The Dolls’ House by Rumer Godden Read Free Book Online Page B

say this aloud, but wax is not very brave stuff and so she remained quiet.
    Tottie wished the Exhibition would never open. ‘But it will,’ thought Tottie, ‘and then – then – someone will buy me. I shall be sold and when the Exhibition closes
I shall go away to a new home. Oh!’ cried Tottie. ‘Oh Apple! Darner! Birdie! Mr Plantaganet! My little home! Oh! Oh! Oh!’ But no sign of grief showed on her wooden face. She stood
as firm as ever.
    ‘Is it true,’ said one of the dolls, ‘that this Exhibition is to be opened by a queen?’
    ‘Queen Victoria?’ asked the wax doll, looking at the dolls in the glass case. Tottie whispered to her that Queen Victoria had been dead long, long ago.
    ‘Forgive me,’ said the wax doll. ‘I have been shut away so long.’
    ‘A queen?’ said Marchpane with great satisfaction. ‘How right and proper. She will be sure to notice me. They always do,’ she said, though Tottie was sure she had never
seen a queen before. ‘I am so glad I have been cleaned.’
    ‘I always stay clean,’ said Tottie. ‘Wood can be washed and be none the worse.’
    ‘So can scrubbing brushes,’ said Marchpane tartly. ‘I am afraid Her Majesty will have rather a disagreeable surprise,’ said Marchpane. ‘She can’t have been
told that there are farthing dolls in this Exhibition. Why, I don’t suppose,’ said Marchpane, opening her china-blue eyes wide, ‘that she knows that such things exist.’
    ‘Even queens can learn,’ said Tottie quietly.
    Every evening, when the Exhibition room was shut, a child came to look at the dolls.
    ‘A child! A child! A child!’ The whisper would go through the room because so many of the dolls through being rare and precious had been for a long while put away in boxes or kept on
shelves or in museums. They had not been near children for so long. They yearned toward this little girl who crept in to look at them. None of them yearned more than the wax doll.
    The child was thin, with poor clothes, and she kept her hands behind her as if she had been told not to touch. She went from one doll to the other and stared with eyes that looked large in her
thin face.
    ‘La! You would think she ’ad nevaire see a doll before!’ said the walking doll.
    ‘Perhaps she hasn’t, as close as this,’ said Tottie. ‘Dolls are scarce now and very expensive.’
    ‘Quite right. They should never be given to children to be played with,’ said Marchpane.
    The wax doll looked at the child as if her heart would melt. ‘Little darling!’ she said. ‘How good she is! How gentle! See, she doesn’t even touch.’
    At that moment the child took one hand from behind her back and stretched it out to the wax doll and, with a finger, very gently touched her satin dress. The wax doll trembled with pleasure from
head to toe. After that the child came most often to look at the wax doll.
    ‘I believe she is the caretaker’s child,’ said Marchpane.
    ‘She is my child,’ breathed the wax doll.
    Now the day came for the Exhibition to be open. By eleven o’clock everything was dusted and ready; the ladies were waiting, the dolls were waiting, and a great number of other ladies and
gentlemen and a few children, invited guests, were waiting. Marchpane and the haughty doll were preening their necks to hold them to the greatest advantage and setting off their dresses; the wax
doll was looking at the children and thinking they were not as good as the caretaker’s child; Tottie stood dreading and fearing the moment when someone would buy her and her secret must be
told.
    The Exhibition ladies kept coming along the tables and shifting and tidying what was arranged and neat already, and putting straight what was straight before.
    ‘I do wish they wouldn’t,’ sighed Tottie.
    ‘They are showing us every attention, naturally,’ said Marchpane. ‘We are very important – at least,’ she corrected herself, ‘some of us are.’
    ‘I don’t like attention,’ said