor, and there was always help at hand if anything serious happened. and of course peggy knew more about cases, and nursing, than other little girls whose fathers were not doctors. wooden had whooping-cough, croup, mumps, scarlet-fever, chicken-pox, measles, german-measles, swollen glands, general debility, bronchitis, typhoid, and lung trouble, all in the ordinary way. for some little time she was a spinal case, and had to be kept on her back. but she was always good and uncomplaining through her ailments, and peggy loved her more because she was a trifle delicate than if she had always been in robust health.
in fact, the longer peggy had wooden the more she loved her. she played with her more than with her other dolls, and wooden was always the one she took to bed with her. peggy had a large teddy bear, which she also loved and took to bed with her. but there could be no jealousy between wooden and teddy, because they were so different. if peggy sometimes dressed teddy up in a jacket and skirt belonging to[pg 12] wooden, it was always treated as a joke. as a rule he went about with nothing on but his own thick fur.
wooden had all the clothes of peggy’s dolls’ wardrobe to wear, if they fitted her, and was better dressed than most dolls. and as everybody liked her when they once came to know her, she had plenty of things given her as time went on. when miss clay came to the house for a week or two to sew, she would generally make something for wooden out of the material left over. once she made her a purple velvet jacket, and once a tailor-made skirt. as for nightgowns, and petticoats, and things like that, trimmed with lace, and sometimes with pink and blue ribbon, wooden was so well supplied that peggy’s father said her laundry bill was becoming quite a serious item. so it will be seen that wooden was very much better off than when she had belonged to mabel, and had only had one red flannel dress.
we now come to the other doll of peggy’s, of whom mention has been made.
her name was lady grace. she came on peggy’s eighth birthday, and was really a beautiful doll, as everybody who saw her bore witness. she had been born in france, although she herself was english, and the clothes that came with her were finer than any of[pg 13] wooden’s. her face was wax, and she had beautiful hair. her eyes opened and shut, and she had the sweetest little hands and feet, with pink toes and fingertips.
peggy loved her at once. this was not altogether because of her beauty, for rose had been beautiful—though not so beautiful as lady grace—and peggy had never been able to love rose at all. there was something about lady grace which made peggy feel that she must look after her and pet her. and she never felt, as she had felt with rose, that all her petting was of no use. lady grace might not say much, but she showed that she was grateful to peggy for all the care she took of her by being always sweet and good; though she was, as i have said, rather helpless.
now, although peggy loved lady grace from the first, it must not be supposed that she loved wooden any the less. it was just as it is with children. when a new baby comes, the mother adores it, but she loves her other children just as much as she did before.
but, just at first, it must be confessed that wooden had rather less attention; and if she had not been so sensible she might have felt jealous. i don’t think she did, or she would have told peggy so afterwards. she[pg 14] probably knew exactly how things were, and that, when lady grace had been made to feel quite at home, her turn would come again.
well, one night when peggy went to bed, she took lady grace and teddy with her, and left wooden on the top of a chest of drawers with all her clothes on. and then wooden might have felt a little sad, because it was the first time that such a thing had ever happened to her; and she might have begun to wonder whether, after all, peggy loved her quite as much as she had done before.
but fortunately for this story, which might not otherwise have been written, as you will presently see, soon after peggy had been tucked up and left to go to sleep, she remembered that she had not undressed wooden. so she called her nurse, who was in the next room with the door a little open, and asked her to give wooden to her.
the nurse would not let her have two dolls in bed with her. teddy didn’t matter because he was so soft. so peggy asked her to put lady grace in the dolls’ cot, and give her wooden instead. she felt dreadfully sorry that she had forgotten about wooden, and wanted to make it up to her. lady grace would have to get used to sleeping in the cot some time or other,[pg 15] and peggy thought she might just as well begin now.
so peggy went to sleep hugging wooden in her arms; and teddy lay on his back on the pillow on the other side of her, with one paw stuck up in the air and the rest of him under the bedclothes.
by-and-by the nurse came in to look at her, and then went to bed in the next room. then her father and mother came in and kissed her, but she did not wake up. then the house became quiet and dark, and everybody in it was fast asleep.
and then things began to happen.
