Part 5

The next day Christina was really ill. It was not only the ankle, but she had caught a chill, the doctor said, and they must be very careful with her. Roy went about with a sad and sadder face, for Christina was his only playmate, and he loved her more than anything else; besides, there was now no one to bowl to him, and also it seemed so silly not to be able to mend a doll’s eyes. He moped in the house all the morning, and was continually being sent away from Christina’s door, because she was too ill to bear anyone in the room except nurse. She was wandering in her mind, nurse said, and kept on saying that she had blinded her doll, and crying to have its eyes made right again; but she would not let a hand be laid upon her, so that to have Diana mended seemed impossible. Nurse cried too, as she said it, and Roy joined with her. He could not remember ever having been so miserable.

The doctor looked very grave when he was going away. “That doll ought to be put right,” he said to Mrs. Tiverton. “She’s a sensitive little thing, evidently, and this feeling of disobeying you and treating her father’s present lightly is doing her a lot of harm, apart altogether from the chill and the sprain. If we could get those eyes in again she’d be better in no time, I believe.”

Roy and his mother heard this with a sinking heart, for they knew that Christina’s arms locked Diana to her side almost as if they were bars of iron.

“Anyway,” the doctor said, “I’ve left some medicine that ought to give her some sleep, and I shall come again this afternoon.” So saying, he touched up his horse, and Mrs. Tiverton walked into the house again.

Roy stood still pondering.

Suddenly his mind was made up, and he set off for the high road at a good swinging pace. At the gate he passed Jim. “If they want to know where I am,” he called, “say I’ve gone to Dormstaple, to the Miss Bannisters’ Brother.”

IV

Miss Sarah Bannister and Miss Selina Bannister had lived in Dormstaple as long almost as anyone could remember, although they were by no means old. They had the red house with white windows, the kind of house which one can see only in old English market-towns. There was a gravel drive before it, in the shape of a banana, the carriages going in at one end and out at the other, stopping at the front doorsteps in the middle. A china cockatoo hung in the window. The door knocker was of the brightest brass; it was a pleasure to knock it.

Behind the house was a very large garden, with a cedar in the midst, and a very soft lawn, on which the same birds settled every morning in winter for the breakfast that the Miss Bannisters provided. The cedar and the other trees had cigar-boxes nailed to them, for tits or wrens to build in, and half cocoa-nuts and lumps of fat were always hung just outside the windows. In September button mushrooms grew on the lawn--enough for breakfast every morning. At one side of the house was the stable and coach-house, on the other side a billiard-room, now used as a workshop. And this workshop brings us to the Miss Bannisters’ Brother.

The Miss Bannisters’ Brother was an invalid, and he was also what is called eccentric. “Eccentric, that’s what he is,” Mr. Stallabrass, who kept the King’s Arms, had said, and there could be no doubt of it after that. This meant that he wore rather shabby clothes, and took no interest in the town, and was rarely seen outside the house or the garden.

Rumour said, however, that he was very clever with his hands, and could make anything. What was the matter with the Miss Bannisters’ Brother no one seemed to know, but it gradually kept him more and more indoors.

No one ever spoke of him as Mr. Bannister; they always said the Miss Bannisters’ Brother. If you could see the Miss Bannisters, especially Miss Selina, you would understand this; but although they had deep, gruff voices, they were really very kind.

As time went on, and the Miss Bannisters’ Brother did not seem to grow any better, or to be likely to take up his gardening and his pigeons again, the Miss Bannisters had racked their brains to think of some employment for him other than reading, which is not good for anyone all day long. One evening, some years before this story, while the three were at tea, Miss Selina cried suddenly, “I have it!”--so suddenly, indeed, that Miss Sarah spilt her cup, and her brother took three lumps of sugar instead of two.

“Have what?” they both exclaimed.

“Why,” she said, “I was talking to-day with Mrs. Boniface, and she was saying how nice it would be if there was some one in the town who could mend toys--poor Miss Piper at the Bazaar being so useless, and all the carpenters understanding nothing but making book-shelves and cucumber-frames, and London being so far away--and I said, ‘Yes,’ never thinking of Theodore here. And, of course, it’s the very thing for him.”

