Miss Happiness and Miss Flower (2 page)

‘I didn’t know you could,’ said Anne. ‘It’s a beautiful story.’

‘Jolly clever to remember it like that,’ said Tom.

‘It comes of reading,’ said Father. ‘That’s what I’m always telling you children. Good girl, Nona.’

He gave Nona a pat on the head and Nona felt so pleased that she smiled at him quite like a happy little girl, but Belinda was not pleased at all.

Belinda was the youngest and she had always been Father’s pet, and Tom’s and Anne’s; she did not like it when they praised Nona. ‘You needn’t think you’re so
clever,’ she said to Nona when everyone else had gone. ‘You can’t do anything
but
read . . . and cry, cry-baby. They only say you’re clever because you were so stupid
before.’

Nona did not answer but the happy look faded from her face.

‘Why did you come here?’ asked Belinda. The more she talked the angrier she grew. ‘Why did you have to come? We don’t want you. Why don’t you go home? Why
don’t you have a house and a family of your own?’

Nona still did not answer.

‘Star Festival! Rubbish!’ shouted Belinda.

‘It isn’t rubbish,’ said Nona in a hard little voice; now she was pale again and her eyes blazed, but Belinda did not see; she had flung out of the room.

When Nona was alone she went and stood by the window and presently a tear splashed down on the window-sill, then another and another. A home and a family of your own . . . ‘Coimbatore, old Ayah,’ whispered
Nona, and the tears came thick and fast.

I do not know how long Nona stood there by the window, but the room, and then the garden, grew dark. She could hear the others talking in the playroom and Mother singing in the
kitchen, but she stood there in the dark room staring out of the window.

I wish I could go home, thought Nona. I wish I could see my
own
father. I wish I could see Ayah. I wish . . . Now the wish was so big that it seemed to run out of her right up into the
sky, and . . . ‘Why, the stars are out!’ said Nona.

Across the garden she could see the shapes of trees, bare against the sky, and above them and behind them were stars, bright because of the frosty winter dark. There was a glass door into the
garden and Nona opened it and stepped outside. It was so cold that it made her catch her breath, but now she could see the whole night sky. There’s the Milky Way, thought Nona – her own
father had often showed it to her – and she wondered which of the stars were the two that held the people in love.

By the glass door there was a little tree. It was not a bamboo, of course, but as she looked at it Nona’s face suddenly grew determined and she came in and shut the door.

She switched on the light, and taking a piece of paper and a pencil from Mother’s desk – ‘Without even asking,’ said Belinda afterwards – she tore the paper into
narrow strips and began to write. ‘I wish I could go home,’ wrote Nona through more tears. ‘I wish I had never come.’ ‘I wish I was back in Coimbatore.’ ‘I
wish I had a house of my own.’ ‘I wish there wasn’t a Belinda.’ She took a piece of cotton from Mother’s work-basket, cut it into short bits and threaded one through
each of her papers, and rolled them up tightly so that no one could read them. There was a blazer belonging to Tom in the basket, waiting to be mended; Nona slipped it on and went out and tied her
wishes on the tree.

It seemed to help her unhappiness to put the wishes on the tree and she went back to write some more, but she had said all there was to say. The Japanese dolls were lying close by her elbow and
now she looked down at them. The light caught their eyes so that they shone up at her. I believe
they
like tying wishes on the tree, thought Nona. Of course, it’s their Star
Festival.

‘Our Star Festival!’ said Miss Happiness and Miss Flower.

It was not, of course, the right night, but that did not seem to matter. Nona took another piece of paper and cut that up, then ran into the playroom and quietly fetched her paint-box and a cup
of water; then she painted the new strips in colours, red and green and blue and yellow. When they were dry she began to write again.

‘What is she doing?’ whispered Miss Flower.

‘Writing wishes.’

‘I wish she would write some for us.’

Nona began to cut the strips into smaller, narrower ones.

‘What is she doing now?’

‘Writing wishes.’

‘But such tiny ones. Do you suppose . . .?’ asked Miss Flower – she hardly dared say it – ‘suppose they are for us?’

