The Doll's Pram

I hope Nina likes this story. Like her, I loved building treehouses and hideaways when I was young.


Day after day I hungered for it. My footsteps slowed as we passed the shop window, my arm stretching as I dragged my mother to a halt.
It stood right in the middle of the shop window, gleaming blue and silver, shaped like a small boat, with a silky hood and lining.
``She really wants that doll’s pram,” I heard my mother whisper after she had put me to bed.
``We’ll see,” my father replied, and that was as good as a promise.
As my birthday approached, my excitement grew. The pram had disappeared from the shop window, and I was certain it was already mine.
While my mother hung out the washing in the yard we were camping in at Dalkey, she watched me working on my house. I had been building it for ages, laying out bricks for the walls, and making little rooms for my dolls and teddy bears. I already had the kitchen and one bedroom finished. I got the bricks from a shed that had been demolished on the farm, and the house was furnished with things I had scrounged, old chairs, a rickety table, a rug my mother had been planning to throw out. I intended to cover the house with branches, like a bower or a thatched cottage.
My mother worried about me. She would have preferred me to enjoy more sedate and ladylike pastimes than mucking about with bricks and home made mud mortar.
My birthday dawned, and I scrambled out of bed, eager to unwrap my presents. My mother had made a knitted suit for my favorite bear, and of course, there were books. My parents were great believers in books for children.
After breakfast, my father took me outside and there was the pram, gleaming in the sunshine. I wheeled it up and down, reveling in the smooth gliding motion. It was so light and easy to push.
My mother produced a pram quilt and pillow she had made and set one of my dolls in the pram with them. She was beaming, plainly happy that at last I was behaving like a proper little girl.
She was sitting on the back step shelling peas when I next sailed past with the pram. She glanced up and smiled at me, then went back to her work.
Ten minutes later, I passed her again, and she was shelling peas in a big cream coloured pottery bowl.
Ten minutes later, when I again went past with the pram, she said, ``My, your dolly is getting a lot of exercise.”
As evening fell, my father came home and stopped to see how my house was progressing.
``Where did all these bricks come from?” he said. ``You must have been working hard today.”
My mother came out and shook her head at me. ``Look at you, covered in mud again. I hope your new pram is still clean.”
Then they both looked at my new pram, standing proudly outside my house.
And they both saw that it was full of bricks.