“Of course,” said Miss Sarah. “He could take the old billiard-room.”

“And have a gas-stove put in it,” said Miss Selina.

“An oil-stove,” said Miss Sarah; “it’s more economical.”

“A gas-stove,” said Miss Selina; “it’s more trustworthy.”

“And put up a bench,” said Miss Sarah.

“And some cocoa-nut-matting on the floor,” said Miss Selina.

“Linoleum,” said Miss Sarah; “it’s cheaper.”

“Cocoa-nut-matting,” said Miss Selina; “it’s better and warmer for his feet.”

“And we could call it the Dolls’ Hospital,” said Miss Sarah.

“Infirmary,” said Miss Selina.

“I prefer Hospital,” said Miss Sarah.

“Infirmary,” said Miss Selina. “Dr. Bannister, house-surgeon, attends daily from ten till one.”

“It would be the prettiest and kindliest occupation,” said Miss Sarah, “as well as a useful one.”

“That’s the whole point of it,” said Miss Selina.

And that is how--five or six years ago--the Miss Bannisters’ Brother came to open the Dolls’ Infirmary. But he did not stop short at mending dolls. He mended all kinds of other things too; he advised on the length of tails for kites; he built ships; he had even made fireworks.

V

Roy walked into Dormstaple at about one o’clock, very tired and hot and dusty and hungry. With the exception of a lift for a mile and a half in the baker’s cart, he had had to walk or run all the way. A little later, after asking his way more than once, he stood on the doorstep of the Miss Bannisters’ house. The door was opened by old Eliza, and as the flavour of roast fowl rushed out, Roy knew how hungry he was. “I want to see the Miss Bannisters’ Brother,” he said, “please.”

“You’re too late,” was the answer, “and it’s the wrong door. Come to-morrow morning, and go to the Hinfirmary. Mr. Theodore never sees children in the afternoon.”

“Oh, but I must,” Roy almost sobbed.

“Chut, chut!” said old Eliza, “little boys shouldn’t say must.”

“But when they must, what else is there for them to say?” Roy asked.

“Chut, chut!” said old Eliza again. “That’s himperent! Now run away, and come to-morrow morning.”

This was too much for Roy. He covered his face with his hands, and really and truly cried--a thing he would scorn to do on his own account.

While he stood there in this distress a hand was placed on his arm and he was drawn gently into the house. He heard the door shut behind him. The hand then guided him along passages into a great room, and there he was liberated. Roy looked round; it was the most fascinating room he had ever seen. There was a long bench at the window, with a comfortable chair before it, and on the bench were hammers and chisels and all kinds of tools. A ship nearly finished lay in one place, a clockwork steamer in another, a pair of rails wound about the floor on the cocoa-nut matting--in and out like a snake--on which a toy train probably ran, and here and there were signals. On the shelves were coloured papers, bottles, boxes, and wire. In one corner was a huge kite, as high as a man, with a great face painted on it. Several dolls, more or less broken, lay on the table.

All this he saw in a moment. Then he looked at the owner of the hand, who had been standing beside him all the while with an amused expression on his delicate, kind face. Roy knew in an instant it was the Miss Bannisters’ Brother.

“Well,” said the Miss Bannisters’ Brother; “so when one must, one must?”

“Yes,” Roy said half timidly.

“Quite right too,” said the Miss Bannisters’ Brother. “‘Must’ is a very good word, if one has the character to back it up. And now tell me, quickly, what is the trouble? Something very small, I should think, or you wouldn’t be able to carry it in your pocket.”

“It’s not in my pocket,” Roy said; “it’s not here at all. I want--I want a lesson.”

“A lesson?” the Miss Bannisters’ Brother asked in surprise.

“Yes, in eye-mending. When eyes fall inside and rattle, you know.”

