“What will we play now, Jaimi?” Kim asked.
“Let’s ask Nanny if we can play in the big old toy chest”, Jaimi said.
Nanny said, “Of course, you may use anything in it. The toys all belonged to your mothers’ when they were little girls, there are some also belonging to your uncle.”
The lid of the toy chest was very heavy, so the two little girls really had to try very hard, and then with a squeaky sort of noise, up it went. The little girls bent to the task of discovery.
Jaimi lifted up an old gray elephant with a long nose and big ears. It had a bright red saddle on it’s back and a funny little hat with tassles on it. “I think I’ll play with this afterwards,” and she put it aside.
Kim found a long neck sticking out from the bundle of toys and tried very hard to pull it out, but it seemed to be stuck amongst the other toys. Suddenly it came out and it was so sudden that Kim finished up sitting down on the floor with a long legged giraffe sort of nearly covering her.
The two little girls chuckled and then put the giraffe over near the elephant to have another delve into the depths of the exciting chest. They found a long legged doll, several cars and trucks, furry cats with big green eyes and big bows around their necks, and right down the bottom in the corner was a large furry teddy bear sitting on a drawstring bag.
The little girls had a wonderful game with all the toys and then suddenly they heard a rumbly, growly noise. They looked at one another with big eyes and both said at once, “What was that!?”
A funny, rumbly growl sounded again and then, “It was only me, I’m very sad. I used to have a lovely jacket and cap and now no-one wants to play with me because my growly noise doesn’t work very well. The children don’t come to play with us now and it’s been a very long time since anyone took me out of the chest for a tea party.” “Oh we will.” “Oh yes we will, and we don’t mind if your growler doesn’t growl any more.” The children agreed and took turns to cuddle the ‘Old Ted” to make him feel loved again.
“Ah choo!” The little girls jumped and said, “Goodness, that was loud,” and, “Who did it?” They looked at each other in amazement.
“Oh dear, it did habben loud, didn’ it! I s’pose it’s all this dust. Ah choo! Ah choo! Oh dear, there’s dothing worse than an elephant with a ruddy dose!” The little girls were trying very hard not to giggle at the idea of an elephant with a runny nose and a bad case of sneezes. Kim kindly wiped the trunk of the little old elephant with her handkerchief.
“Oh yes there is! I have a sore, sore throat and I feel all sort of scratchy and scrunchy all the way down my throat. Oh dear, it hurts so!” The little girls looked all around and saw the giraffe standing over in the corner looking so miserable that the girls found a clean hanky and put it around the giraffe’s long neck. “Oh thank you, that’s feeling much better, you are both very kind,” the giraffe said.
The little girls were having a lovely time with the toys, the big eyed cats were very friendly even though one kept trying to chew the big ribbon off, “because it made him feel silly”, he said when he was asked. The other cat was rather shy and tried to stay in the corner, and when the little girls tried to coax her out into the game that they were playing, she sat back and said, “The children that we belonged to loved me nearly to pieces, I think I’m in trouble, look my tail is nearly off and I have one ear that hangs down nearly to my nose. Maybe you had better just leave me here to snooze while you play.”
Jaimi and Kim looked at one another and said, “Maybe Nanny could make you feel better, let’s see if she can.” So the old pussy cat was taken out to leave with Nanny to be mended. Nanny sat down and stitched away and chatted kindly to the worried pussycat, “Let’s see now, don’t worry, it won’t hurt a bit. There now, you can see properly out of those big green eyes, and now just a few more stitches and your tail will be alright for waving around again. Any more stitches needed now? There we are girls, Mother Cat is as good as ever!” The two little girls thanked Nanny and took the pussy cat back to their game.
“Let’s have a tea party for the animals.” The little girls set up the tea set and sat all the animals around and waited with smiling faces to refill the cups and pass around the pretend afternoon tea. While Jaimi and Kim were busy with their game, they were suddenly startled to hear loud arguing coming from the bottom of the trunk, and as the children had already taken all the toys out, they tip-toed over to peep in. To their surprise, the quarreling was coming from the drawstring bag and it was bulging in all directions; in and out and all about.
