# The Hammer and the Writing-desk

Extracted from Pall Mall magazine, Aug 1907, pp. 193–201. Accompanying illustrations may be omitted.
The Hammer and the Writing-desk.
A STORY TOLD BY A CHILD.
BY E. NESBIT
ONCE upon a time there was a little girl who lived with her mother in a little house in the corner of a big park. The park really belonged to Lord Elstead, who lived in the big house with the hundred and fifteen windows; but the little girl enjoyed it much more than Lord Elstead did, because she was always playing in it, and he wasn’t. At least, if he did, she never saw him. She used to meet him sometimes in the long lime avenue, walking along with a stick. His hair was white and his face was wrinkled and reddy-brown like an apple that has been kept over Christmas. When he met the little girl he used to say good-morning if she said it to him first, and once when it was her birthday he gave her a gold piece. She often wondered how he knew it was her birthday. The little girl’s mother said that she had never told him when the little girl’s birthday was, and the little girl......
I cannot go on like this. I thought at first I could write it like a story-book, but it is so dull, and writing “the little girl” every time instead of “‘me” and “I” is just silly. The gentle reader will now see that that little girl was me, myself.
I always loved the park better than anything. I never cared a straw about going on walks on roads—silly straight things. I liked it all: the trees and the deer and the foreign cattle—as long as they did not come too close with their horns—and the acorns and chestnuts and beechnuts and may-trees and buttercups and daisies and red sorrel. I used to think Elstead Park was the most lovely place in the world, and fit for a king. And I think so still, though what this story is about happened more than a year ago. I think I have a constant nature.
Ours was a jolly little house, and we had one servant, and mother gave me lessons herself, so there was no going to school. I think now that some little girls might have found it dull, but I never did, so I suppose I had a contented mind, even when I was only nine. The only thing I wanted was some other little girls to play with.
What I am going to say began to happen the day I saw Lord Elstead sitting on one of the half-moon stone benches that are at the place where the two avenues cross. He looked like a greenish apple that day instead of like a ripe one as usual, so I said: “Don’t you feel well?”
And he said: “I’m better now.”
I said: “Can I fetch anything for you? Would you like some Ody?”
“What?” was what he said. (Mother says you ought to say, “What did you say?”)
So I said: “Ody Klone, like mother has when her head aches.”
“No, thank you,” he said.
I then sat down beside him, in case he was going to have a fit or anything, so that I could run for the men to take him home on a hurdle and send the best horse in the stables to fetch the doctor. You should always try to be useful if you can. I was not very sorry for him till he kissed me and said: “You’re a good, kind little girl,” and then I was very sorry. So I said: “Shall I go along with you till you get to the Hall, in case you feel green again?”
And he said: “No, thank you, my dear. Run along now. I’m quite well. I must come down and see your mother to-morrow.” And he kissed me again, and I went home.
And that was every word either of us remarked. I know, because I’ve tried again and again to remember if there was anything else, and however hard I try there never is.
Mother looked very odd when I told her he was coming to see her, and made me tell her exactly what him and me had both said. And I truthfully did, just like I’ve done to you.
And next morning she and Ellen turned out the sitting-room and the hall—not a once-a-week turn-out, but more like a wild, fleet spring-cleaning, and by three it was all beautiful, and that nice turpentiny smell that means it’s the day for the room to be “done.” Mother put on her best dress, and I had a clean pinny.
But Lord Elstead never came. Because he was dead. They found him dead in the library, where all the wonderful, brown, powdery-looking books are. He was leaning on a table over an old desk that he used to use. It had belonged to his son that died in the wars in India when he was a boy. I thought that was very touching, because my own daddy died in the Indian Frontier wars; and if you think it was silly of me, all I can say is, mother was as bad, for when she heard it, she cried.
Mother seemed very restless and odd, and kept walking about the house and taking things up and putting them down just where they were before. She was like this until the day Lord Elstead was buried. But when the bell tolled in that dreadful black way it does for funerals, she pulled down all the blinds and sat down and began to cry. So of course I said what was it, and hugged her, and said, “Don’t cry,” like you have to when people are like that.
