The Lonesomest Doll (1928)/Chapter 2
II
Nichette
The lonesomest doll lay in her box in a corner of the Treasure Room in the southwest tower of the Queen’s palace. Around the palace was a high gray wall and a moat; beyond the moat was a walled-in garden; and beyond the garden again was a tiny white cottage covered with roses, where Nichette lived with her father and mother!
Pierre, Nichette’s father, was the porter of the palace, and under the eyes of the Grand Chamberlain he had charge of the keys to the western wing where the Queen lived. So of course Pierre knew all about everything, even about the lonesomest doll whom very few persons had seen, though every one in the kingdom had heard of her. And of course Nichette knew all about her also.
Ever since she had first sat upon Pierre’s knee, jingling his great bunch of keys in her baby fist, till now when she was a great girl of ten, she had loved to hear about the gates and the doors and the locks which these keys opened. And although she had never gone inside the palace she knew the way in and about almost as well as Pierre himself. And she knew just where the lonesomest doll lay, and up what stairs and along what hallway and through what rooms one must go to find her. She could see the window of the very room from the corner of the Queen’s garden where she was allowed to play. And often when she was there with her own dolls she would look up at the gray tower and wish she could do something to comfort that poor, beautiful doll whose mamma was a little Queen, but did not love her.
Nichette had four ugly wooden dolls of her own, and she loved them dearly. It made her heart ache to think of the lonely doll over there in the palace shut up in her dark box, taken out but once or twice in the long year. Nichette had often planned what she would do if she could but get into that tower, and up to that room, and open that oaken chest. Her fingers ached to smooth Mignon’s hair, to kiss her and cuddle her close. She had often begged Pierre to let her go into the west wing, but he always said,—“No, no, child! The Queen does not like children, and will allow none in the palace. It would make her very angry.”
So Nichette knew that she should never even see the lonesomest doll, unless some time she could steal into the palace without any one’s knowing. But fierce soldiers mounted guard at the front gate, and at all the gates except the little one in the garden, to which Pierre held the keys. Through that would be her way—if she had the keys. But she could never, never enter without her father’s keys, and he kept them always by him, very carefully, because he was the Lord Chamberlain’s porter; and he was proud of the trust.
Nichette often wondered if a clever person might not take the keys from his pocket. But she would never dare do this; for Pierre was very stem when one was naughty; and she knew he would think this the naughtiest thing which a child could do. So Nichette could only long and long, hope and hope, that some time she might see the lonesomest doll and try to make her happy as a beautiful doll should be.