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Little Maid in Toyland

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<h2>CHAPTER VI THE LITTLE BACK DOOR</h2> SALLY was busily bustling around the kitchen, clad in one of Dinah’s clean gingham aprons and with a stiff and clean bandanna ’kerchief perched on her shining hair. For Dinah was ill, the result of an unfortunate accident, for which the little girl felt herself more or less responsible. For some time the Little Lamb had been growing “grimy, grimier and grimier,” as Sally said to herself, and the child had finally resolved, although not without some misgivings, that a bath would be the next best thing in the order of events. Having several old scores to settle, Mary joyfully offered to assist, and with such a backing Sally proceeded with her preparations in a resolute and hopeful frame of mind. As the Little Lamb was indeed very dirty, Sally prepared a kind of shampoo, such as she had often seen nurse concoct for her own use. This was composed of tar soap, melted over the fire to a kind of jelly, and then beaten up with a couple of eggs and a dash of borax. When it was finished, it made a yellow, frothy compound, altogether nice and delectable looking. Sally had made a liberal[44] quantity, owing to the area that had to be covered in the personality of the Little Lamb. She left it on the kitchen table, and hurried off to find that worthy who, scenting an impending conflict, had betaken himself to the attic. Entrenched behind Bedelia’s screen, he firmly awaited the onslaught of the enemy. Dinah had all this time been busy in the upper part of the house and now returning below stairs beheld the foamy, creamy mixture frothing over the pan on the kitchen table. It never entered into her wooden head to suppose that it was anything except some nice omelet or something of the kind that one of the dolls or perhaps Sally had knocked together for luncheon. Stirring it up with a spoon, she found it rather thin, and proceeded to thicken it with flour and finally decided that it would serve best as batter for griddle cakes. As she herself was extremely fond of lemon flavoring, she added a large dose of that, and then proceeded to bake the mess on the well-greased and sputtering griddle. <div class="figleft"> <ANTIMG src="images/illus045.jpg" width-obs="345" height-obs="458" alt="Dinah and Bedelia eatting cakes" /></div> Now it must be confessed that Dinah was greedy, and the brown cakes certainly looked tempting. Besides, had she not planned something quite different for the dolls’ luncheon? Just one nibble she took, and then, like other people who have hesitated, she proceeded to get lost. Her wooden palate certainly failed to detect the flavor of tar soap, and one brown and smoking cake speedily disappeared after another. Goodness knows when she would have[45] stopped had not Bedelia, attracted by the odor of the baking cakes, suddenly appeared in the kitchen. That worthy had been decidedly out of favor with Sally for several days, and consequently was in no enviable frame of mind. Without so much as a “by your leave,” she now advanced on the greedy Dinah, snatched the plate of cakes from under her very nose, and proceeded to dispose of them with neatness and despatch. Her taste for eatables had been well cultivated, however, and she now discovered something decidedly peculiar in the flavor of the cakes. But she swallowed them all to the last crumb, more in order to spite Dinah than because she wanted them, pausing now and then[46] between bites to utter a threatening little growl that served very effectually to keep Dinah at a distance, for the cook was dreadfully afraid of the Teddy Bears. It did not take very long for the soap and borax to get in some very fine work, and soon Dinah and Bedelia found themselves companions in misery. <div class="figright"> <ANTIMG src="images/illus046.jpg" width-obs="350" height-obs="459" alt="Bedelia getting a lecture on gluttony" /></div> When Sally had hunted all over the house without being able to find the Little Lamb—and no wonder, for he was safely entrenched under Bedelia’s bed in the attic—and came hurrying into the kitchen to look after her shampoo, she found two unutterably wretched individuals tied up in knots and rolling around on the kitchen floor. Had it been Bedelia alone, Sally would have suspected a trick, but Dinah’s sufferings were too genuine to admit of suspicion. [47] Sally flew for help without waiting for explanations, and in a short time the sufferers were tucked up in their beds, feeling decidedly more comfortable and listening to a lecture on gluttony which they did not soon forget. Not but that this same lecture had to be administered in two sections, one to Dinah in her room and one to Bedelia in the attic, for Dinah would have died sooner than lie down in the same room with the Teddy Bear that she now regarded with more fear and dislike than ever. Thus it happened that Sally was flying around the shining little kitchen, putting