It sounded like this. “Take your foot out of my ear!” “Well you have your strings all tied up in knots and now you have mixed my legs up with yours!” “Did not!” “Oh yes, you both are mixed up like a plate of wet spaghetti and now I can’t move my beautiful wings!” “Stop weeping, you fluffy yellow thing.”
Jaimi said, “Maybe we better call Nanny, because they sound naughty!” Kim thought a moment and said, “If we peep into the bag, we can see what’s happening.” So the little girls lifted the bag out of the trunk and undid the drawstring and then, after they had a little whisper together, they said, “One, two, three!” and together they tipped the noisy, quarreling unknown things onto the floor.
“Oh what a bump!” said the yellow thing. “Stop your whinging!” said the grumpy one with the red feathers around its neck and on its tail. “Oh I’ll never get my beautiful long legs undone!” “You only have two legs to unwind, I’m in twice as much trouble with four legs.”
The little girls sat down and looked very hard at the jumbled mixture of legs, bodies, arms, heads, feathers and strings. “Why they are some sort of puppets, I think!”
“Of course we are puppets, we are special string puppets,” said one of the crazy mixed up puppets. So the girls slowly started sorting out one from another until finally they had a wiggly wobbly horse, a feathery red grumpy rooster, a long legged ostrich with yellow feathers, and a something that neither Kim nor Jaimi could decide.
Suddenly the wiggly wobbly horse stood up on his shaky legs and bowed his head and said grandly, “Good afternoon children, my name is Wibbly.” The little girls bowed back and said, “Good afternoon.”
The feathery red grumpy rooster said, “Hmph! I suppose you want to know my name too, don’t you?” “Not really, thank you, because you are very grumpy,” the little girls said. “Very well, I’ll tell you, my parents called me Rossiter.” The grumpy rooster almost smiled as he straightened his neck to show off his red feathers. The little girls tried not to laugh, “Rossiter Rooster indeed!”
“I’ll tell you what my name is now,” said the long legged ostrich with yellow feathers, “It’s Ogilvie L. Ostrich, and please don’t ask what the L. is for!” Of course this made Kim and Jaimi want to know. So, after some coaxing, he nodded his head and bent his long neck over to them, and said, “It’s L.L. really and it’s Long Leggy.” “So your name is really Ogilvie Long Leggy Ostrich.” The little girls were so surprised that a string puppet could have such a long name, but he was rather a dear.
“What is your name then little puppet?” asked Jaimi and Kim of the little something puppet that was trying to make itself smaller on the floor. “Oh you don’t want to know about me,” it said. “Yes we do.” “Oh yes, we want to know what to call you when we play together.”
“Oh well, it’s not a secret really, if you hold my feet down on the floor and then the other one stand up and hold my head I’ll tell you.” So Kim held its feet and Jaimi stood up and held its head. “I’M A CONFUSALUM BIRD AND I”M BIGGER THAN YOU,” it shouted as it towered over the two little girls.
Jaimi got such a fright that she let its head drop and Kim got such a fright that she let its feet go and it fell in a heap. “Oh dear, I always frighten people and then they won’t play with me again!” whinged the little huddled heap on the floor. The girls said crossly, “We’ll play with you if you don’t shout or whinge.” “Will you really?” said the confusalum bird. “Well you can call me Commrie like my Mum did.”
So for the rest of the afternoon Kim and Jaimi had a wonderful time with their tea party guests, and only had to stop three or four quarrels between Wibbly, Rossiter, Ogilvie L.L. Ostrich and Commrie Confusalum who would keep trying to reach across the tea set at the same time and so their long legs were always getting mixed up.
When their mothers arrived to take them home from their day at Nanny’s house, they tip-toed along to see what the children were doing, and before they knew what was happening, they had also joined in to the afternoon tea party with some long ago much loved friends, and a good time was had by all.
As the toys were packed back into the big old toy chest, they were kissed and cuddled by the two little girls and told that they would soon be back to have another tea party afternoon. All the toys were yawning and nodding sleepily and waving goodbye until the next time, and while they waited the toys all had smiley faces, as they had sweet dreams of the fun times still to be had when next the children came to visit.
Tea parties and toys and children really seem to go together very well, don’t you think?
