Racketty-Packetty House

Racketty-Packetty House

The Project Gutenberg EBook of Racketty-Packetty House, by Frances
H. Burnett #16 in our series by Frances H. Burnett
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Title: Racketty-Packetty House
Author: Frances H. Burnett
Release Date: July, 2005 [EBook #8574] [Yes, we are more than one
year ahead of schedule] [This file was first posted on July 25, 2003]
Edition: 10

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RACKETTY-PACKETTY HOUSE ***

Produced by Nicole Apostola

RACKETTY-PACKETTY HOUSE As told by Queen Crosspatch
By Frances Hodgson Burnett Author of "Little Lord Fauntleroy"
With illustrations by Harrison Cady
[Transcribers note: see frontispiece.jpg, dance.jpg and fairy.jpg]

Now this is the story about the doll family I liked and the doll family I
didn't. When you read it you are to remember something I am going to
tell you. This is it: If you think dolls never do anything you don't see
them do, you are very much mistaken. When people are not looking at
them they can do anything they choose. They can dance and sing and
play on the piano and have all sorts of fun. But they can only move
about and talk when people turn their backs and are not looking. If any
one looks, they just stop. Fairies know this and of course Fairies visit in
all the dolls' houses where the dolls are agreeable. They will not
associate, though, with dolls who are not nice. They never call or leave
their cards at a dolls' house where the dolls are proud or bad tempered.
They are very particular. If you are conceited or ill-tempered yourself,
you will never know a fairy as long as you live.
Queen Crosspatch.

RACKETTY-PACKETTY HOUSE
Racketty-Packetty House was in a corner of Cynthia's nursery. And it
was not in the best corner either. It was in the corner behind the door,
and that was not at all a fashionable neighborhood. Racketty-Packetty
House had been pushed there to be out of the way when Tidy Castle
was brought in, on Cynthia's birthday. As soon as she saw Tidy Castle

Cynthia did not care for Racketty-Packetty House and indeed was quite
ashamed of it. She thought the corner behind the door quite good
enough for such a shabby old dolls' house, when there was the beautiful
big new one built like a castle and furnished with the most elegant
chairs and tables and carpets and curtains and ornaments and pictures
and beds and baths and lamps and book-cases, and with a knocker on
the front door, and a stable with a pony cart in it at the back. The
minute she saw it she called out:
"Oh! what a beautiful doll castle! What shall we do with that untidy old
Racketty-Packetty House now? It is too shabby and old-fashioned to
stand near it."
In fact, that was the way in which the old dolls' house got its name. It
had always been called, "The Dolls' House," before, but after that it was
pushed into the unfashionable neighborhood behind the door and ever
afterwards--when it was spoken of at all--it was just called
Racketty-Packetty House, and nothing else.
[Transcriber's Note: See picture tidyshire_castle.jpg]
Of course Tidy Castle was grand, and Tidy Castle was new and had all
the modern improvements in it, and Racketty-Packetty House was as
old-fashioned as it could be. It had belonged to Cynthia's Grandmamma
and had been made in the days when Queen Victoria was a little girl,
and when there were no electric lights even in Princesses' dolls' houses.
Cynthia's Grandmamma had kept it very neat because she had been a
good housekeeper even when she was seven years old. But Cynthia was
not a good housekeeper and she did not re-cover the furniture when it
got dingy, or re-paper the walls, or mend the carpets and bedclothes,
and she never thought of such a thing as making new clothes for the
doll family, so