Ten Girls from Dickens Part 14

"And I'll tell you what I must ask you to do, G.o.dmother. I must ask you to be so kind as to give my child a tap, and change him altogether. Oh, my child has been such a bad, bad child of late! It worries me almost out of my wits. Not done a stroke of work these ten days."

"What shall be changed after him?" asked Riah, in a compa.s.sionately playful voice.

"Upon my word, G.o.dmother, I am afraid I must be selfish next, and get you to set me right in the back and legs. It's a little thing to you with your power, G.o.dmother, but it's a great deal to poor, weak, aching me."

There was no querulous complaining in the words, but they were not the less touching for that.

"And then?"

"Yes, and then--_you_ know, G.o.dmother. Well both jump into the coach and six, and go to Lizzie. This reminds me, G.o.dmother, to ask you a serious question. You are as wise as wise can be (having been brought up by the fairies), and you can tell me this,--Is it better to have had a good thing and lost it, or never to have had it?"

"Explain, G.o.ddaughter."

"I feel so much more solitary and helpless without Lizzie now than I used to feel before I knew her." (Tears were in her eyes as she said so.)

"Some beloved companionship fades out of most lives, my dear," said the Jew, "that of a wife, and a fair daughter, and a son of promise, has faded out of my own life--but the happiness _was_"

"Ah!" said Miss Wren thoughtfully, by no means convinced. "Then I tell you what change I think you had better begin with, G.o.dmother. You had better change Is into Was, and Was into Is, and keep them so."

"Would that suit your case? Would you not be always in pain then?" asked the old man tenderly.

"Right!" exclaimed Miss Wren. "You have changed me wiser, G.o.dmother.

Not," she added, with a quaint hitch of her chin and eyes, "that you need to be a very wonderful G.o.dmother to do that, indeed!"

Thus conversing, they pursued their way over London Bridge, and struck down the river, and held their still foggier course that way. As they were going along, Jennie twisted her venerable friend aside to a brilliantly lighted toy-shop window, and said: "Now, look at 'em! All my work!"

This referred to a dazzling semicircle of dolls in all the colors of the rainbow, who were dressed for all the gay events of life.

"Pretty, pretty, pretty!" said the old man with a clap of his hands.

"Most elegant taste!"

"Glad you like 'em," returned Miss Wren loftily. "But the fun is, G.o.dmother, how I make the great ladies try my dresses on. Though it's the hardest part of my business, and would be, even if my back were not bad and my legs queer."

He looked at her as not understanding what she said.

"Bless you, G.o.dmother," said Miss Wren, "I have to scud about town at all hours. If it was only sitting at my bench, cutting out and sewing, it would be comparatively easy work; but it's the trying-on by the great ladies that takes it out of me."

"How the trying-on?" asked Riah.

"What a moony G.o.dmother you are, after all!" returned Miss Wren. "Look here. There's a Drawing-room, or a grand day in the Park, or a show or a fete, or what you like. Very well. I squeeze among the crowd, and I look about me. When I see a great lady very suitable for my business, I say, 'You'll do, my dear!' and I take particular notice of her again, and run home and cut her out, and baste her. Then another day I come scudding back again to try on. Sometimes she plainly seems to say, 'How that little creature _is_ staring!' All the time I am only saying to myself, 'I must hollow out a bit here; I must slope away there'; and I am making a perfect slave of her, making her try on my doll's dress.

Evening parties are severer work for me, because there's only a doorway for full view, and what with hobbling among the wheels of the carriages and the legs of the horses, I fully expect to be run over some night.

Whenever they go bobbing into the hall from the carriage, and catch a glimpse of my little physiognomy poked out from behind a policeman's cape in the rain, I daresay they think I am wondering and admiring with all my eyes and heart, but they little think they're only working for my dolls! There was Lady Belinda Whitrose. I said one night when she came out of the carriage. 'You'll do, my dear!' and I ran straight home, and cut her out, and basted her. Back I came again, and waited behind the men that called the carriages. Very bad night too. At last, 'Lady Belinda's Whitrose's carriage!' Lady Belinda Whitrose coming down! And I made her try on--oh! and take pains about it too--before she got seated.