And she dried her eyes quite soon, because she is very brave, like heroines and Joan of Arc, and said: “Some one’s sure to tell you if I don’t, and I’d rather you heard it from me.”
I said: “Heard what, mother?”
“We shall have to go away from here, Miranda,” she said then; “and I don’t know what will become of us!”
Then she took me on her lap and told me with suddenness that Lord Elstead was my grandfather, only he had quarrelled with her because his son married her, and it was really my daddy’s desk he had died leaning on, and his son Charles was the same as my daddy, but my daddy’s name was different to Lord Elstead’s, because lord’s sons don’t have their father’s names till they are dead—the fathers, I mean. And he’d let mother have the little house and enough money to buy clothes and things for us to eat; but he hadn’t ever spoken to her, because it was through daddy wanting to marry mother that Lord Elstead had quarrelled with his son, As if it was mother’s fault that she was so nice and dear that people wanted to marry her!
“And I did think he’d have left us something in his will,” mother said; “but he hasn’t, or I should have been asked to come and hear it read. And now all the property will go to Mr. Egbert—he’ll be Lord Elstead now, of course—and he’ll never let us have a penny of it.”
I said, No, I didn’t think he would. Because I’d seen Mr. Egbert quite often, and he was one of those fair, sleek, smooth people that I don’t like, with little pig’s eyes. They never like me, either.
Then everything was very uncomfortable. Mr. Egbert, who was Lord Elstead now, sent word mother was to go in a month, and there was to be a sale at the Hall. Mr. Egbert was going to let the Hall, and sell the furniture, and go and spend the money in Paris, and at a place called Bridge, where he’d lost a lot of money before. Ellen told me this.
The day the sale began mother went away in the train to find a place for us to live in, and before she went she said: “I should have liked to buy something at the sale, something that belonged to your father.”
I said: “Why don’t you, then, mother?”
And she said, Because she was poor now, and must take care of every penny.
Then she kissed me, and I saw her out at the gate, and watched her as far as the corner so as to be ready to wave when she looked back for a last farewell, and then I went back into the house and began to be most dreadfully unhappy.
I hadn’t seen before that I was going to be taken away from the little house in the park—and from the park itself, But I did not cry. I thought I would try to think, instead, like people do in books, about ways of making money. But it is much harder to think than you’d think it was. And the more I tried to think the more there wasn’t anything to think of; and all the money I had in the world was the gold money-piece Lord Elstead had given me.
So I went to the window and watched the people going up through the park to the sale, some in carts and some in carriages, and some on bikes and some on their own large feet. I hated the way they trampled with them on the edges of the grass, not keeping well on the grass or quite on the drive, as everybody knows you ought to do, especially when your feet are that size. And I hated to think of them going in and trampling on the polished floors, and perhaps sitting on the chairs with the gold backs that Ellen and I saw once when Lord Elstead was away, and we peeped in at the drawing-room window that is at the end close to where the big yew-hedge ends, so as to be convenient for getting away unseen, if any one came along. And I hated most of all to think of the furniture and the big chandelier with the crystal drops and the pictures and books and every- thing being sold, perhaps to these people with the boots that didn’t understand about grass edging.
Then Ellen came and said, Would I mind being left? her heart was set on going up to the Hall to have a look at the house and the furniture and all. “It’s a thing I’ve often had a mind to,” she said, “and now’s me chance or never. And I never see a sale, and I’d like to be able to say I’d seen me Lord’s things sold.”
So I said I didn’t mind, and she went. And then quite suddenly the great idea happened to me, and I just did that idea that very minute, without stopping to think about whether I should or shouldn’t. If you stop to think about a great idea, as often as not you never do it at all.
I washed my hands and face very nicely and did my hair, and I put on my best summer dress, which was white with little blue flowers on it, and my best hat, and I got my white silk church-gloves out of mother’s corner drawer. Then I got out the gold money-piece Lord Elstead had given me, and I tied it up in the corner of one of mother’s best hankies—I thought she wouldn’t mind, just that once. Then I printed very big in ink on an envelope: “Gone to the Sale,” and I put it under the knocker, and shut all the downstairs windows, and locked the doors back and front, and put the key under the water-butt like mother used to when me and her went out and Ellen hadn’t come back yet from her errands. I was quite careful about everything. And then I went up to the Hall—by a short cut over the grass and through the beechwood. It brings you out by the stable-yard. There were a lot of people standing about, and the big front steps, that are like terraces, were dirty and littered with straw and bits of paper and string and all sorts of untidiness. I don’t know how they got there. Mother says sales are always like that.
