Mr. Sloppy opened it, if possible, wider, and kept it open, until his laugh was out.
"Why, you"re like the giant," said Miss Wren, "when he came home in the land of Beanstalk, and wanted Jack for supper."
"Was he good looking, Miss?" asked Sloppy.
"No," said Miss Wren. "Ugly."
Her visitor glanced round the room--which had many comforts in it now, that it had not had before--and said:
"This is a pretty place, Miss.
"Glad you think so, sir," returned Miss Wren. "And what do you think of Me?"
The honesty of Mr. Sloppy being severely taxed by the question, he twisted a b.u.t.ton, grinned, and faltered.
"Out with it," said Miss Wren, with an arch look. "Don"t you think me a queer little comicality?" In shaking her head at him after asking the question, she shook her hair down.
"Oh!" cried Sloppy in a burst of admiration. "What a lot, and what a color!"
Miss Wren with her usual expressive hitch, went on with her work. But left her hair as it was, not displeased by the effect it had made.
"You don"t live here alone, do you, Miss?" asked Sloppy.
"No," said Miss Wren with a chop. "Live here with my fairy G.o.dmother."
"With;" Mr. Sloppy couldn"t make it out; "with, who did you say, Miss?"
"Well!" replied Miss Wren more seriously. "With my second father. Or with my first, for that matter." And she shook her head and drew a sigh.
"If you had known a poor child I used to have here," she added, "you"d have understood me. But you didn"t and you can"t. All the better!"
"You must have been taught a long time, Miss," said Sloppy, glancing at the array of dolls on hand, "before you came to work so neatly, Miss, and with such a pretty taste."
"Never was taught a st.i.tch, young man!" returned the dressmaker, tossing her head. "Just gobbled and gobbled, till I found out how to do it.
Badly enough at first, but better now."
"And here have I," said Sloppy, in a self-reproachful tone, "been a-learning and a-learning at cabinet-making, ever so long! I"ll tell you what, Miss, I should like to make you something."
"Much obliged, but what?"
"I could make you," said Sloppy, surveying the room, "a handy set of nests to lay the dolls in. Or a little set of drawers to keep your silks and threads and sc.r.a.ps in. Or I could turn you a rare handle for that crutch-stick, if it belongs to him you call your father."
"It belongs to me," said the little creature, with a quick flush of her face and neck. "I am lame."
Poor Sloppy flushed too, for there was an instinctive delicacy behind his b.u.t.tons. He said perhaps, the best thing in the way of amends that could be said. "I am very glad it"s yours, because I"d rather ornament it for you than for any one else. Please, may I look at it?"
Miss Wren was in the act of handing it over to him when she paused.
"But you had better see me use it," she said sharply. "This is the way.
Hoppetty, kicketty, peg-peg-peg. Not pretty, is it?"
"It seems to me that you hardly want it at all," said Sloppy.
The little dressmaker sat down again, and gave it into his hand, saying with that better look upon her, and with a smile:
"Thank you! You are a very kind young man, a really kind young man. I accept your offer--I suppose _He_ won"t mind," she added as an afterthought, shrugging her shoulders; "and if he does, he may!"
"Meaning him you call your father, Miss?" said Sloppy.
"No, no," replied Miss Wren. "Him, _him_, HIM!"
"_Him_, HIM, HIM?" repeated Sloppy, staring about, as if for him.
"Him who is coming to court and marry me," returned Miss Wren. "Dear me, how slow you are!"
"Oh! HIM!" said Sloppy, "I never thought of him. When is he coming, Miss?"
"What a question!" cried Miss Wren. "How should I know?"
"Where is he coming from, Miss?"
"Why, good gracious, how can I tell! He is coming from somewhere or other, I suppose, and he is coming some day or other, I suppose. I don"t know any more about him, at present."
This tickled Mr. Sloppy as an extraordinarily good joke, and he threw back his head and laughed with measureless enjoyment. At the sight of him laughing in that absurd way, the dolls" dressmaker laughed very heartily indeed. So they both laughed till they were tired.
"There, there, there!" said Miss Wren. "For goodness sake, stop, Giant, or I shall be swallowed up alive, before I know it. And to this minute you haven"t said what you"ve come for?"
"I have come for little Miss Harmonses" doll," said Sloppy.
"I thought as much," remarked Miss Wren, "and here is little Miss Harmonses" doll waiting for you. She"s folded up in silver paper, you see, as if she was wrapped from head to foot in new banknotes. Take care of her--and there"s my hand--and thank you again."
"I"ll take more care of her than if she was a gold image," said Sloppy, "and there"s _both_ my hands, Miss, and I"ll soon come back again!"
Here we leave the little dolls" dressmaker, under the protecting care of her "G.o.dmother," the first real guardian she has ever known, and with a new friendship to supply her life with that youthful intercourse which has never been hers. And so in leaving her our hearts are light, for Miss Jenny Wren is brighter now, and happier now, and younger now, than ever before.
SISSY JUPE
[Ill.u.s.tration: SISSY JUPE AND HER FATHER]
SISSY JUPE
"Now, what I want is, Facts. Teach these boys and girls nothing but Facts. Facts alone are wanted in life. Plant nothing else, and root out everything else. You can only form the minds of reasoning animals upon Facts: nothing else will be of any service to them. This is the principle on which I bring up my own children, and this is the principle on which I bring up these children. Stick to Facts, sir!"
The scene was a bare, plain, monotonous vault of a schoolroom, and the speaker"s square forefinger emphasized his observation. The emphasis was helped by his square wall of a forehead, by his thin and hardset mouth, by his inflexible and dictatorial voice, and by the hair which bristled on the skirts of his bald head, as if the head had scarcely warehouse room for the hard facts stowed inside. The speaker"s obstinate carriage, square coat, square legs, square shoulders,--nay, his very neckcloth, trained to take him by the throat with an unaccommodating grasp, like a stubborn fact, as it was,--all helped the emphasis.