



Produced by Nicole Apostola




RACKETTY-PACKETTY HOUSE
As told by Queen Crosspatch

By
Frances Hodgson Burnett
Author of "Little Lord Fauntleroy"

With illustrations by Harrison Cady

[Transcribers note: see frontispiece.jpg, dance.jpg and fairy.jpg]



Now this is the story about the doll family I liked and the doll
family I didn't. When you read it you are to remember something I
am going to tell you. This is it: If you think dolls never do
anything you don't see them do, you are very much mistaken. When
people 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 of
fun. But they can only move about and talk when people turn their
backs 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 their
cards at a dolls' house where the dolls are proud or bad tempered.
They are very particular. If you are conceited or ill-tempered
yourself, 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. And
it was not in the best corner either. It was in the corner behind
the door, and that was not at all a fashionable neighborhood.
Racketty-Packetty House had been pushed there to be out of the way
when Tidy Castle was brought in, on Cynthia's birthday. As soon as
she saw Tidy Castle Cynthia did not care for Racketty-Packetty
House and indeed was quite ashamed of it. She thought the corner
behind the door quite good enough for such a shabby old dolls'
house, when there was the beautiful big new one built like a castle
and furnished with the most elegant chairs and tables and carpets
and curtains and ornaments and pictures and beds and baths and
lamps and book-cases, and with a knocker on the front door, and a
stable with a pony cart in it at the back. The minute she saw it
she called out:

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

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

[Transcriber's Note: See picture tidyshire_castle.jpg]

Of course Tidy Castle was grand, and Tidy Castle was new and had
all the modern improvements in it, and Racketty-Packetty House was
as old-fashioned as it could be. It had belonged to Cynthia's
Grandmamma and had been made in the days when Queen Victoria was a
little girl, and when there were no electric lights even in
Princesses' dolls' houses. Cynthia's Grandmamma had kept it very
neat because she had been a good housekeeper even when she was
seven years old. But Cynthia was not a good housekeeper and she did
not re-cover the furniture when it got dingy, or re-paper the
walls, or mend the carpets and bedclothes, and she never thought of
such a thing as making new clothes for the doll family, so that of
course their early Victorian frocks and capes and bonnets grew in
time to be too shabby for words. You see, when Queen Victoria was a
little girl, dolls wore queer frocks and long pantalets and boy
dolls wore funny frilled trousers and coats which it would almost
make you laugh to look at.

But the Racketty-Packetty House family had known better days. I and
my Fairies had known them when they were quite new and had been a
birthday present just as Tidy Castle was when Cynthia turned eight
years old, and there was as much fuss about them when their house
arrived as Cynthia made when she saw Tidy Castle.

Cynthia's Grandmamma had danced about and clapped her hands with
delight, and she had scrambled down upon her knees and taken the
dolls out one by one and thought their clothes beautiful. And she
had given each one of