My Naughty Little Sister

by Dorothy Edwards

  My naughty little sister waited and waited until she heard my mother coming upstairs with the doctor, and when the doctor came into her bedroom my naughty little sister didn’t say, ‘Go away,’ or pretend to be shy, or scream, or do any of the bad things she could do.

  She said, ‘Hallo, doctor,’ and then the doctor said, ‘Hallo, and how are you today?’ and my naughty little sister said, ‘I’m not a well girl today.’

  Then she said, ‘Have you got your doctor’s bag, and your listening-thing, and your glass-stick-thing to pop into my mouth?’ and the doctor said, ‘Yes, I have.’

  Then my naughty little sister was pleased as pleased, and she liked the doctor so much after all, that she took all the medicine he sent her without being cross once, and got a well girl again very quickly.

  4. My Naughty Little Sister makes a bottle-tree

  One day, when I was a little girl, and my naughty little sister was a littler girl, my naughty little sister got up very early one morning, and while my mother was cooking the breakfast, my naughty little sister went quietly, quietly out of the kitchen door, and quietly, quietly up the garden-path. Do you know why she went quietly like that? It was because she was up to mischief.

  She didn’t stop to look at the flowers, or the marrows or the runner-beans and she didn’t put her fingers in the water-tub. No! She went right along to the tool-shed to find a trowel. You know what trowels are, of course, but my naughty little sister didn’t. She called the trowel a ‘digger’.

  ‘Where is the digger?’ said my naughty little sister to herself.

  Well, she found the trowel, and she took it down the garden until she came to a very nice place in the big flower-bed. Then she stopped and began to dig and dig with the trowel, which you know was a most naughty thing to do, because of all the little baby seeds that are waiting to come up in flower-beds sometimes.

  Shall I tell you why my naughty little sister dug that hole? All right. I will. It was because she wanted to plant a brown shiny acorn. So, when she had made a really nice deep hole, she put the acorn in it, and covered it

  all up again with earth, until the brown shiny acorn was all gone.

  Then my naughty little sister got a stone, and a leaf, and a stick, and she put them on top of the hole, so that she could remember where the acorn was, and then she went indoors to have her hands washed for breakfast. She didn’t tell me, or my mother or anyone about the acorn. She kept it for her secret.

  Well now, my naughty little sister kept going down the garden all that day, to look at the stone, the leaf and the stick, on top of her acorn-hole, and my naughty little sister smiled and smiled to herself because she knew that there was a brown shiny acorn under the earth.

  But when my father came home, he was very cross. He said, ‘Who’s been digging in my flower-bed?’

  And my little sister said, ‘I have.’

  Then my father said, ‘You are a bad child. You’ve disturbed all the little baby seeds!’

  And my naughty little sister said, ‘I don’t care about the little baby seeds, I want a home for my brown shiny acorn.’

  So my father said, ‘Well, I care about the little baby seeds myself, so I shall dig your acorn up for you, and you must find another home for it,’ and he dug it up for her at once, and my naughty little sister tried all over the garden to find a new place for her acorn.

  But there were beans and marrows and potatoes and lettuce and tomatoes and roses and spinach and radishes, and no room at all for the acorn, so my naughty little sister grew crosser and crosser and when tea-time came she wouldn’t eat her tea. Aren’t you glad you don’t show off like that?

  Then my mother said, ‘Now don’t be miserable. Eat up your tea and you shall help me to plant your acorn in a bottleful of water.’

  So my naughty little sister ate her tea after all, and then my mother, who was a clever woman, filled a bottle with water, and showed my naughty little sister how to put the acorn in the top of the bottle. Shall I tell you how she did it, in case you want to try?

  Well now, my naughty little sister put the pointy end of the acorn into the water, and left the bottom of the acorn sticking out of the top – (the bottom end, you know, is the end that sits in the little cup when it’s on the tree).

  ‘Now,’ said my mother, ‘you can watch its little root grow in the water.’