‘They are for us,’ said Miss Happiness, and Miss Flower cried, ‘Wishes for the River of Heaven!’ which is what Japanese people call the Milky Way.
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Next morning Anne was the first to look out of the window and see the little tree covered with wishes. How pretty they looked with their colours! Nona had found some tinsel left over from
Christmas and put that on too, and had cut out some paper flowers. ‘Why, Nona!’ said Anne, ‘how lovely!’ Then she looked again and asked, ‘Isn’t it . . .? Yes, it
is. Look,’ she called to the others. ‘Oh, do come and see. Nona has made a Star Festival all by herself.’

‘But not on bamboos,’ said Nona. ‘You haven’t any.’

‘But lots of wishes,’ said Anne.

‘Lots of wishes,’ whispered Miss Happiness and Miss Flower. They knew what the wishes were.

‘Rolled up like secrets,’ said Tom.

‘They are secrets,’ said Nona quickly. She was beginning to feel ashamed of some of them. ‘Secrets,’ she said again.

‘Secrets!’ sighed Miss Happiness and Miss Flower. They would have liked everyone to read them. ‘Because we
do
want to go home,’ they said. ‘We
do
want
a house of our own. We
do
wish Miss Nona could look after us. It’s a pity they have to be secrets.’ But the wishes were secret no longer; Belinda had slipped out into the garden
and was pulling them off the tree. When she had read some she came in and slammed the door.

‘How dare you!’ shouted Belinda at Nona. ‘They’re my dolls as much as yours,’ and she snatched them up. ‘Mother said so,’ shouted the furious
Belinda.

Two days ago Nona would have let Belinda take the dolls; she would have gone away by herself and read or stood looking out of the window, but she could not bear to see the way Miss Flower hung
limply in Belinda’s rough little hand. ‘Don’t! You’re hurting them,’ she cried.

‘They’re only dolls,’ said Belinda, more angry than ever, and she cried, ‘All right. They want a house. They can go in my dolls’ house.’

‘House? Did she say house?’ asked poor squeezed Miss Flower.

‘She said house,’ said Miss Happiness.

‘Like in our wish?’ But Miss Happiness was not at all sure this was like their wish.

‘How wonderful,’ whispered Miss Flower. She would have liked to close her eyes and dream but, of course, dolls with fixed eyes cannot do this.

Belinda knelt down in front of her dolls’ house and swung open the door. ‘It’s a funny kind of house,’ said Miss Happiness. For the first time she had a frightened quiver
in her voice.

To us it would not have been a funny kind of house, but when a Japanese doll says ‘a house’ she means something quite different. Belinda’s dolls’ house
was white with gables and a red roof. The front opened, and inside were two rooms downstairs and two rooms upstairs; it had flannel carpets, bits of lace for curtains and was filled full of
dolls’-house furniture and dolls’-house dolls all belonging to Belinda.

I am afraid she was a careless child and everything was dusty, dirty and higgledy-piggledy. It looked very higgledy-piggledy to Miss Happiness and Miss Flower. ‘I don’t want to stay
here,’ said Miss Flower as Belinda sat her on a dusty chair, on which already there was a large pin. ‘Ow!’ cried poor Miss Flower.

‘I don’t want to either,’ said Miss Happiness.

Perhaps it was because Nona too had known quite other kinds of houses, and felt so unhappy and strange in England, that she could guess what Miss Happiness and Miss Flower were feeling behind
their stiff plaster faces. ‘I don’t think the dolls’ house will do,’ said Nona.

‘Why not?’ said Belinda. She did not see anything wrong. ‘I’ll make room for them,’ she said and she swept the other dolls out of the dolls’ house,
helter-skelter, bumpetty-bump; the other poor dolls were bumped and bruised, their legs twisted round. ‘No! No!’ cried the Japanese dolls. ‘O Honourable Miss, please no! Oh no,
not for us! Oh, the poor dolls! No! No!’ Miss Flower remembered how her chip had ached when it was done. She saw a little boy doll with his wig half torn off, a girl doll with a twisted leg,
and ‘Oh, I can’t bear it!’ cried Miss Flower and she fell off the chair on to the floor.

‘Stupid thing,’ said Belinda.

When Belinda said that, Nona grew so angry and hot that she had to speak. ‘
She’s
not stupid,’ she said. ‘
You
are. Japanese dolls don’t sit on
chairs.’