The Miss Bannisters’ Brother sat down, and took Roy between his knees. There was something about this little dusty, nervous boy that his clients (often tearful enough) had never displayed before, and he wished to understand it. “Now tell me all about it,” he said.

Roy told him everything, right from the first.

“And what is your father’s name?” was the only question that had to be asked. When he heard this, the Miss Bannisters’ Brother rose. “You must stay here a minute,” he said.

“But--but the lesson?” Roy exclaimed. “You know I ought to be getting back again. Christina----”

“All right, just a minute,” the Miss Bannisters’ Brother replied.

When the Miss Bannisters’ Brother came back, Miss Selina came with him. “Come and get tidy. You are just in time for dinner,” she said, “and afterwards we are going to drive home with you.”

“Oh, but I can’t stop for dinner!” Roy cried. “It’s much too important to stop for dinner; I’m not really hungry, either.”

“Dinner will only take a little while,” said Miss Selina, “and the horses can be getting ready at the same time; and if you were to walk you wouldn’t be home nearly so soon as you will if you drive, dinner-time included.”

“Besides,” said the Miss Bannisters’ Brother, “I’m much too hungry to give lessons. I need heaps of food--chicken and things--before I can give a lesson.”

“But Christina----” Roy gasped again.

“And, as a matter of fact, we’ve thought of a better way than the lesson,” Miss Selina said. “Mr. Bannister is going with you; but he must eat first, mustn’t he?”

It took a moment for Roy to appreciate this, but when he did he was the happiest boy in Dormstaple.

He never tasted a nicer chicken, he said afterwards.

VI

Certainly not more than three-quarters of an hour had passed before the carriage was on its way to Mapleton--with the Miss Bannisters’ Brother propped up with cushions (for he could not bear the jolting of carriages) on the back seat, and Miss Selina and Miss Sarah, who had come to look after him, on the other. Roy was on the box. You never saw such puzzled faces as the Dormstaple people had when the party went by, for the Miss Bannisters’ Brother had not driven out these twenty years; but their surprise was nothing to that of old Eliza, who wandered about the rooms all the rest of the day muttering “Little himperent boy!”

At the Mapleton gates Roy jumped down and rushed up to the house. His mother came to the door as he reached it. “Oh, mother, mother,” he cried, “he’s come himself!”

“Who has come?” she asked, forgetting to say anything about Roy’s long absence. “I hoped it was the doctor. Christina is worse, I’m afraid; she won’t sleep.”

“It’s all right,” Roy assured her. “I’ve brought the Miss Bannisters’ Brother, who mends dolls and everything, and he’ll put the eyes right in no time, and then Chrissie’ll be well again. Here they are!”

At this moment the carriage reached the door; but Mrs. Tiverton’s perplexities were not removed by it. On the contrary, they were increased, for she saw before her three total strangers. Miss Selina, however, hastily stepped out and took Mrs. Tiverton’s hand, and explained the whole story, adding, “We are not coming in; my sister and I have a call to pay a little further on. We shall come back in less than an hour for our brother, carry him off, and be no trouble at all. I know how little you must want just now even people that you know.” In spite of Mrs. Tiverton’s protest, Miss Selina had her way, and the sisters drove off.

While this conversation had been in progress, Roy had been speaking to the Miss Bannisters’ Brother. He had been preparing the speech ever since they had started, for it was very important. “Please,” he said--“please how much will this visit be, because I want to pay for it myself?”

The Miss Bannisters’ Brother smiled. “But suppose you haven’t enough?” he said.

“Oh, but I think I have!” Roy told him. “I’ve got seven-and-six, and when the vet. came to see Lord Roberts it was only five shillings.”

The Miss Bannisters’ Brother smiled again. “Our infirmary is rather peculiar,” he said. “We don’t take money at all; we take promises; different kinds of promises from different people, according to their means. We ask rich patients’ friends to promise to give away old toys, or story-books, or scrap-books, or something of that kind, to real hospitals--children’s hospitals. We find that much better than money. Money’s such a nuisance. One is always losing the key of the money-box.”

