Peggy in Toyland — Story, Setting & Ideas

ust eight years old. She had very long rather straight hair, blue eyes, a dear little pudgy nose, and a small mouth. She lived with her father and mother in a nice house in the country with a big garden round it. It was about five miles from the sea, and she was sometimes taken there in the motor-car, to paddle and to play on the sands.

The place she used to go to had only one house near it. This was a large bungalow belonging to some friends of Peggy’s father and mother. It was built right on the beach, but there was a little lawn beside it, and on the edge of the lawn were two wooden figures that had been once figure-heads of ships. They were both ladies, and it was difficult to tell whether they were old or young, because one of them had had her nose broken off, and the other had lost every bit of paint off her face. But there was something agreeable in the appearance of both of them, and Peggy used to think she would have liked to know them when they were leading a more active life, perched up in the very front of the ships to which they belonged, and travelling over the sea to all sorts of strange places. But they still looked over the sea, which was better than being broken up and burnt, with the rest of the ships; and of course they always looked in one direction, straight across the water to the big Island on the other side of it.

Peggy had never been to the Island, and when she was playing on the sands she would sometimes look at it, and wonder what it was like there. She could see a little town and a little church, and a few houses scattered about among the hills; and she wondered what sort of people lived in them.

Well, when she was eight years old she found out, and she also got to know a good deal more about the two wooden ladies of the bungalow. What she found out was so remarkable that it is doubtful if any little girl has ever seen anything like it before, and I am going to tell you the story of it.

But before I begin I must say this: that if Peggy had not had a kind heart she would never have found out anything. I do not mean to say that she was never naughty; but she was never naughty in that most horrid of all ways, by being cruel or unkind. She had several pets--two rabbits and four guinea-pigs, a bantam cock and hen, two white pigeons, and a kitten, which she liked best of them all. If she had once been cruel to any of these pets, just to see what they would do, it is quite certain that she would never have been taken to the Island. And if she had made fun of old people or poor people, she would never have gone either, because that is an extremely unkind and horrid thing to do. But Peggy had never done any of these things, because she was a really kind little girl, and if something horrid inside her whispered: “Now, just be a little bit cruel,” she was almost as much ashamed of it as if she had really been cruel, and she never listened to the whisper for a moment. So when she was eight years old she was taken to the Island in the extraordinary way I am going to tell you about.

Peggy had a good number of toys, and amongst them two dolls, which will now engage our attention.

The elder of the two was a wooden doll, which she had had for some time, and the story of this doll is rather interesting.

When Peggy was five years old she had a doll given her called Rose. Rose was well-dressed, in clothes that would come on and off; and rather a nice hat came with her. But somehow Peggy could not get to like her much. She took her about everywhere for quite a week, undressed her every night and dressed her again every morning, and sometimes gave her a bath, but not with water in it, because her body was stuffed, although her head was composition. She also took her out in the new pram that had been given to her at the same time, and put up the hood if it was sunny. In fact she did everything that a nice little girl could to make Rose feel that she had come to a kind and loving home.