peggy had only stayed a very short time in prison, and had been so much interested in all that had happened there that she had hardly been able to think of herself in prison at all, but she was none the less pleased to be in the open street and free to go anywhere. they were going first of all to wooden’s house, which was in the chief residential quarter of dolltown, near the royal palace.
the news of the imprisonment of a human child, and of four dolls, two at least of whom were highly respected, must have spread; for as they walked along everybody seemed to recognize them, and they were followed by an ever increasing crowd of dolls, who seemed to be greatly excited by their reappearance. the lord chancellor was in a high state of delight at the attention they were receiving. if he had a fault, it was a slight but excusable vanity. by his own labours he had raised himself to his present proud position, and thought it only natural that everybody who[pg 166] saw him should be extremely interested in him. he was generally accompanied by his secretary when he walked about the streets of dolltown, so that if he happened to go unrecognized the secretary could tell the people who he was. but this time he had left him behind, to write out the notes he had taken in the hall of audience, and walked alone with peggy and wooden.
he certainly received a great deal of attention, and was at first very pleased with it, as i have said. but by-and-by he became a good deal less pleased.
for the crowd was not so good-tempered as it had been when they had all walked to prison together. most of the dolls that composed it made a lot of fuss over peggy and wooden, whom they were pleased to see let out of prison, but they did not seem at all pleased to see the lord chancellor, and he had to listen to some unpleasant remarks about himself for his share in what had happened.
these remarks caused him a good deal of pain, and, when he understood that he was not sharing in the popularity that peggy and wooden enjoyed, he began to explain to everybody who would listen to him that he had been against sending anybody to prison from the first, and that it was entirely owing to him that[pg 167] peggy and wooden had been let out. but nobody did listen to him very carefully, and one rather rude dutch doll actually said to him, “oh, dry up, you silly old fool, and don’t talk so much.” this distressed him very much. he had never in his life been called a silly old fool before, and the phrase rankled. he did not try to excuse himself any more, but kept on repeating “silly old fool” under his breath, so as to see if it was really as bad as it sounded.
wooden’s house was situated in a handsome terrace, which had a gate and a little wooden lodge at each end of it, to keep the houses private. this was a good thing, for the crowd had to stay outside the gates. it was nice to have them so enthusiastic, but they might have made themselves a nuisance if they had swarmed about the house itself, and looked in at the windows, and dirtied the front door steps.
wooden had told peggy what a nice house she had, and was pleased to be able to show it to her. it was a handsome, rather old-fashioned, wooden dolls’ house of three stories and six rooms, with a staircase running up the middle. it was nicely furnished, too, with beautifully-made dolls’ furniture and ornaments. any little girl would have been[pg 168] overjoyed at having such a dolls’ house given to her to play with. to peggy it[pg 169] was even more delightful than if she had had it as a toy, because it was of a size that made it possible for her to use it as a real house. instead of putting her hand inside the rooms with great care, so as not to disturb the arrangements, she could go into all the rooms herself and use the things in them.
i know that it is not customary in stories to talk about the rooms and furniture of a house before your characters have entered it; but in this case it is all right, because the front of the house stood open, and peggy saw nearly everything inside it before they went in.
the rooms were a good deal larger than those in most dolls’ houses. i mean not only larger because the house had grown up, so to speak, but because they would hold more dolls and more furniture. in a dolls’ house it is sometimes awkward to have a doll or a piece of furniture that takes up nearly the whole of a room, and even in good ones it does not often happen that the rooms are big enough to accommodate many dolls, or more than a few pieces of furniture. but there was quite a lot of furniture in the rooms of wooden’s house, and although they were all square, and of the same size, which gave them a certain[pg 170] lack of variety, they would comfortably hold quite a large number of dolls.
on the ground floor were a kitchen and a dining-room, on the first floor a drawing-room and the best bedroom, and on the top floor a servants’ room and a spare room. wooden pointed them out as they walked up the terrace, and said that as long as peggy stayed with her she should give her the best bedroom, because it had the best furniture in it, and use the spare room for herself.
it was just like wooden to offer to do this, but peggy said no, she wouldn’t hear of it. she could not see the furniture of the spare room from where they were, as it was too high up, but she was sure it was good enough for her.
