My Naughty Little Sister

by Dorothy Edwards

  When my naughty little sister went down the road, the rain went plop, plop, plop, plop, on to her head, and scatter-scatter-scatter against her cape, and trickle, trickle down her cheeks, and her wellington boots went splish-splosh, splish-splosh in the puddles.

  My naughty little sister liked puddles very much, and she splished and sploshed such a lot that the water

  got into the tops of her wellingtons and made her feet wet inside, and then my naughty little sister was very sorry, because she caught a cold.

  She got a nasty, sneezy, atishoo-y cold, and couldn’t go out in the rain any more. My poor little sister looked very miserable when my mother said she could not go out. But her cold was very bad, and she had a red nose, and red eyes, and a nasty buzzy ear – all because of getting her feet wet, and every now and again – she couldn’t help it – she said, ‘A-a-tishoo!’

  Now, my naughty little sister was a fidgety child. She wouldn’t sit down quietly to hear a story like you do, or play nicely with a toy, or draw pictures with a pencil – she just fidgeted and wriggled and grumbled all the time, and said, ‘Want to go out in the rain – want to splash and splash,’ in the crossest and growliest voice, and then she said, ‘A-a-tishoo!’ even when she didn’t want to, because of the nasty cold she’d got. And she grumbled and grumbled and grumbled.

  My mother made her an orangedrink, but she grumbled. My mother gave her cough-stuff, but she grumbled, and really no one knew how to make her good.

  My mother said, ‘Why don’t you look at a picture-book?’

  And my naughty little sister said, ‘No book, nasty book.’

  Then my mother said, ‘Well, would you like to play with my button-box?’ and my naughty little sister said she thought she might like that. But when she had dropped all the buttons out and spilled them all over the floor, she said, ‘No buttons, tired of buttons. A-a-tishoo!’ She said, ‘A-a-tishoo’ like that, because she couldn’t help it.

  My mother said, ‘Dear me, what can I do for the child?’

  Then my mother had a good idea. She said, ‘I know, you can make a scrap-book!’

  So my mother found a big book with clean pages and a lot of old birthday cards and Christmas cards, and some old picture-books, and a big pot of sticky paste, and she showed my naughty little sister how to make a scrap-book.

  My naughty little sister was quite pleased, because she had never been allowed to use scissors before, and these were the nice snippy ones from Mother’s work-box.

  My naughty little sister cut out a picture of a cow, and a basket with roses in, and a lady in a red dress, and a house and a squirrel, and she stuck them all in the big book with the sticky paste, and then she laughed and laughed.

  Do you know why she laughed? She laughed because she had stuck them all in the book in a funny way. She stuck the lady in first, and then she put the basket of roses on the lady’s head, and the cow on top of that, and then she put the house and the squirrel under the lady’s feet. My naughty little sister thought that the lady looked very funny with the basket of flowers and the cow on her head.

  So my naughty little sister amused herself for quite a long while, and my mother said, ‘Thank goodness,’ and went upstairs to tidy the bedrooms, as my naughty little sister wasn’t grumbling any more.

  But that naughty child soon got tired of the scrap-book, and when she got tired of it, she started rubbing all the sticky paste over the table and made the table all gummy. Wasn’t that nasty of her?

  Then she poked the scissors into the birthday cards and the Christmas cards, and made them look very ugly, and then, because she liked to do snipsnipping with the scissors, she looked round for something big to cut.

  Fancy looking round for mischief like that! But she did. She didn’t care at all, she just looked round for something to cut.

  She snipped up all father’s newspaper with the scissors, and she tried to snip the pussy-cat’s tail, only pussy put her back up and said ‘Pss’, and frightened my naughty little sister.

  So my naughty little sister looked round for something that she could cut up easily, and she found a big brownpaper parcel on a chair – a parcel all tied up with white string.

  My naughty little sister was so bad because she couldn’t go out to play in the wet, that she cut the string of the parcel. She knew that she shouldn’t but she didn’t care a bit. She cut the string right through, and pulled it all off. She did that because she thought it would be nice to cut up all the brown paper that was round the parcel.

