So the Muffin-man came hurrying round to the back door and took the tray of muffins off his head and lifted the green baize cloth off the top, and then the nice white cloth which was underneath it. And Mother bought some muffins, while Milly-Molly-Mandy looked at the Muffin-man’s bell, and rang it just a bit (it was quite heavy).
And when little-friend-Susan came along the road outside the nice white cottage with the thatched roof, to see if Milly-Molly-Mandy was coming out to play, Mother asked Milly-Molly-Mandy if she wouldn’t like to invite little-friend-Susan to meet Milly-next-door.
So Milly-Molly-Mandy ran hoppity-skipping out and said to little-friend-Susan, “Mother says will you come to tea today? Milly-next-door is coming!”
So little-friend-Susan ran hoppity-skipping home down the road to ask her mother; and then she ran hoppity-skipping back to Milly-Molly-Mandy and said, “Mother says thank you very much. I’d love to come!”
That afternoon Milly-Molly-Mandy was very busy. She tidied her little bedroom, and she brushed Toby the dog and Topsy the cat as long as they would let her, and she helped lay the table with cups and saucers and plates, and fetched a pot of strawberry jam and a pot of honey from the storeroom (outside the back door), and picked chrysanthemums for the vase in the centre of the table.
And then little-friend-Susan came in (in her Sunday frock), and she helped Milly-Molly-Mandy arrange her dolls.
And then there was a sound of voices outside, and they looked out of the window and saw Uncle talking to Mr Short and Milly-next-door, so Mother and Milly-Molly-Mandy went out and brought Milly-next-door in, while Uncle and Mr Short went off together to the chicken enclosure.
Milly-Molly-Mandy was very glad she had a nice little bedroom of her own now to take her friends up to. Milly-next-door thought it was very pretty indeed, and she loved the robin cloth on the little green chest of drawers.
When they came downstairs again Mother had lighted the lamp, and Aunty had drawn the curtains, and Grandma was beginning to toast the muffins before the blazing fire. Milly-Molly-Mandy and Milly-next-door and little-friend-Susan all said they would do it for Grandma.
So they sat in a row before the blazing fire and toasted muffins on forks, and little-friend-Susan and Milly-next-door quite got over feeling shy with each other, and they talked about school and paper dolls and all sorts of things. And as they toasted the muffins Grandma buttered them and stood them in the muffin dish on the stove to keep hot.
Just then there came a knock on the back door, and when Mother opened it there was Billy Blunt with a note from Mrs Blunt. (It was a recipe for ginger biscuits which Mother wanted.)
So Mother thanked Billy Blunt and said, “You’re just in time to have tea with us!”
Billy Blunt said, “I’ve just had tea, really.”
But he grinned and looked quite pleased when Mother said, “Well, come in and have another!” And he came in, and Milly-Molly-Mandy gave him her fork and he toasted muffins, while Milly-Molly-Mandy helped Grandma to butter them.
And what with the hot muffins, and the cherry cake, and the ordinary cake, and the big dish of strawberry jam, and the honey, and the new brown loaf and the white loaf, the kitchen began to smell very nice indeed.
And when Father came in from the garden, and Grandpa came in from the stable, and Uncle and Mr Short came in from the chicken enclosure, they felt very ready indeed for their tea.
“YOU’RE JUST IN TIME TO HAVE TEA WITH US!”
Milly-Molly-Mandy and Milly-next-door and little-friend-Susan and Billy Blunt had a low table all to themselves, with the cherry cake in the middle, which Milly-Molly-Mandy cut, and the grown-ups sat round the big table. (Toby the dog and Topsy the cat liked to be by the little table best.)
And then everybody talked and laughed and ate, and the fire blazed and crackled. And every single one of the toasted muffins was eaten up. (Toby the dog got the last half muffin, but Topsy the cat would only eat cherry cake with the cherries picked out.)
As soon as everyone had finished Mr Short and Milly-next-door had to go, as the last bus left the village at a quarter past six in winter-time. So they said goodbye to Father and Mother and Grandpa and Grandma and Uncle and Aunty and Milly-Molly-Mandy and little-friend-Susan and Billy Blunt, and hoped Milly-Molly-Mandy would come to see them next time she came to stay with Mrs Hooker.
And then Mr Short and Milly-next-door went out into the dark with two sleepy chickens in a basket (who were going to live in Mr Short’s back garden now).
When they were gone there was quite a lot of washing up to be done, and Mother and Aunty began clearing the table. So little-friend-Susan said please might she stay and help. Billy Blunt didn’t say anything at all, but he started putting the crumby plates together, and Milly-Molly-Mandy collected the cups and saucers.
So everybody set to work, and they had a regular clearing-up party all to themselves, each one seeing how quick and tidy they could be. Mother washed up in a big bowl of steamy water; Aunty and little-friend-Susan dried with tea-cloths; and Milly-Molly-Mandy and Billy Blunt ran backward and forward between scullery and kitchen, putting the china away in the cupboard and the spoons and knives in the basket, and Toby the dog ran backward and forward with them, and got quite excited (he thought it was some sort of a new game!).
Grandma sat knitting by the fire with Topsy the cat on her lap, because, she said, they were better out of the way with all those busy, bustling people about.
Very soon indeed everything was done, and Mother took off her apron and thanked all her helpers. And then Mr Moggs came to fetch little-friend-Susan home.