  My naughty little sister had to put her acorn in lots of bottles of water, because the bottles were always getting broken, as she put them in such funny places. She put them on the kitchen window-sill where the cat walked, and on the side of the bath, and inside the bookcase, until my mother said, ‘We’ll put it on top of the cupboard, and I will get it down for you to see every morning after breakfast.’

  Then at last, the little root began to grow. It pushed down, down into the bottle of water and it made lots of other little roots that looked just like whitey fingers, and my naughty little sister was pleased as pleased. Then, one day, a little shoot came out of the top of the acorn, and broke all the browny outside off, and on this little shoot were two tiny baby leaves, and the baby leaves grew and grew, and my mother said, ‘That little shoot will be a big tree one day.’

  My naughty little sister was very pleased. When she was pleased she danced and danced, so you can just guess how she danced to think of her acorn growing into a tree.

  ‘Oh,’ she said, ‘when it’s a tree we can put a swing on it, and I can swing indoors on my very own tree.’

  But my mother said, ‘Oh, no. I’m afraid it won’t like being indoors very much now, it will want to grow out under the sky.’

  Then my naughty little sister had a good idea. And now, this is a good thing about my little sister – she had a very kind thought about her little tree. She said, ‘I know! When we go for a walk we’ll take my bottle-tree and the digger’ (which, of course, you call a trowel) ‘and we will plant it in the park, just where there are no trees, so it can grow and grow and spread and spread into a big tree.’

  And that is just what she did do. Carefully, carefully, she took her bottle-tree out of the bottle, and put it in her little basket, and then we all went out to the park. And when my little sister had found a good place for her little bottle-tree, she dug a nice deep hole for it, and then she put her tree into the hole, and gently, gently put the earth all round its roots, until only the leaves and the stem were showing, and when she’d planted it in, my mother showed her how to pat the earth with the trowel.

  Then at last the little tree was in the kind of place it really liked, and my little sister had planted it all by herself.

  Now you will be pleased to hear that the little bottle-tree grew and grew and now it’s quite a big tree. Taller than my naughty little sister, and she’s quite a big lady nowadays.

  5. The wiggly tooth

  When I was a little girl, and my naughty little sister was a very little girl, we used to have an apple tree in our garden, and sometimes my naughty little sister used to pick the apples and eat them. It was a very easy thing to do because the branches were so low.

  So, my mother told us we were not to pick the apples. My mother said, ‘It is naughty to pick the apples when they are growing upon the tree, because we want them to go on growing until they are ripe and rosy, and then we shall pick them and put them quite away for the winter-time.’

  ‘If you want an apple,’ my mother said, ‘you must pick up a windfall and bring it to me, and I will wash it for you.’

  As you know, ‘windfalls’ are apples that fall off the tree on to the grass, so, one day, my little sister looked under the tree and found a nice big windfall on the grass, and she took it in for my mother to wash.

  When my mother had washed the apple, and cut out the specky bit where the little maggot had gone to live, my little sister sat down on the step to eat her big apple.

  She opened her mouth very wide, because it was such a big apple, and she took a big bite. And what do you think happened? She felt a funny cracky sort of feeling in her
mouth. My naughty little sister was so surprised that she nearly tumbled off the step when she felt the funny cracky feeling in her mouth, and she put in her finger to see what the crackiness was, and she found that one of her nice little teeth was loose.

  So my naughty little sister ran indoors to my mother, and she said, ‘Oh, dear, my tooth has gone all loose and wiggly, what shall I do?’ in a waily whiny voice because at first she didn’t like it very much.

  My mother said, ‘There’s nothing to worry about. All your nice little baby-teeth will come out one by one to make room for your big grown-up teeth.’

  ‘Have a look, have a look,’ said my naughty little sister. So my mother had a look, and then she said, ‘It’s just as I thought, there is a new little tooth peeping through already.’

  So after that my little sister had a loose tooth, and she used to wiggle it and wiggle it with her finger. She used to wiggle it so much that the tooth got looser and looser.