  So she dragged the parcel on to the floor, and began to pull off the brown paper. But when the brown paper was off, my very naughty little sister found something inside that she thought would be much nicer to cut. It was a lovely piece of silky, rustly material with little flowers all over it – the sort of special stuff that party-dresses are made of.

  Now, my naughty little sister knew that she mustn’t cut stuff like that but she didn’t care. She thought she would just make a quick snip to see how it sounded when it was cut. So she did make a snip, and the stuff went ‘sccscrr-scrr’ as the scissors bit it, and my naughty little sister was so pleased that she forgot about everything else, and just cut and cut.

  And then, all of a sudden…yes! In came my mother!

  My mother was cross when she saw the sticky table, and the cut-up newspaper, but when she looked on the floor and saw my naughty little sister cutting the silky stuff, she was very, very angry.

  ‘You are a bad, bad child,’ my mother said. ‘You shall not have the scissors any more. Your kind Aunt Betty is going to be married soon, and she sent this nice stuff for me to make you a bridesmaid’s dress, because she wanted you to hold up her dress in church for her. Now you won’t be able to go.’

  My naughty little sister cried and cried because she wanted to be a bridesmaid and because she liked to have new dresses very much. But it was no use, because the stuff was all cut up.

  After that my naughty little sister tried to be a good girl until her cold was better.

  8. My Naughty Little Sister at the party

  You wouldn’t think there could be another child as naughty as my naughty little sister, would you? But there was. There was a thoroughly bad boy who was my naughty little sister’s best boy-friend, and this boy’s name was Harry.

  This Bad Harry and my naughty little sister used to play together quite a lot in Harry’s garden, or in our garden, and got up to dreadful mischief between them, picking all the baby gooseberries, and the green blackcurrants, and throwing sand on the flower-beds, and digging up the runner-bean seeds, and all the naughty sorts of things you never, never do in the garden.

  Now, one day this Bad Harry’s birthday was near, and Bad Harry’s mother said he could have a birthday-party and invite lots of children to tea. So Bad Harry came round to our house with a pretty card in an envelope for my naughty little sister, and this card was an invitation asking my naughty little sister to come to the birthday-party.

  Bad Harry told my naughty little sister that there would be a lovely tea with jellies and sandwiches and birthday-cake, and my naughty little sister said, ‘Jolly good.’

  And every time she thought about the party she said, ‘Nice tea and birthday-cake.’ Wasn’t she greedy? And when the party day came she didn’t make any fuss when my mother dressed her in her new green party-dress, and her green party-shoes and her green hair-ribbon, and she didn’t fidget and she didn’t wriggle her head about when she was having her hair combed, she kept as still as still, because she was so pleased to think about the party, and when my mother said, ‘Now, what must you say at the party?’ my naughty little sister said, ‘I must say, “nice tea”.’

  But my mother said, ‘No, no, that would be a greedy thing to say. You must say, “please” and “thank you” like a good polite child, at tea-time, and say, “thank you very much for having me”, when the party is over.’

  And my naughty little sister said, ‘All right, Mother, I promise.’

  So, my mothe
r took my naughty little sister to the party, and what do you think the silly little girl did as soon as she got there? She went up to Bad Harry’s mother and she said very quickly, ‘Please-and-thank-you, and thank-you-very-much-for-having-me,’ all at once – just like that, before she forgot to be polite, and then she said, ‘Now, may I have a lovely tea?’

  Wasn’t that rude and greedy? Bad Harry’s mother said, ‘I’m afraid you will have to wait until all the other children are here, but Harry shall show you the tea-table if you like.’

  Bad Harry looked very smart in a blue party-suit, with white socks and shoes and a real man’s haircut, and he said, ‘Come on, I’ll show you.’

  So they went into the tea-room and there was the birthday-tea spread out on the table. Bad Harry’s mother had made red jellies and yellow jellies, and blancmanges and biscuits and sandwiches and cakes-with-cherries-on, and a big birthday-cake with white icing on it and candles and ‘Happy Birthday Harry’ written on it.