There were crowds of people there, all the ones I had seen going up along the grass-edge, and many more who must have come by the other avenues. I went through the crowd, looking as prim as I could, so that they should think, “What a good little girl! Of course she is looking for her relations,” and not stop me to ask what I was doing there.
I think my heart must be like Ellen’s, because what I had always wanted too was to see all over the Hall, and that day I did—even the servants’ bedrooms, that open out of a passage that goes round like a hoop up in the dome at the top of the house. There were people everywhere, looking about, and the furniture was in the big rooms; but all the bronze things and Chinese vases and pictures and pretties were not there. And no one said anything to me, and I never saw Ellen at all, from beginning to end. I looked all over the house, but I didn’t see anything that looked small enough for me to be able to buy with my gold money-piece.
When I came down the stairs, which are marble, and very like a fairy palace, I saw a fat, shopkeeping-looking man I thought seemed kind, so I said to him: “Please, what have they done with the little things?”
And he replied: “They’re a-sellin’ of ’em now, Missy, in the dining-room. Objects of H’art and Virtue.”
“Are you going to buy any?” I said. And he said: “No, I ain’t on in that piece. ‘Tables and chairs is what I’m after, and I see they won’t come on till to-morrow. ‘Where’s the dining-room?’ Along there where you see the folks thick round the door like bees agoin’ to swarm.”
I walked right down the hall. It was like walking up to your pew in church, only your boots didn’t seem so loud as they do on Sundays. And I asked the biggest of the outside bees if they were selling the little things in there.
He was a very kind man, and a farmer I found out later.
“They are,” he replied. “Are you looking for any one, my dear? Can I help you to find any one?”
So I said: “No, thank you.”
And then he said what I had been so afraid of some one saying: “But what are you doing all alone here?”
I was very frightened then that they’d turn me out, so I said: “It’s open to everybody to-day, isn’t it?”
He laughed and said: “Yes, it is. But won’t mother be wondering where on earth her little gell has got to?”
So then I saw he would be interested, and I said: “I want to buy something at the sale for mother, because Lord Elstead that is dead was my grandfather, only he quarrelled with mother; but his son Charles that died in India was the same as my daddy that died there too, and mother wanted something that belonged to daddy, only we’re poor now because Lord Elstead didn’t leave us any money when he died, and Mr. Egbert isn’t the sort of person to give anything to any one. So you see.”
But although I had explained it all so plainly, he didn’t see, and I had to say it all over several times before he said: “By George! If that isn’t a shame! Come on, me little dear, I’ll get you in to the front row, and we’ll see if I can’t keep the bidding down if you see any little thing you fancy.”
He picked me up and carried me—I should be much too old for it now. He was nearly as big as a bull, so it was quite easy for him; and he got the people to move and let us in through the crowd, which was rather dusty, and smelt of people and everyday clothes like in church on a wet Wednesday evening.
The dining-room was full of people, and in the middle there was the big dinner-table and a carpet spread on it instead of a table-cloth; and at one end a little table and chair on the big table, and a man with a hammer knocking on the little table, and saying: “Number one hundred and fifteen, a graceful group in bronze: girl taming a wild horse.” And a lot more, ending up with, “Now, gentlemen, what offers?”
I remember that, because of there being the same number of windows in the Hall.
The man that was carrying me squeezed through the crowd till he got to the front, and then he stood me on the table and kept his big arm round me. Of course every one looked at me, and of course I must have felt shy with so many people looking at me. But I only remember feeling glad I had my best frock on.
The man with the hammer said: “That little lot for sale?” and every one laughed, but not at me, so I didn’t mind.
My man said: “The little lady’s a buyer, sir; only put her here to get her level with the other buyers, so as she can see how buying’s done.”
And then a lot of different people said very quickly indeed:
“Pound.”