Roy was a little disappointed. “Oh yes!” he said, however, “I’ll do that. Won’t I just? But, you know,” he added, “you can always break open a money-box if it comes to the worst. Pokers aren’t bad. And there’s a way of getting the money out with a table-knife.”

It was just then that the Miss Bannisters drove off, and Mrs. Tiverton asked their brother to come to Christina’s room with her. Roy would have given anything to have been allowed upstairs; but as it was forbidden, he went to see Jim and tell him the news. He found, however, that the housemaid had already told not only Jim but every one else.

“Now it will be all right,” she was saying. “The Miss Bannisters’ Brother will do it! Why, he made a wooden leg for a tame jackdaw once!”

VII

Christina was moaning in the bed with Diana locked in her arms when the Miss Bannisters’ Brother sat down beside her. “Come,” he said gently, “let me feel your pulse.”

Christina pushed her wrist towards him wearily.

“Oh no, not yours!” he said, with a little laugh. “Yours doesn’t matter. I meant this little lady’s. I’m not your doctor. I’m a doll’s doctor.”

Christina turned her poor flushed face towards him for the first time. A doll’s doctor--it was a new idea. And he really seemed to be all right--not anyone dressed up to make her feel foolish or coax her into taking horrid medicine. “Was it your carriage I heard?” she asked.

“Yes,” he said. “I have come on purpose. But so many dolls are ill just now that I must be getting away soon. It’s quite a bad time for dolls, especially French ones. They are very delicate.”

“Mine is French,” Christina said, growing really interested.

“How very curious!” he answered. “I had a French patient the other day--a Parisian--whose sight had become so weak that she had to wear glasses. And now for the pulse,” he went on, and he drew out a large gold watch.

Mrs. Tiverton was looking on with tears in her eyes. Christina had not taken this quiet interest in anything or kept so still in bed for many hours. Not even the sleeping draught had had any effect.

The Miss Bannisters’ Brother held Diana’s tiny wrist and looked very grave. “Dear, dear!” he said, “I ought to have been sent for before, and then I could have cured her here in your arms. As it is, I must take her to the light. Won’t you have that nice jelly while I am treating Miss----? Let me see, what is my patient’s name?”

“Diana,” Christina said.

“Ah, yes--Miss Diana. By the time you have finished the jelly I ought to have finished my visit.” So saying he rose and carried Diana to the window-seat behind the curtains, while Mrs. Tiverton gave Christina the jelly. Christina took it, nurse said afterwards, like a lamb--though I never saw a lamb take jelly.

Meanwhile, the Miss Bannisters’ Brother had taken some tools and a tube of seccotine from his pocket, and he had lifted up Diana’s hair, cut a hole in her head, and was busily readjusting the machinery of her eyes. It was all done in five minutes, just as Christina was eating the last mouthful. “There,” he said, returning to the bedside, “that’s all right. It was a very simple operation, and didn’t hurt at all. I think our patient can see now as well as ever.”

Christina peered into Diana’s face with a cry of joy, and sank back on the pillow in an ecstasy of content.

Neither Mrs. Tiverton nor the Miss Bannisters’ Brother dared to move for some minutes. While they sat there the doctor tip-toed in. He crossed to the bed and looked at Christina. “She’s asleep,” he said. “Splendid! She’s all right now. It was sleep she wanted more than anything. Don’t let her hear a sound, nurse, for hours.”

They found Roy waiting for the news. When he heard it he jumped for joy. His mother caught him up and hugged him. “You thoughtful little imp!” she cried--and, turning to the doctor, told him the story. He went off, laughing. “I shall take my door-plate down when I get home,” he called out as he drove off, “and send it round to you, Bannister. You’re the real doctor.”

When the Miss Bannisters drove back they found tea all ready, and Mrs. Tiverton would not hear of their leaving without it. And when they did leave, an hour later, they were all fast friends.

VIII

Roy and Christina never think of going to Dormstaple now without calling at the red house.