  My naughty little sister’s eyes grew bigger and bigger, and Bad Harry

  said, ‘There’s something else in the larder. It’s going to be a surprise treat, but you shall see it because you are my best girl-friend.’

  So Bad Harry took my naughty little sister out into the kitchen and they took chairs and climbed up to the larder shelf – which is a dangerous thing to do, and it would have been their own faults if they had fallen down – and Bad Harry showed my naughty little sister a lovely spongy trifle, covered with creamy stuff and with silver balls and jelly-sweets on the top. And my naughty little sister stared more than ever because she liked spongy trifle better than jellies or blancmanges or biscuits or sandwiches or cakes-with-cherries-on, or even birthday-cake, so she said, ‘For me.’

  Bad Harry said, ‘For me too,’ because he liked spongy trifle best as well.

  Then Bad Harry’s mother called to them and said, ‘Come along, the other children are arriving.’

  So they went to say, ‘How do you do!’ to the other children, and then Bad Harry’s mother said, ‘I think we will have a few games now before tea – just until everyone has arrived.’

  All the other children stood in a ring and Bad Harry’s mother said, ‘Ring O’Roses first, I think.’ And all the nice party children said, ‘Oh, we’d like that.’

  But my naughty little sister said, ‘No Ring O’Roses – nasty Ring O’Roses’ – just like that, because she didn’t like Ring O’Roses very much, and Bad Harry said, ‘Silly game.’ So Bad Harry and my naughty little sister stood and watched the others. The other children sang beautifully too, they sang:

  ‘Ring O’Ring O’Roses,

  A pocket full of posies –

  A-tishoo, a-tishoo, we all fall down.’

  And they all fell down and laughed, but Harry and my naughty little sister didn’t laugh. They got tired of watching and they went for a little walk. Do you know where they went to?

  Yes. To the larder. To take another look at the spongy trifle. They climbed up on to the chairs to look at it really properly. It was very pretty.

  ‘Ring O’Ring O’Roses’ sang the good party children.

  ‘Nice jelly-sweets,’ said my naughty little sister. ‘Nice silver balls,’ and she looked at that terribly bad Harry and he looked at her.

  ‘Take one,’ said that naughty boy, and my naughty little sister did take one, she took a red jelly-sweet from the top of the trifle; and then Bad Harry took a green jelly-sweet; and then my naughty little sister took a yellow jelly-sweet and a silver ball, and then Bad Harry took three jelly-sweets, red, green and yellow, and six silver balls. One, two, three, four, five, six, and put them all in his mouth at once.

  Now some of the creamy stuff had come off on Bad Harry’s finger and he liked it very much, so he put his finger into the creamy stuff on the trifle, and took some of it off and ate it, and my naughty little sister ate some too. I’m sorry to have to tell you this, because I feel so ashamed of them, and expect you feel ashamed of them too.

  I hope you aren’t too shocked to hear any more? Because, do you know, those two bad children forgot all about the party and the nice children all singing ‘Ring O’Roses’. They took a spoon each and scraped off the creamy stuff and ate it, and then they began to eat the nice spongy inside.

  Bad Harry said, ‘Now we’ve made the trifle look so untidy, no one else will want any, so we may as well eat it all up.’ So they dug away into the spongy inside of the trifle and found lots of nice fruit bits inside. It was a very big trifle, but those greedy children ate and ate.

  Then, just as they had nearly finished the whole big trifle, the ‘Ring O’Roses’-ing stopped, and Bad Harry’s mother called, ‘Where are you two? We are ready for tea.’

  Then my naughty little sister was very frightened. Because she knew she had been very naughty, and she looked at Bad Harry and he knew he had been very naughty, and they both felt terrible. Bad Harry had a creamy mess of trifle all over his face, and even in his real man’s haircut, and my naughty little sister had made her new green party-dress all trifly – you know how it happens if you eat too quickly and greedily.