things to rights and making ready to get together something for the dolls’ luncheon. She smiled as she scoured and dried the tin pan in which the shampoo, whose ending had been so unusual, had been mixed. She wondered what had become of the Little Lamb, and could not help wishing that he, instead of Dinah and Bedelia, had been the one to gobble up the sickening cakes, for the stuff certainly had been intended for him in the beginning. Sally was a born housekeeper, and as she had formerly played with her doll house, perpetually cleaning and straightening it, so she now worked in the bright little rooms until at last all was in order, the table laid for luncheon and a savory meal made ready. She was too much delighted with her work to ask for assistance from any of the dolls, and puttered around briskly, singing little snatches of a song half under her breath. “Puttering around” was[48] one of Dinah’s pet expressions, and while Sally had never been sure what it really meant, she felt quite certain that she could not be doing anything else while working in Dinah’s kitchen. Vigorously, then, did she flutter Dinah’s duster, seeking for dust where none existed, and merrily polishing the already shining window sills, on which stood stiff little pots of glowing scarlet paper geraniums. And then she suddenly became aware that she was standing in front of a little door, whose existence she had heretofore failed to observe. The door was directly in the center of the back wall, and Sally could not but wonder that John should have built it in such a place, for the doll’s house stood flat against the nursery wall, as any orderly doll’s house always stands. Hence there was absolutely no use for a door in such a location. Sally meditated for a moment or two and then suddenly concluded that the best thing to do would be to open the door and do a little investigating. She seized the knob and pulled vigorously, but to no purpose. The door was locked sure enough, and her best efforts resulted in nothing. It seemed very odd that the door should be locked and no key anywhere about. Suddenly she remembered that hanging up in her room was a tiny golden key belonging to a chain bracelet that Papa Doctor had once locked upon Mamma Wee’s pretty white wrist. For some inexplicable reason Mamma Wee had never unlocked the bracelet, but Papa Doctor always wore the key on one end of his watch chain[49] until one day the slender golden ring from which it hung broke, and Sally had found the key lying on the floor. Papa Doctor had been called out of town for an important consultation just then, and had not yet returned. Therefore the key was hanging up in Sally’s room, and thither the little girl hastened. Having possessed herself of the article in question, she hurried back to the kitchen, all on tip-toe with curiosity. <div class="figleft"> <ANTIMG src="images/illus050.jpg" width-obs="291" height-obs="459" alt="Sally leaving room" /></div> She did not hear the padding of velvet paws behind her, nor see the furry brown figure that came trotting stealthily in her wake. Having taken a good nap, Bedelia awoke feeling as good as new. After a few preliminary yawns, she bounced out of bed, much to the detriment of the Little Lamb who, too much scared by all the rumpus to run away, had finally fallen asleep under the bed with his head sticking out at the inner side where he had considered it quite safe, as the bed stood comparatively close to the wall. But with her usual perversity, Bedelia jumped out of that side of the bed, landing plump in the Little Lamb’s face. Bedelia was no light weight, and the unhappy Little Lamb uttered a piercing shriek, at the same time hastily wriggling back into his place of concealment. Bedelia had been considerably shaken by her sickness and now, scared out of all her impudence by the queer thing that she felt moving under her feet, she uttered a shrill squawk and fled precipitately from the attic. She paused at the top of the stairs and[50] peered down between the railings just in time to see Sally emerge from her room with the key in her hand. In a moment the Teddy Bear was on the alert, trotting silently down the stairs, dreadfully tempted to take a slide down the polished rail of the banister, but equally afraid of being sent back if discovered. In the meantime, Sally hastened to the kitchen, clutching the golden key which was, of course, very much larger in proportion than in the time when she had found it lying on the nursery floor. “How I do hope it will open the door!” the little girl said to herself as she thrust it into the lock and pressed against it very gently, for she was rather afraid of breaking off the golden handle. To her surprise and delight, however, it yielded at once, and with a turn of the door knob Sally flung open the door and stepped outside, closely followed by the still unseen Bedelia. <hr class="chap" /> [51] <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

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