THE ANTI-BURGLARS

THE ANTI-BURGLARS

I

The letter was addressed to Miss Mary Stavely. It ran:

“MY DEAR MARY,

“I have just received five pounds that I had given up for lost, and, remembering what you told me at Easter of the importance of distributing a little money in the village, I think you had better have it and become my almoner. An almoner is one who gives away money for another. I shall be interested in hearing how you get on.

“Your affectionate “UNCLE HERBERT.”

Inside the letter was a five-pound note.

Mary read the letter for the twentieth time, and for the twentieth time unfolded the crackling five-pound note--more money than she had ever seen before. She was thirteen.

“But what shall I do with it?” she asked. “So many people want things.”

“Oh, you mustn’t ask me,” said her mother. “Uncle Herbert wants you to decide entirely for yourself. You must make a list of every one in the village who wants help, and then look into each case very carefully.”

“Yes,” said Harry, Mary’s brother, as he finished breakfast, “and don’t forget me. My bicycle ought to be put right, for one thing, and, for another, I haven’t any more films for my camera. If that isn’t a deserving case I’d like to know what is.”

II

In a few days’ time the list was ready. It ran like this:

£ s. d. Mrs. Meadows’ false teeth want mending. It can be done for 0 12 6 Tommy Pringle ought to go to a Nursing Home by the sea for three weeks. This costs 7s. a week and 5s. 4d. return fare 1 6 4 Old Mrs. Wigram really must have a new bonnet 0 4 6 Mrs. Ryan has been saving up for months to buy a sewing machine. She had it all ready, but Sarah’s illness has taken away 10s. I should like to make that up 0 10 0 The little Barretts ought to have a real ball. It isn’t any fun playing with a bit of wood 0 1 0 Mr. Eyles has broken his spectacles again 0 2 6 Old Mr. and Mrs. Snelling have never been in London, and they’re both nearly eighty. I’m sure they ought to go. There is an excursion on the first of the month at 3s. return each, and their grandson’s wife would look after them there. Fraser’s cart to the station and back would be 4s. 0 10 0 Mrs. Callow will lose all her peas and currants again if she doesn’t have a net 0 3 0

The schoolmaster says that the one thing that would get the boys to the village room is a gramaphone like the one at the public-house. This is 15s., and twelve tunes for 9s. 1 4 0 Mrs. Carter’s mangle will cost 8s. to be mended, but it must be done 0 8 0 Thomas Barnes’ truck is no good any more, and his illness took away all the money he had; but he will never take it if he knows it comes from us 1 10 0

Mary read through her list and once more added up the figures. They came to £6 11s. 10d.

“Dear me!” she said, “I hadn’t any idea it was so difficult to be an almoner.”

She went through the list again, and brought it down to £5 0s. 10d. by knocking off one week of Tommy Pringle’s sea-side holiday and depriving the village room of its gramaphone.

“I suppose I must make up the tenpence myself,” she said.

III

That afternoon Mary went to call on Mr. Verney. Mr. Verney was an artist who lived at the forge cottage. He and Mary were great friends. She used to sit by him while he painted, and he played cricket with her and Harry and was very useful with a pocket-knife.

“No one,” she said to herself, “can help me so well as Mr. Verney, and if I decide myself on how the money is to be spent, it will be all right to get some help in spending it.”

Mr. Verney liked the scheme immensely. “But I don’t see that you want any help,” he said. “You have done it so far as well as possible.”

“Well,” said Mary, “there’s one great difficulty: Thomas Barnes would never take anything from our house. You see, we once had his son for a gardener, and father had to send him away because of something he did; but though it was altogether his son’s fault, Thomas Barnes has never spoken to father since, or even looked at him. But he’s very old and poorly, and very lonely, and it’s most important he should have a new hand-truck, because all his living depends on it; but it’s frightfully important that he shouldn’t know who gave it to him.”

“Wouldn’t he guess?” Mr. Verney said.

“Not if nobody knew.”

“Oh, I see: no one is to know. That makes it much more fun.”