  When the nice baker came, my naughty little sister showed him the tooth, and she showed the milkman and the window-cleaner man, and sometimes she used to climb up to the mirror and wiggle it hard, to show herself, because she thought that a loose tooth was a very special thing to have.

  After a while, my mother said, ‘Your tooth is so very loose, you had better let me take it out for you.’

  But my naughty little sister didn’t want to lose her lovely tooth, because she liked wiggling it so much, and she wouldn’t let my mother take it out at all.

  Then my mother said, ‘Well, pull it out yourself then,’ and my silly little sister said, ‘No, I like it like this.’

  The next time the window-cleaner man came, he said, ‘Isn’t that toothypeg out yet?’

  And my naughty little sister said, ‘No. It’s still here.’ And she opened her mouth very wide to show the window-cleaner man that it was still there.

  The window-cleaner man said, ‘Why don’t you pull it out? It’s hanging on a threddle, it is indeed.’

  My naughty little sister told him that she liked to have it to wiggle and to show people.

  So the window-cleaner man said, ‘You’d better take it to show the dentist.’

  My naughty little sister said why should she take it to the dentist? Because she hadn’t heard much about dentists, and the window-cleaner man who knew all about doctors and dentists and about how the sun moves and how pumpkins grow, told my naughty little sister all about dentists, how they looked after people’s teeth for them, and made teeth for grown-up people who hadn’t any of their own.

  The window-cleaner man told my naughty little sister that his teeth were dentist-teeth and they were much prettier than his old ones, and my naughty little sister was very interested, and she said she would like the dentist to see her wiggly tooth.

  So, the next time my mother said, ‘What about that tooth, now?’ my naughty little sister said, ‘I want to go to the dentist.’

  My mother said, ‘Goodness me, surely it’s loose enough for you to pull out yourself now?’

  But my naughty little sister started to cry, ‘I want to go the dentist. I want to go, I do,’ in a miserable voice like that.

  So my mother said, ‘Very well then. I want the dentist to see your teeth anyway, so we shall go as soon as he can see you!’

  Well now, the dentist was a very nice man, he said he thought he’d really better see my naughty little sister’s tooth right away.

  When my mother and my little sister arrived at the dentist’s they had to wait in the waiting-room with a lot of other people. My naughty little sister told all these other people about her wiggly tooth, and she showed it to them, and they all said what a lucky child she was to have such a wiggly tooth.

  When it was my naughty little sister’s turn to see the dentist, she was very pleased. She sat on his big chair and let him have a good look.

  The dentist said, ‘It’s a very nice tooth, old lady. I’m sorry you don’t want it taken out.’

  ‘I want it to wiggle with,’ said my silly little sister. Then my little sister asked all about making teeth and everything, and the dentist told her very nicely.

  ‘It’s a pity you don’t want to part with that tooth though,’ he said, ‘because I should just like a tooth like that for my collection. I collect really nice teeth,’ the dentist said.

  My naughty little sister thought and thought, and she couldn’t help seeing how very nice it would be to have a tooth in a real collection, so, do you know what she did? She put her hand up to her mouth, as quick as quick, and then she said, ‘Here you are,’ and there, right in the middle of her hand was her little tooth. She’d pulled it out all her very self.

  6. The fairy-doll

  When I was a little girl, I had a fairy-doll that was so beautiful that I never wanted to play with it.

  It had real shiny wings and a shiny crown and a fairy-wand, and a sticking-out dress with golden stars on it, and it shut its eyes when you laid it down and opened them when you stood it up, and said, ‘ma-ma,’ if you tipped it forwards.

  It was so beautiful, that I kept it in its box, wrapped up in white paper, in the drawer of my mother’s wardrobe.

  I used to go and peep at it whenever I specially wanted to.

  Well now, my naughty little sister had a doll too. Her doll was a very poor old thing, with no eyes left, and all its nose rubbed off. My naughty little sister called her doll ‘Rosy-Primrose’. My little sister used to take Rosy-Primrose to bed with her, but sometimes, when my naughty little sister was cross, she would smack poor Rosy-Primrose and throw her out of bed.

