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Racketty-Packetty House, by H. Burnett

RACKETTY-PACKETTY HOUSE

As told by Queen Crosspatch

By Frances Hodgson Burnett

Author of "Little Lord Fauntleroy"

With illustrations by Harrison Cady

Now this is the story about the doll family I liked and the dollfamily I didn't. When you read it you are to remember something Iam going to tell you. This is it: If you think dolls never doanything you don't see them do, you are very much mistaken. Whenpeople 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 offun. But they can only move about and talk when people turn theirbacks 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 theircards at a dolls' house where the dolls are proud or bad tempered.They are very particular. If you are conceited or ill-temperedyourself, 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. Andit was not in the best corner either. It was in the corner behindthe door, and that was not at all a fashionable neighborhood.Racketty-Packetty House had been pushed there to be out of the waywhen Tidy Castle was brought in, on Cynthia's birthday. As soon asshe saw Tidy Castle Cynthia did not care for Racketty-PackettyHouse and indeed was quite ashamed of it. She thought the cornerbehind the door quite good enough for such a shabby old dolls'house, when there was the beautiful big new one built like a castleand furnished with the most elegant chairs and tables and carpetsand curtains and ornaments and pictures and beds and baths andlamps and book-cases, and with a knocker on the front door, and astable with a pony cart in it at the back. The minute she saw itshe called out:

"Oh! what a beautiful doll castle! What shall we do with thatuntidy old Racketty-Packetty House now? It is too shabby andold-fashioned to stand near it."

In fact, that was the way in which the old dolls' house got itsname. It had always been called, "The Dolls' House," before, butafter that it was pushed into the unfashionable neighborhood behindthe door and ever afterwards—when it was spoken of at all—it wasjust called Racketty-Packetty House, and nothing else.

Of course Tidy Castle was grand, and Tidy Castle was new and hadall the modern improvements in it, and Racketty-Packetty House wasas old-fashioned as it could be. It had belonged to Cynthia'sGrandmamma and had been made in the days when Queen Victoria was a