And after Milly-Molly-Mandy had seen them off down the path (Billy Blunt with them), she came back and stood in the middle of the tidy kitchen and thought how very nice it was to have real friends to come visiting!
About the Author
Joyce Lankester Brisley was born over a hundred years ago, on 6 February 1896. She had two sisters: an elder one, Ethel, and Nina, who was just a year younger than Joyce. The family lived in Bexhill-on-Sea in Sussex, in a house so close to the sea that when there was a very high tide the waves would come right into the garden. Joyce’s father ran a chemist’s shop in the town. Her mother enjoyed drawing and painting, but had to spend most of her time looking after the home and her children.
Joyce and her sisters were all good at art, like their mother, and went to evening classes at Hastings School of Art, taking the train there and back along the coast. By the time they were teenagers, “Eth” (as Ethel was always known in the family) was having her pictures accepted for exhibitions at the Royal Academy in London and was soon selling paintings as a result. Then, through a friend, the girls were invited to meet Miss Brown of the magazine Home Chat. They quickly began to do illustrations for this magazine, so for the first time all three sisters started to earn money for themselves.
This money was soon to become very important for the family. In 1912, when Joyce was sixteen, her parents separated. In her diary (writing in French as if to keep it a secret) she recorded that her father wanted his family to leave the house. They stayed until Joyce and Nina had finished their term at art school, then the three girls moved with their mother to South London, where Eth had found them a tiny flat.
In London, Joyce and Nina enrolled at the Lambeth School of Art in 1912 – an uncle kindly agreed to pay the fees for both girls. They studied there five days a week for two years. In 1913 they moved to a house with a large room that the three girls could use as a studio.
The outbreak of the First World War in 1914 meant that food was scarce. Their mother had to spend a lot of time searching for meat and vegetables she could afford, while the girls worked hard earning money from illustrations for magazines, newspapers and advertisements. Joyce writes in her diary about drawing advertisements for Cherry Blossom boot polish and Mansion floor polish. She also writes about the German bombing raids on London – describing how, in September 1916, the sister had to get up in the middle of the night and g
o downstairs for safety, still in their nightclothes and bedtime plaits.
Despite the war and constant worries about money, family life continued happily throughout this time. In 1917 Joyce records in her diary that Nina (daringly) wanted to cut her hair short, and Eth longed to do the same, but Joyce felt “I couldn’t – it wouldn’t suit me well at all”. The sisters obviously got along very well together, but nevertheless Joyce wished she had some privacy. She was delighted when, shortly after her twenty-first birthday, she was able to have a room of her own – “My longing, for years and years.”
In 1918 they all moved again, to a house with a larger studio. Joyce went with her mother and sisters to the local Christian Science Church. There they met an artist who worked for The Christian Science Monitor. As a result, both Joyce and Nina began submitting stories and drawings to the paper, and it was on the Children’s Page in October 1925 that the first story about Milly-Molly-Mandy appeared. The idea had come into Joyce’s mind one day when “the sun was shining and I longed to be out in the country instead of sitting indoors all day, earning a living . . .”
Milly-Molly-Mandy was an immediate success and soon began to gain a strong following among readers. Joyce records that:
“. . . boys and girls began writing letters to the paper, to the editors and to Milly-Molly-Mandy herself, wanting to know more about her, asking, Could she come for a holiday by the sea? Could she have a baby sister to take out riding in the pram? (She couldn’t, as she was an ‘only’ child, but little-friend-Susan could, and did.) Some of the letters enclosed foreign stamps for Billy Blunt’s collection (so generous!). One boy wrote all the way from Australia to tell me that ‘Father’ was shown digging with his wrong foot on the spade (for it seems the left foot is the right foot for digging with!). I wrote back to thank him and promised to alter the drawing before it went into a book – as you may see I did, for it’s nice to get things quite correct.”
Joyce went on writing stories about Milly-Molly-Mandy for the rest of her life, but she wrote about other characters too, in books such as Marigold in Godmother’s House (1934) and Adventures of Purl and Plain (1941). She also illustrated stories by other authors and was specially chosen by her publisher, George Harrap, to draw the pictures for the first edition of Ursula Moray Williams’ Adventures of the Little Wooden Horse (1938).
Joyce always remained close to her sisters. Nina, who became the first and much-loved illustrator of the Chalet School stories by Elinor M. Brent-Dyer, was the only one to marry. Ethel died in 1961, and Nina and Joyce died within a few months of each other, in 1978.
Joyce Lankester Brisley seems to have been rather a shy person and she obviously didn’t like publicity. Once, after two of her pictures had been accepted by the Royal Academy and a journalist wanted to interview her, she telegraphed at once that she “would be out”. Maybe she was a bit like Milly-Molly-Mandy herself – happy to be busily getting on with whatever task or errand she’d set herself for the day, and content with whatever good fortune life might bring her.
Books about Milly-Molly-Mandy from Macmillan Children’s Books
Milly-Molly-Mandy Stories
More of Milly-Molly-Mandy
First published by George G. Harrap 1929
This edition published 2018 by Macmillan Children’s Books
This electronic edition published 2018 by Macmillan Children’s Books
an imprint of Pan Macmillan
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ISBN 978-1-5098-4502-6
Copyright © Joyce Lankester Brisley 1929
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