“Ten.”
“Two.”
“Ten.”
“Three.”
Then the hammer-man, who I will now call Thor, because of the heathen god of that name, looked round about, and some of the people nodded, and he suddenly hammered with his hammer and said: “Twenty-two ten! Mr. Jacobs? Right!” and the girl and the wild horse were lifted off, and a tortoiseshell and silver cabinet put up. Thor acted as before, and so did the buyers, and this went on with lots of things. I whispered to my man would all the things be as dear as this? And he said wait a bit.
So I waited, and looked over the heads of the people, and wished they weren’t going to take all the beautiful things away. Silver candlesticks and trays, and carved ivory chessmen, and pagodas, and mirrors with china roses for frames—all sorts of lovely things; but everything costing more than twenty times my gold money-piece that I had got tight in my hand inside my pocket, tied up in one of mother’s best hankies. And I got very tired.
Then at last the men who fetched and carried the beautiful things brought a little desk with brass corners, and Thor looked surprised, and said something to his priest—I mean the man who was writing at the table. The man whispered back, and then Thor said: “Gentlemen, a melancholy interest attaches to lot one hundred and seventy. It was this very desk, formerly the property of his deceased son, that the late Lord Elstead habitually wrote at, and that he was pondering over at the time of his demise. A pair of exceptional Sheffield plate candlesticks will perhaps appeal to those who are insensible to merely sentimental associations. What shall we say for the desk and the candlesticks? A pound to begin, gentlemen?”
Then I saw I must be very quick before some one offered twenty pounds as usual, so I said: “Please may I have it?” Every one laughed, but my man didn’t; and I went on: “I’ve got a pound, and I want it for mother, because it was my daddy’s—and Lord Elstead was my grandfather.”
Thor whispered again to his priest, and the priest whispered back, and the people in the room buzzed and stared.
And a man near me said: “That’s quite correct, sir,” and all the village people that knew us, nodded. So then Thor said: “Well, gentlemen, shall I knock it down to the little lady? It’s not much out of such a fine collection. Shall we say ...”
“Oh, don’t say ten, anybody!” I called out, “because I’ve only got a gold pound, and I do so want the desk.”
Then quite a lot of people called out: “Let the child have it,” and a lot of others said it was a shame, so it was. And I held out my pound, and people passed it up to Thor, and passed the desk down to me, and the candlesticks. And then I forgot that I had my best frock on, and I began to cry. I can’t think what for.
My man was very kind. He said: “There, there! Think how pleased mother will be. And what a brave girl it is to come to an auction all on her own and buy a lot like this at her own price!”
I got my arms round his neck, and said in his ear: “Oh, I do want to go home!” I didn’t even say “Thank you” to him for being so kind.
He got out, carrying me and the desk, and I had the candlesticks. And when we got into the hall there was mother and she looked rather cross. She’d found the paper I left under the knocker, and come after me. She said: “Miranda, how could you be so naughty?”
And I did think it hard, when I’d only done it for her, and spent my very own money. But my man made it all right. He said I was a girl in a thousand, and made mother and me come into a little side room where nobody was, only a table and chairs, and a big rolly-top desk, and an iron safe that locks thickly. It is the steward’s room, where he pays the wages.
Then he said: “Set you down, mum, and let little missy set down here in the big chair, and look at the pretty present she’s bought you with her own money—the dear!”
So I sat and looked at the candlesticks and the desk; and he talked to mother in significating whispers, like in books.
The candlesticks were dull, but I liked the desk, and I hoped mother would let me write on it sometimes if I ever had any little girl friend to write to. There was nothing in it, but there were places for ink and pens and so on, and three little brass knobs, quite tiny, just to ornament it. I was fidgeting with the brass knobs, and hoping mother wouldn’t be cross long—she generally isn’t—when she came quite suddenly and kissed me, and said: “Thank you, my own darling foolish dear one”; and I sort of clutched at one of the knobs, and something went bang in the desk, and a long, narrow drawer jumped out at me from the desk’s side.
So we all said: “Oh!”