  One day, when my naughty little sister threw Rosy-Primrose out of bed, my mother said, ‘I think I’ll take that poor old doll downstairs and put her in the cupboard until you can be kind to her.’

  But my naughty little sister said, ‘Won’t be kind to her.’ So my mother put Rosy-Primrose away in the cupboard for a rest.

  Now, what do you think? The very next day, when my mother was doing the ironing, she suddenly said, ‘Where is that naughty little girl? Where is that naughty sister of yours? I expect she’s in mischief, because she is so quiet.’ That’s what my mother said.

  So my mother stopped her ironing, and went out into the garden to look for my little sister. But she wasn’t in the garden. My mother looked in the shed, and she wasn’t in the shed. She wasn’t in the sitting-room, or in her bedroom, or in the spare room, but when my mother peeped into her own bedroom – there was my naughty little sister looking very cross at being caught.

  The fairy-doll’s box wasn’t in the wardrobe drawer either. It was on the bed, and all the white paper was all over the floor, and there was my naughty little sister holding my fairy-doll and making it say, ‘ma-ma, ma-ma, ma-ma, ma-ma.’

  My mother was very cross. She said, ‘That’s not your doll. It belongs to your big sister,’ and my naughty little sister said, ‘I want it.’ My mother said, ‘Put it down on the bed,’ and my very naughty little sister said, ‘No.’

  Then my mother was angry, and went to take the doll away from my naughty little sister, but that bad child ran away with my lovely fairy-doll. And, well – you remember what she did to poor Rosy-Primrose when she was cross, don’t you? She did something even more dreadful to my fairy-doll. She threw it out of the window, that lovely beautiful doll with the golden wings and the shiny crown and the sticking-out dress with golden stars on.

  My naughty little sister had to go straight to bed for that, because she really had been terrible.

  My lovely fairy-doll had fallen down into the garden, right into a muddy puddle, and its face was broken. I cried and cried, and when my little sister saw the poor fairy-doll, she cried and cried too, because she wasn’t really such a bad child as all that – she just threw the doll out of the window when she was being mischievous.

  My naughty little sister was so very sorry that we all forgave her, and my mother said that if she promised to be kind in future, she should have Rosy-Primrose back very soon. So my little sister
promised hard.

  Do you know what my kind mother did? She sent the poor fairy-doll to the Dolls’ Hospital, and she sent Rosy-Primrose there too, and when the two dolls came back, they looked very nice.

  My little sister was a bit sorry to see Rosy-Primrose, because Rosy-Primrose had a new nice face and some curly hair that hadn’t been there for a long, long time. My little sister never was quite happy with the tidy Rosy-Primrose until it lost all its hair again, and its new eyes fell in. But she was always kind to it after that.

  I was glad about my fairy-doll, though. Because it wasn’t a fairy any more after the window-fall. It had a pretty new face, and a nice smile with teeth showing, and it still shut its eyes when you laid it down, and it still said, ‘ma-ma’; but the fairy clothes had all been spoiled in the muddy puddle, so my mother had made it a nice yellow dress and bonnet, and a white apron, and I called it ‘Annabella’ and, now that its clothes were not so grand, I could play with it whenever I wanted to – so really that fairy-doll’s window-fall wasn’t so terribly dreadful after all.

  7. My Naughty Little Sister cuts out

  Once, when I was a little girl, and my naughty little sister was a very little girl, it rained and rained and rained. It rained every day, and it rained all the time, and everything got wetter and wetter and wetter, and when my naughty little sister went out she had to wear her mackintosh and her wellingtons.

  My naughty little sister had a beautiful red mackintosh-cape with a hood – just like Little Red Riding Hood’s – and she had a little red umbrella.

  My little sister used to carry her umbrella under her cape, because she didn’t want it to get wet. Wasn’t she a silly girl?