Part 13 (1/2)

”I don't know about that,” Miss Wren retorted; ”but you'd better by half set up a pen-wiper, and turn industrious, and use it.”

”Why, if we were all as industrious as you, little Busy Body, we should begin to work as soon as we could crawl, and there would be a bad thing!”

”Do you mean,” returned the little creature with a flush suffusing her face, ”bad for your backs and your legs?”

”No, no,” said the visitor, shocked at the thought of trifling with her infirmity. ”Bad for business. If we all set to work as soon as we could use our hands, it would be all over with the dolls' dressmakers.

”There's something in that,” replied Miss Wren, ”you have a sort of an idea in your noddle sometimes!” Then, resting one arm upon the elbow of her chair, resting her chin upon that hand, and looking vacantly before her, she said in a changed tone: ”Talking of ideas, my Lizzie, I wonder how it happens that when I am working here all alone in the summer-time, I smell flowers. This is not a flowery neighborhood. It's anything but that. And yet as I sit at work, I smell miles of flowers; I smell rose-leaves till I think I see the rose-leaves lying in heaps, bushels, on the floor; I smell fallen leaves, till I put down my hand--so--and expect to make them rustle; I smell the white and the pink May in the hedges, and all sorts of flowers that I never was among. For I have seen very few flowers indeed in my life.”

”Pleasant fancies to have, Jenny dear!” said her friend with a glance toward their visitor, as if she would have asked him whether they were given the child in compensation for her losses.

”So I think, Lizzie, when they come to me. And the birds I hear! Oh!”

cried the little creature, holding out her hand and looking upward, ”How they sing!”

There was something in the face and action for the moment quite inspired and beautiful. Then the chin dropped musingly upon the hand again.

”I dare say my birds sing better than other birds, and my flowers smell better than other flowers. For when I was a little child,” in a tone as though it were ages ago, ”the children that I used to see early in the morning were very different from any others I ever saw. They were not like me; they were not chilled, anxious, ragged, or beaten; they were never in pain. They were not like the children of the neighbors; they never made me tremble all over, by setting up shrill noises; and they never mocked me. Such numbers of them too! All in white dresses, and with something s.h.i.+ning on the borders, and on their heads, that I have never been able to imitate with my work, though I know it so well. They used to come down in long, bright, slanting rows, and say all together, 'Who is this in pain! Who is this in pain!' When I told them who it was, they answered, 'Come and play with us!' When I said 'I never play! I can't play,' they swept about me and took me up, and made me light. Then it was all delicious ease and rest till they laid me down, and said all together, 'Have patience, and we will come again.' Whenever they came back, I used to know they were coming before I saw the long bright rows, by hearing them ask, all together a long way off, 'Who is this in pain!

Who is this in pain!' And I used to cry out, 'Oh my blessed children, it's poor me. Have pity on me. Take me up and make me light!'”

By degrees as she progressed in this remembrance, the hand was raised, the last ecstatic look returned, and she became quite beautiful again.

Having so paused for a moment, silent, with a listening smile upon her face, she looked round and recalled herself.

”What poor fun you think me, don't you,” she said to the visitor. ”You may well look tired of me. But it's Sat.u.r.day night, and I won't detain you.”

”That is to say, Miss Wren,” observed the visitor, rather weary of the person of the house, and quite ready to profit by her hint, ”you wish me to go?”

”Well, it's Sat.u.r.day night,” she returned, ”and my child's coming home.

And my child is a troublesome, bad child, and costs me a world of scolding. I would rather you didn't see my child.”

”A doll?” said the visitor, not understanding, and looking for an explanation.

But Lizzie, with her lips only, shaping the two words, ”_Her father_,”

he took his leave immediately, and presently the weak and shambling figure of the child's father stumbled in, to be expostulated with, and scolded, and treated as the person of the house always treated him, when he came home in such a pitiable condition.

While they ate their supper, Lizzie tried to bring the child round again to that prettier and better state. But the charm was broken. The dolls'

dressmaker had become a little quaint shrew, of the world, worldly; of the earth, earthy.

Poor dolls' dressmaker! How often so dragged down by hands that should have raised her up; how often so misdirected when losing her way on the eternal road and asking guidance! Poor, poor little dolls' dressmaker.

One of Miss Jenny's firmest friends was an aged Jew, Mr. Riah, by name; of venerable aspect, and a generous and n.o.ble nature. He was supposedly the head of the firm of Pubsey and Co., at Saint-Mary-Axe, but really only the agent of one Mr. Fledgeby, a miserly young dandy who directed all the aged Jew's transactions, and forced him into sharp, unfair dealings with those whom Mr. Riah himself would gladly have befriended; s.h.i.+elding his own meanness and dishonesty behind the venerable figure of the Jew, and keeping his own connection with the firm a profound secret.

Mr. Riah suffered himself to remain in such a position only because once when he had had sickness and misfortune, and owed Mr. Fledgeby's father both princ.i.p.al and interest, the son inheriting, had been merciful and placed him there; and little did the guileless old man realize that he had long since, richly repaid the debt; his age and serene respectability, added to the characteristics ascribed to his race, making a valuable screen to hide his employer's misdeeds.

The aged Jew often befriended the dolls' dressmaker, and she called him, in her fanciful way, ”G.o.dmother.”

On his roof-top garden, Jenny Wren and her friend Lizzie were sitting one day, together, when Mr. Fledgeby came up and joined the party, interrupting their conversation. For the girls, perhaps with some old instinct of his race, the gentle Jew had spread a carpet. Seated on it, against no more romantic object than a blackened chimney-stack, over which some humble creeper had been trained, they both pored over one book, while a basket of common fruit, and another basket of strings of beads and tinsel sc.r.a.ps were lying near.

”This, sir,” explained the old Jew, ”is a little dressmaker for little people. Explain to the master, Jenny.”

”Dolls; that's all,” said Jenny shortly. ”Very difficult to fit too, because their figures are so uncertain. You never know where to expect their waists.”