"Aunt Penelope's stories werecharming."—Frontispiece.
THE
LAND OF LOST TOYS
BY
JULIANA HORATIA EWING
AUTHOR OF "JACKANAPES," "DADDY DARWIN'S DOVECOT,"
"THE STORY OF A SHORT LIFE,""MARY'S MEADOW," ETC
Illustrated
BOSTON
LITTLE, BROWN, AND COMPANY
Copyright, 1900,
By Little, Brown, and Company
THE LAND OF LOST TOYS
AN EARTHQUAKE IN THE NURSERY.
t was certainly an aggravated offence. It is generally understood infamilies that "boys will be boys," but there is a limit to theforbearance implied in the extenuating axiom. Master Sam was condemnedto the back nursery for the rest of the day.
He always had had the knack of breaking his own toys,—he notunfrequently broke other people's; but accidents will happen, and histwin sister and factotum, Dot, was long-suffering.
Dot was fat, resolute, hasty, and devotedly unselfish. When Samscalped her new doll, and fastened the glossy black curls to a wigwamimprovised with the curtains of the four-post bed in the best bedroom,Dot was sorely tried. As her eyes passed from the crownless doll onthe floor to the floss-silk ringlets hanging from the bed-furniture,her round rosy face grew rounder and rosier, and tears burst from hereyes. But in a moment more she clenched her little fists, forced backthe tears, and gave vent to her favorite saying, "I don't care."
That sentence was Dot's bane and antidote; it was her vice and hervirtue. It was her standing consolation, and it brought her into allher scrapes. It was her one panacea for all the ups and downs of herlife (and in the nursery where Sam developed his organ of[2]destructiveness there were ups and downs not a few); and it was theform her naughtiness took when she was naughty.
"Don't care fell into a goose-pond, Miss Dot," said nurse, on oneoccasion of the kind.
"I don't care if he did," said Miss Dot; and as nurse knew no furtherfeature of the goose-pond adventure which met this view of it, sheclosed the subject by putting Dot into the corner.
In the strength of Don't care, and her love for Sam, Dot bore muchand long. Her dolls perished by ingenious but untimely deaths. Hertoys were put to purposes for which they were never intended, andsuffered accordingly. But Sam was penitent, and Dot was heroic.Fiorinda's scalp was mended with a hot knitting-needle and a perpetualbonnet, and Dot rescued her paint-brushes from the glue-pot, and smelther india-rubber as it boiled down in Sam's waterproof manufactory,with long-suffering forbearance.
There are, however, as we have said, limits to everything. Anearthquake celebrated with the whole contents of the toy cupboard isnot to be borne.
The matter was this. Early one morning Sam announced that he had aglorious project on hand. He was going to give a grand show andentert