Racketty-Packetty House | Page 9

it. They've forgotten you." And Peter Piper said:
"Don't let's think of it. Let's all join hands and dance round and round and kick up our heels and laugh as hard as ever we can."
And they did--and Lady Patsy laughed harder than any one else. After that she was always stealing away from Tidy Castle and coming in and having fun. Sometimes she stayed all night and slept with Meg and Peg and everybody invented new games and stories and they really never went to bed until daylight. But the Castle dolls grew more and more scornful every day, and tossed their heads higher and higher and sniffed louder and louder until it sounded as if they all had influenza. They never lost an opportunity of saying disdainful things and once the Duchess wrote a letter to Cynthia, saying that she insisted on removing to a decent neighborhood. She laid the letter in her desk but the gentleman mouse came in the night and carried it away. So Cynthia never saw it and I don't believe she could have read it if she had seen it because the Duchess wrote very badly--even for a doll.
And then what do you suppose happened? One morning Cynthia began to play that all the Tidy Castle dolls had scarlet fever. She said it had broken out in the night and she undressed them all and put them into bed and gave them medicine. She could not find Lady Patsy, so she escaped the contagion. The truth was that Lady Patsy had stayed all night at Racketty-Packetty House, where they were giving an imitation Court Ball with Peter Piper in a tin crown, and shavings for supper--because they had nothing else, and in fact the gentleman mouse had brought the shavings from his nest as a present.
[Transcriber's Note: See picture gentleman_mouse.jpg]
Cynthia played nearly all day and the Duchess and Lady Gwendolen and Lady Muriel and Lady Doris and Lord Hubert and Lord Francis and Lord Rupert got worse and worse.
By evening they were all raging in delirium and Lord Francis and Lady Gwendolen had strong mustard plasters on their chests. And right in the middle of their agony Cynthia suddenly got up and went away and left them to their fate--just as if it didn't matter in the least. Well in the middle of the night Meg and Peg and Lady Patsy wakened all at once.
"Do you hear a noise?" said Meg, lifting her head from her ragged old pillow.
[Transcriber's Note: See picture noise.jpg]
"Yes, I do," said Peg, sitting up and holding her ragged old blanket up to her chin.
Lady Patsy jumped up with feathers sticking up all over her hair, because they had come out of the holes in the ragged old bed. She ran to the window and listened.
"Oh! Meg and Peg!" she cried out. "It comes from the Castle. Cynthia has left them all raving in delirium and they are all shouting and groaning and screaming."
Meg and Peg jumped up too.
"Let's go and call Kilmanskeg and Ridiklis and Gustibus and Peter Piper," they said, and they rushed to the staircase and met Kilmanskeg and Ridiklis and Gustibus and Peter Piper coming scrambling up panting because the noise had wakened them as well.
They were all over at Tidy Castle in a minute. They just tumbled over each other to get there--the kind-hearted things. The servants were every one fast asleep, though the noise was awful. The loudest groans came from Lady Gwendolen and Lord Francis because their mustard plasters were blistering them frightfully.
Ridiklis took charge, because she was the one who knew most about illness. She sent Gustibus to waken the servants and then ordered hot water and cold water, and ice, and brandy, and poultices, and shook the trained nurse for not attending to her business--and took off the mustard plasters and gave gruel and broth and cough syrup and castor oil and ipecacuanha, and everyone of the Racketty-Packettys massaged, and soothed, and patted, and put wet cloths on heads, until the fever was gone and the Castle dolls all lay back on their pillows pale and weak, but smiling faintly at every Racketty-Packetty they saw, instead of turning up their noses and tossing their heads and sniffing loudly, and just scorning them.
Lady Gwendolen spoke first and instead of being haughty and disdainful, she was as humble as a new-born kitten.
"Oh! you dear, shabby, disrespectable, darling things!" she said. "Never, never, will I scorn you again. Never, never!"
[Transcriber's Note: See picture shabby.jpg]
"That's right!" said Peter Piper in his cheerful, rather slangy way. "You take my tip-never you scorn any one again. It's a mistake. Just you watch me stand on my head. It'll cheer you up."
And he turned six summersaults--just like lightning--and stood on his head and wiggled his ragged legs at them