There was nothing pretty in the drawer. If you expected it to be diamonds and pearls you are now more disappointed than I was, because I didn’t expect anything. All there was in it was a folded paper. If grown-ups read this story they will guess what it was. If you are a child you perhaps won’t, any more than me.
I said: “Here’s a letter or something, mummy,” and she took it, and opened it and read it. And then she showed it to my man, in such a queer way, as if she didn’t want to, yet couldn’t help it.
My man read it too, and his straw-coloured eyebrows went up and down, like as if you were pulling them with elastic, And he laid the paper on the table, and he slapped one of his big knees with one of his big hands, and said: “By George, now! I wouldn’t have missed it for twenty pounds. Little Missy she deserves it—if ever a kid did, asking your pardon, mam, but I’ve got five of my own. Giving up her pound to please you. Talk of sprats to catch salmon,” and a lot more nonsense, but very kind. Then he held out his hand to mother, and she took it in both hers. I never noticed before how different her hands were to his.
Mother licked her lips—she really did—with her tongue. She always told me not to, but she said afterwards, when I asked her, they were so dry she couldn’t have spoken if she hadn’t, and she said: “It is all right?”
And my man said: “Right as rain, mum. I’m dead certain of it, and I wish you joy—you and the little ’un—I do, upon my Sam.”
I don’t know what his Sam was, because he was standing on the steward’s room carpet—it has a pattern of violet roses, rather ugly. And mother had her arm round me all the time.
“I take it you’d like the sale stopped?” he said; and I said “I would,” and he laughed. Mother did something that I didn’t know whether it was laughing or crying.
My man, after this, went straight back to where they were selling the Heart and Virtue, and I heard every word he said, because the steward’s room door was open, and close to the dining-room, which he couldn’t get into, owing to the bees.
He shouted: “Hold hard, mister!” and I heard the voice of Thor, which had been going on all the time, stop suddenly. And my man went on: “That desk and candlesticks what the little lady bought, with her own only money, it’s got a new will in it, and it leaves this place and everything in it to her. And her mother in trust.—No, sir, ’course I ain’t kidding. This ’ere sale’s got to stop. It’s ’ard on the brokers, but them as knows the kiddie and her ma ’ll give three cheers for the rightful heir.”
They gave three cheers, and then Thor and some other men came in, and one of them was the lawyer, and mother showed the paper, and my man took me out on the terrace and told me to look out on the park, and said;
The woods and the glens and the towers that we see,
They all are belonging, dear baby, to thee.
I wasn’t a baby, of course, but he meant to be kind; he said he had got the poetry out of the “Glee Club for Male Voices,” and he had never thought to see the day. Then he told me (not in poetry, which is difficult, and you never know whether it means what it says) that Lord Elstead, who was my grandfather, had made a will and left the Hall and the park and a lot of money to me, and mother to take care of it for me till I was old enough.
So now the park is ours, and the Hall and all the lovely things; and Mr. Egbert, with the fair-sleekness, has a house in London, and quite a lot of money that was his mother’s. And we shan’t sell the beautiful things and live at Bridge where you lose your money. We shall just stay on here, and love it all more and more and more. And because there is much too much money for just us, mother is going to get some other little girls to come and live with us, and play with me and be my sisters, little girls that are poor like mother and me would have been if I hadn’t bought that desk for mother with my golden money-piece. So I shall have plenty of other children now to play with.
Please don’t think I think it was clever or good of me to think of getting the desk. It was not that at all. When you get an idea like I got, it’s just like some one telling you to go and do it. And, if you have any sense, you do, that’s all. But you can’t take any credit for it. And saying I deserved it was only just my farmer man’s kindness.
P.S.—I have got a white pony, and I have only fallen off nine times. When the little sisters come, they are going to have ponies too—not white, if they’d rather not, but just any colour they like, even sorrel, which is the ugliest colour in the world for a horse, I always think. Don’t you?
This work is in the public domain in the United States because it was published before January 1, 1929.
The longest-living author of this work died in 1924, so this work is in the public domain in countries and areas where the copyright term is the author's life plus 99 years or less. This work may be in the public domain in countries and areas with longer native copyright terms that apply the rule of the shorter term to foreign works.
Public domainPublic domainfalsefalse