That's Lady Belinda hanging up by the waist, much too near the gas-light for a wax one, with her toes turned in."

When they had plodded on for some time, they reached a certain tavern, where Mr. Riah had some business to transact with its proprietress, Miss Abbey Potterson, to whom he presented himself, and was about to introduce his young companion when Miss Wren interrupted him:

"Stop a bit," she said, "I'll give the lady my card." She produced it from her pocket with an air, and Miss Abbey took the diminutive doc.u.ment, and found it to run thus:

Miss JENNY WREN.

_Dolls' Dressmaker._.

_Dolls attended at their own residences_.

So great were her amus.e.m.e.nt and astonishment, and so interested was she in the odd little creature that she at once asked:

"Did you ever taste shrub, child?"

Miss Wren shook her head.

"Should you like to?"

"Should if it's good," returned Miss Wren.

"You shall try. Put your little feet on the fender. It's a cold, cold night, and the fog clings so." As Miss Abbey helped her to turn her chair, her loosened bonnet fell on the floor. "Why, what lovely hair!"

cried Miss Abbey. "And enough to make wigs: for all the dolls in the world. What a quant.i.ty!"

"Call _that_ a quant.i.ty?" returned Miss Wren. "_Poof_! What do you say to the rest of it?" As she spoke, she untied a band, and the golden stream fell over herself, and over the chair, and flowed down to the ground. Miss Abbey's admiration seemed to increase her perplexity. She beckoned the Jew towards her, and whispered:

"Child or woman?"

"Child in years," was the answer; "woman in self-reliance and trial."

"You are talking about me, good people," thought Miss Jenny, sitting in her golden bower, warming her feet. "I can't hear what you say, but I know your tricks and your manners!"

The shrub, mixed by Miss Potterson's skilful hands, was perfectly satisfactory to Miss Jenny's palate, and she sat and sipped it leisurely while the interview between Mr. Riah and Miss Potterson proceeded, keenly regretting when the bottom of the gla.s.s was reached, and the interview at an end.

There was at this time much curiosity among Lizzie Hexam's acquaintances to discover her hiding-place, and many of them paid visits to the dolls'

dressmaker in hopes of obtaining from her the desired address. Among these was Mr. Wrayburn, whom we find calling upon Miss Wren one evening:

"And so, Miss Jenny," he said, "I cannot persuade you to dress me a doll?"

"No," replied Miss Wren snappishly; "If you want one, go and buy it at the shop."

"And my charming young G.o.ddaughter," said Mr. Wrayburn plaintively, "down in Hertfordshire--"

("Humbugshire, you mean, I think," interposed Miss Wren)--"is to be put upon the cold footing of the general public, and is to derive no advantage from my private acquaintance with the Court dressmaker?"

"If it's any advantage to your charming G.o.dchild, and oh, a precious G.o.dfather she has got!" replied Miss Wren, p.r.i.c.king at him in the air with her needle, "to be informed that the Court dressmaker knows your tricks and your manners, you may tell her so, by post, with my compliments."

Miss Wren was busy with her work, by candlelight, and Mr. Wrayburn, half amused and half vexed, stood by her bench looking on, while her troublesome child was in the corner, in deep disgrace on account of his bad behavior, and as Miss Jenny worked, she rated him severely, accompanying each reproach with a stamp of her foot.

"Pay five shillings for you indeed!" she exclaimed in response to his appeal for money. "How many hours do you suppose it costs me to earn five shillings, you infamous boy? Don't cry like that, or I'll throw a doll at you. Pay five shillings fine for you, indeed! Fine in more ways than one, I think! I'd give the dustman five shillings to carry you off in the dust-cart."

The figure in the corner continuing to whine and whimper, Miss Wren covered her face with her hand. "There!" she said, "I can't bear to look at you. Go upstairs and get me my bonnet and shawl. Make yourself useful in some way, bad boy, and let me have your room instead of your company, for one half minute."

Obeying her, he shambled out, and Mr. Wrayburn, pitying, saw the tears exude between the little creature's fingers, as she kept her hand before her eyes.

"I am going to the Italian Opera to try on," said Miss Wren, taking away her hand, and laughing satirically to hide that she had been crying.