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PART I
THE PLAY-HOUSE

THE PLAY-HOUSE

You should have seen the china-closet. It was under a bent root, and all the dishes were white with violet markings. One might have thought they were big and little and middling-sized clam-shells, if one had not seen them in a china-closet.

There was a bedroom between two big roots. A doll was taking a nap there, not on a pine-pillow, but on a whole bed of pleasant-smelling pine needles which had dropped off a tree in the neighbourhood. The mistress of the house was in the kitchen cooking, and the kitchen, of course, was where the sun came through a break in the branches. One must have a patch of sun in a kitchen, for how can you bake without it? When I went into this kitchen, there was a cake baking, with an ornament on the top that looked quite like an acorn.

I was invited to stay for lunch, and I will tell you what we had: First, there were brown-bread cutlets, and smooth white stone potatoes, and a wonderful salad made of maple leaves and pepper-grass. Then for dessert we had the cake I had seen baking, and milk. The cake had a brown layer made from the garden beds and a yellow layer made from the path, and was iced with white sand. You will guess that the brown bread cutlets and the milk were what people getting up plays call "practicable," which is just a grown-up word for "really and truly."

A tree is one of the nicest play-houses a person can have. But suppose it is a rainy day! We will play it is a rainy day, and we will go and go until we get to a house with a steep roof. And we will go in, and go upstairs, and then upstairs again until we get to a garret, where we can see the rafters sloping to the ridge over our heads, and the inside of the shingles. On the floor are trunks and boxes and barrels, and all sorts of things are hanging from the rafters. Sometimes we hear the pigeons running on the outsides of the shingles and cooing under the eaves. It is a lonely sound. It is rather dark, too, but we are brave, and we get past two saddles, and a row of white petticoats, and a dim place where there are a lot of old books with strange dark pictures in them, which one likes to be sure are shut in tight. At last we get round a corner and find a gable with a pointed window, and there is a play-house where a little girl and eight dolls live. There are four rooms in the play-house, though if you are not thinking, you may very likely walk right through the walls and not know it. On one side of the window is a bedroom, and on the other side is the kitchen. The dining room and the living room are in the corners nearest the rest of the garret.

The little girl's big sister put up some pictures on the sloping wooden walls to suit each room. One of them is very useful when the little girl is deciding what to play. It is seven little pictures on a card with verses to explain them. You can read the verses at the beginning of this chapter; I am sorry the pictures are not there, too.

This little girl likes especially to play "Monday, I wash my dollies' clothes"—because she has a tub and a washboard, and a wringer that will really let buttons through, and clothespins and a clothes-horse, and all the garret to put up lines in. Housework, you know, is so much more fun if you have the right things to do it with.

"Tuesday, I neatly press them," is a good day, too, but "Wednesday, I mend their little hose," is not. One cannot sit still and make believe sew, for many minutes. When mother was told about this trouble, she looked at the pictures and said, "Why, there's no sweeping day! As soon as the stockings are mended on Wednesday, you had better sweep, and tidy things up a little." Mother often wants things "tidied up" when it isn't in the game. She says, she does not keep her little girl's hat on the dining table, nor leave her bed unmade, and she cannot have the dolls brought up that way either.

The Friday game is one of the best. The two dolls that have night dresses are most often sick. Of course, it is a great care to have a doll sick, but it does make a great many interesting things to do. She may need cold-water cloths, or a hot-water bottle, or a poultice, and there is always medicine to give and meals to serve on a tray. Then the bed should be made over often. The little girl who lives in this play-house likes to have her dolls ill when she has company, because then there is some one to be the doctor.

"Saturday something or other," usually means cooking, and that, too, is a favourite game for company. Sometimes the little girl goes down into the "really and truly" kitchen to market, or sometimes mother sends up a little cake baked in a doll's pan. That makes a very grand occasion. The table must be laid with all the dishes, and napkins if possible, when there is a cake from the big kitchen.

A great many things can happen in a garret play-house, besides housekeeping. Sometimes it is so still up there, that one knows one must be in a deep forest, or out on the plains; and, of course, in that case, the cooking or nursing may be interrupted by a band of robbers, or an attack from Indians, or one may have a visit from an escaping prisoner, and besides, there are always long, dangerous journeys to take