  ‘It’s tea-time,’ said Bad Harry, and he looked at my naughty little sister, and my naughty little sister thought of the jellies and the cakes and the sandwiches, and all the other things, and she felt very full of trifle, and she said, ‘Don’t want any.’

  And do you know what she did? Just as Bad Harry’s mother came into the kitchen, my naughty little sister slipped out of the door, and ran and ran all the way home. It was a good thing our home was only down the street and no roads to cross, or I don’t know what would have happened to her.

  Bad Harry’s mother was so cross when she saw the trifle, that she sent Bad Harry straight to bed, and he had to stay there and hear all the nice children enjoying themselves. I don’t know what happened to him in the night, but I know that my naughty little sister wasn’t at all a well girl, from having eaten so much trifle – and I also know that she doesn’t like spongy trifle any more.

  9. The naughtiest story of all

  This is such a very terrible story about my naughty little sister that I hardly know how to tell it to you. It is all about one Christmas-time when I was a little girl, and my naughty little sister was a very little girl.

  Now, my naughty little sister was very pleased when Christmas began to draw near, because she liked all the excitement of the plum-puddings and the turkeys, and the crackers and the holly, and all the Christmassy-looking shops, but there was one very awful thing about her – she didn’t like to think about Father Christmas at all – she said he was a horrid old man!

  There – I knew you would be shocked at that. But she did. And she said she wouldn’t put up her stocking for him.

  My mother told my naughty little sister what a good old man Father Christmas was, and how he brought the toys along on Christmas Eve, but my naughty little sister said, ‘I don’t care. And I don’t want that nasty old man coming to our house.’

  Well now, that was bad enough, wasn’t it? But the really dreadful thing happened later on.

  This is the dreadful thing: one day, my school-teacher said that a Father Christmas Man would be coming to the school to bring presents for all the children, and my teacher said that the Father Christmas Man would have toys for all our little brothers and sisters as well, if they cared to come along for them. She said that there would be a real Christmas tree with candles on it, and sweeties and cups of tea and biscuits for our mothers.

  Wasn’t that a nice thought? Well now, when I told my little sister about the Christmas tree, she said, ‘Oh, nice!’

  And when I told her about the sweeties she said, ‘Very, very nice!’ But when I told her about the Father Christmas Man, she said, ‘Don’t want him, nasty old man.’

  Still, my mother said, ‘You can’t go to the Christmas tree without seeing him, so if you don’t want to see him all that much, you will have to stay at home.’

  But my naughty little sister did wa
nt to go, very much, so she said, ‘I will go, and when the horrid Father Christmas Man comes in, I will close my eyes.’

  So, we all went to the Christmas tree together, my mother and I, and my naughty little sister.

  When we got to the school, my naughty little sister was very pleased to see all the pretty paper-chains that we had made in school hung all round the class-rooms, and when she saw all the little lanterns, and the holly and all the robin-redbreast drawings pinned on the blackboards she smiled and smiled. She was very smiley at first.

  All the mothers, and the little brothers and sisters who were too young for school sat down on chairs and desks, and all the big school-children acted a play for them.

  My little sister was very excited to see all the children dressed up as fairies and robins and elves and bo-peeps and things, and she clapped her hands very hard, like all the grown-ups did, to show that she was enjoying herself. And she still smiled.

  Then, when some of the teachers came round with bags of sweets, tied up in pretty coloured paper, my little sister smiled even more, and she sang too when all the children sang. She sang, ‘Away in a Manger’, because she knew the words very

  well. When she didn’t know the words of some of the singing, she ‘la-la’d’.

  After all the singing, the teachers put out the lights, and took away a big screen from a corner of the room, and there was the Christmas tree, all lit up with candles and shining with silvery stuff, and little shiny coloured balls. There were lots of toys on the tree, and all the children cheered and clapped.

  Then the teachers put the lights on again, and blew out the candles, so that we could all go and look at the tree. My little sister went too. She looked at the tree, and she looked at the toys, and she saw a specially nice doll with a blue dress on, and she said, ‘For me.’