it may seem a little odd that wooden should have spoken as if they were going to stay in toyland, if not for ever, at least for some time. for peggy had understood that the dolls who were still played with by children only went to toyland when it was night—“over there,” as they would have said. but it did not seem odd to her, and in fact she never thought about it. once in toyland, the dolls who inhabited that pleasant country behaved as if they always lived there. it seemed to come from the air of the place; and that[pg 171] explains why peggy never once thought of going home again as long as she was there, any more than wooden or any of the other dolls did.
the weather was fine and warm, which would have made it nice to have the front of the house open, although a little wanting in privacy. but wooden said, “i should like you to go in through the front door, dear. it is a beautiful door, and it seems a pity not to use it. so i think i will have the front of the house shut.”
two wooden servant dolls, a cook and a housemaid, dressed one in a blue, the other in a black frock, with snowy white caps and aprons, had been standing in front of the kitchen looking out for them. wooden told them to shut the front of the house, and they came out and did so, pushing it back quite easily. for they were good servants and devoted to their mistress, and kept the hinges well oiled.
when the front of the house was shut it looked very handsome indeed. the door that wooden was so proud of was inside a fine porch, and had a brass knocker on it. all the windows had little panes of glass, kept beautifully clean, and white curtains looped up inside them. and each of them had a neat iron railing in front of it to hold flowers. it was like a[pg 172] real house, and yet it was like a dolls’ house, too, which made it all the more fascinating.
they went up two steps under the porch, and wooden knocked with the knocker, to show that it was a real knocker. the doll housemaid opened the door, and they went in. for the first time in her life, naturally, peggy was inside a real dolls’ house, with the front shut and even the door shut. hitherto she had only been able to see what it was like by peeping in through the windows; for of course you know that a dolls’ house can never be quite the same with its front open. it takes away from the make-believe. she felt frightfully pleased; and it really was nice, and not a bit like a real house, although everything in it was of an ordinary real size.
the lord chancellor had come in with them. he had told wooden that he had had a lot of running about and should like to rest a little. but, of course, what he really wanted was to get away from the crowd, and go home later on when it should have dispersed. but wooden said that it was an honour to entertain him in her own house, which pleased him, and by the time they had got inside he had recovered some of his spirits, and seemed ready to be as talkative as ever.
wooden led the way up to the drawing-room, which[pg 173] had a carpet of a very large pattern and a wall paper with enormous roses on it. the furniture was beautifully made, but peggy felt that she was really sitting on a dolls’ sofa and not on an ordinary one, although it was comfortable, and of an ordinary size. nothing was quite the same. the mirrors had tin frames, the books on the tables were evidently toy books, with thick leaves and bindings that did not keep quite flat; and there were some packs of cards and some dominoes on another table looking exactly like those very tiny ones which you can buy in shops, but are[pg 174] so small that you do not want to play with them more than once.
they had hardly sat down, peggy and wooden on the sofa and the lord chancellor on a large chair, before the doll housemaid opened the door and announced a visitor, by the name of mrs. winifred.
mrs. winifred was a mature-looking dutch doll. most of the wooden dolls in toyland were of dutch extraction, even wooden herself, just like many of the old families of new york, but they were no more dutch than the new yorkers are. she came forward and kissed wooden, and said she was very glad she had come out of prison, and she felt that she must come round at once and tell her so.
mrs. winifred had hardly been accommodated with a seat before mrs. hilda was announced, and when mrs. hilda had said the same as mrs. winifred, captain and mrs. louisa were announced. captain louisa was an officer in a regiment of wooden soldiers, and wore his uniform. his wife and mrs. hilda were wooden dolls like mrs. winifred. these were followed by mr. and mrs. joyce, mr. and mrs. ida, mrs. mollie, mrs. jane, and one or two more, all of the best wooden families of dolltown, and it was evidently a[pg 175] source of great pride to wooden that they should show such a nice feeling towards her.
she introduced them all to peggy, and those who did not know him to the lord chancellor. there were so many of them that it was like a sort of party. the dolls sat rather stiffly in their chairs, and there were other little points about them, such as their knees showing rather prominently through their skirts and trousers, which made it seem like a dolls’ party, and as if they were all playing at something. this pleased peggy. she felt as if she had set them all down herself on their chairs and on the sofas, exactly where she wanted them to be, as she did sometimes with her smaller dolls in her dolls’ house at home, and pretended that they were talking politely to each other.
