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Five Minute Stories

Chapter 55: NANCY’S NIGHTMARE
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About This Book

A lively collection of short stories and poems for children, offering simple domestic scenes, playful rhymes, brief narratives, and light moral lessons. Pieces range from tender portraits of family life and child play to fanciful nonsense verses, seasonal and holiday sketches, animal vignettes, and concise character studies, often keyed to children's imagination and daily activities. Language is straightforward and rhythmic, with songs and jingles interspersed among short tales; many pieces aim to charm or amuse while gently reinforcing kindness, curiosity, and good manners. Illustrations accompany several items, enhancing the accessible tone and appeal to young readers.

NANCY’S NIGHTMARE

I am the doll that Nancy broke!
Hadn’t been hers a week.
Punch me behind, and I sweetly spoke;
Rosy and fair was my cheek.
Now my head is rolled in a corner far,
My body lies here in another;
And if this is what human children are,
I never will live with another.
I am the book that Nancy read
For twenty minutes together.
Now I am standing here on my head,
While she’s gone to look at the weather.
My leaves are crushed in the cruellest way,
There’s jam on my opening page,
And I would not live with Miss Nancy Gay,
Though I should not be read for an age.
I am the frock that Nancy wore
Last night at her birthday feast.
I am the frock that Nancy tore
In seventeen places, at least.
My buttons are scattering far and near,
My trimming is torn to rags;
And if I were Miss Nancy’s mother dear,
I’d dress her in calico bags!
We are the words that Nancy said
When these things were called to her view.
All of us ought to be painted red,
And some of us are not true.
We splutter and mutter and snarl and snap,
We smoulder and smoke and blaze.
And if she’d not meet with some sad mishap,
Miss Nancy must mend her ways.