‘How do you know?’

‘I once saw a picture of a Japanese girl serving tea, and she was kneeling on the floor, like this,’ said Nona; she took Miss Happiness and made her kneel.
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Miss Happiness had rather more stuffing in her body than Miss Flower; she stayed exactly where Nona had put her and very pretty she looked with her little black head and the big loop of her
sash, far more comfortable than Miss Flower had looked on the chair. Then, very gently, Nona took up Miss Flower and straightened her kimono and put her to kneel beside Miss Happiness.

‘That’s better. That’s better,’ sighed Miss Flower, and ‘Wish, Wish,’ Miss Happiness told her. ‘Wish that Miss Nona could look after us.’

‘Bet they won’t like kneeling there for long,’ said Belinda. ‘The floor’s too hard.’

‘Cushions,’ said Nona. ‘Flat sort of cushions.’ She said it quite certainly for she seemed to see a heap of bright dolls’ house cushions, and she pleaded,
‘Let me try to make them cushions, Belinda.’

Belinda looked at the untidy, dirty dolls’ house, then at the two little dolls kneeling on the floor as if they were . . . asking? thought Belinda. Indeed they were. Dolls cannot speak
aloud, you know that, but now Miss Happiness and Miss Flower wished: ‘Please, Honourable Miss. We are your little nuisances but please let us have the cushions.’ It was certainly the
first time in her noisy busy life that Belinda had felt a doll’s wish, and she was suddenly ashamed, but she was not going to let Nona know that. ‘You had better make them a whole
Japanese house,’ she said mockingly.

‘A Japanese dolls’ house,’ said Anne.

‘A Japanese dolls’ house?’ Nona looked startled. Until that moment she had never thought of such a thing. ‘I couldn’t. How could I?’ asked Nona.

At that moment Miss Flower slipped – you remember she had not as much stuffing as Miss Happiness. She slipped and the slip sounded like a sharp breath and her head sank even lower on the
floor. She must have knocked Miss Happiness, for Miss Happiness bent over too, and they looked as if they were very much asking.

‘But . . .’ said Nona, ‘I don’t know how.’

‘You didn’t know how to make a Star Festival, but you made it,’ said Tom.

‘Not properly,’ said Nona, but she was pleased, for Tom was the one in the family who really made things. Anne was clever; she could embroider and paint and sew and weave on her loom
but Tom had a proper work-bench in the play-room and was making a model galleon – which is a sailing-ship man-of-war. He was making it most beautifully with endless delicate pieces for masts
and spars, decks and rails. Tom really knew, and ‘You could make a dolls’ house,’ said Tom.

It was a week later. Every day Nona took Miss Happiness and Miss Flower out of their wooden box and dusted them and looked at them. ‘But where is our house?’ asked
Miss Flower every day, and every day they both wished, ‘Little Honourable Miss. Oh! please, little Honourable Miss, where is our house?’ But Nona could not think how to make a Japanese
dolls’ house.

She got a big cardboard box and cut out doors and windows, but that did not seem right and the cutting hurt her fingers. She tried to arrange an empty drawer with the wooden box for a bed and
some rolled-up handkerchiefs for cushions, but it did not look like anything at all. At last she came to Tom’s work-table and stood at his elbow.

He had finished cutting the pieces for the hull of his galleon – the hull is the bottom part of a boat – and now was very busy gluing them together. He knew Nona would not talk as Belinda
did and so he did not tell her to go away. She stood quite silently watching his clever careful fingers, and a feeling stirred in her own as if they could be clever and careful too. At last the
hull sat up firm and neat between its blocks on the work-table, though the glue was still sticky. Then Nona did speak.

‘How did you know how to make it?’ she asked very respectfully.

‘Learnt,’ said Tom, rubbing the glue off his thumbs with a wet rag.

‘How did you learn?’

‘How did you learn about the Star Festival?’

‘Oh!’ said Nona. ‘You mean . . .’ and, as she said that, Tom flipped over the book that had the plan of the galleon in it; it was a paper book filled with patterns and
designs, and called
100 Ways to Make a Fretsaw Model.
‘Don’t lose my place,’ said Tom.