One day, a great many years ago, a gentleman ran up the steps of a tall
house in the neighborhood of St. Mary Axe.
The gentleman knocked and rang several times before any one came, but at
last an old man opened the door. "What were you up to that you did not
hear me?" said Mr. Fledgeby irritably.
"I was taking the air at the top of the house, sir," said the old man
meekly, "it being a holiday. What might you please to want, sir?"
"Humph! Holiday indeed," grumbled his master, who was a toy merchant
amongst other things. He then seated himself and gave the old man--a Jew
and Riah by name--directions about the dressing of some dolls, and, as
he rose to go, exclaimed--
"By the bye, how _do_ you take the air? Do you stick your head out of a
chimney-pot?"
"No, sir, I have made a little garden on the roof."
"Let's look at it," said Mr. Fledgeby.
"Sir, I have company there," returned Riah hesitating, "but will you
please come up and see them?"
Mr. Fledgeby nodded, and the old man led the way up flight after flight
of stairs, till they arrived at the house-top. Seated on a carpet, and
leaning against a chimney-stack, were two girls bending over books. Some
creepers were trained round the chimney-pots, and evergreens were placed
round the roof, and a few more books, a basket of gaily colored scraps,
and bits of tinsel, lay near. One of the girls rose on seeing that Riah
had brought a visitor, but the other remarked, "I'm the person of the
house downstairs, but I can't get up, whoever you are, because my back
is bad, and my legs are queer."
"This is my master," said Riah speaking to the two girls, "and this," he
added, turning to Mr. Fledgeby, "is Miss Jenny Wren; she lives in this
house, and is a clever little dressmaker for little people. Her friend
Lizzie," continued Riah, introducing the second girl. "They are good
girls, both, and as busy as they are good; in spare moments they come up
here, and take to book learning."
"Humph!" said Mr. Fledgeby, looking round, "Humph!" He was so much
surprised that apparently he couldn't get beyond that word.
Lizzie, the elder of these two girls, was strong and handsome, but the
little Jenny Wren, whom she so loved and protected, was small, and
deformed, though she had a beautiful little face, and the longest and
loveliest golden hair in the world, which fell about her like a cloak of
shining curls, as though to hide the poor little misshapen figure.
The Jew Riah, as well as Lizzie, was always kind and gentle to Jenny
Wren, who called him godfather. She had a father, who shared her poor
little rooms, whom she called her child, for he was a bad, drunken,
disreputable old man, and the poor girl had to care for him, and earn
money to keep them both. Sometimes the two girls, Jenny helping herself
along with a crutch, would go and walk about the fashionable streets. As
they walked along, Jenny would tell her friend of the fancies she had
when sitting alone at her work. "I imagine birds till I can hear them
sing," she said one day, "and flowers till I can smell them. And oh! the
beautiful children that come to me, in the early mornings! They are
quite different to other children, not like me, never cold, or anxious,
or tired, or hungry, never any pain; they come in numbers, in long
bright slanting rows, all dressed in white, with shiny heads. 'Who is
this in pain?' they say, and they sweep around and about me, take me up
in their arms, and I feel so light, and all the pain goes. I know they
are coming a long way off, by hearing them say, 'Who is this in pain?'
and I answer, 'Oh my blessed children, it's poor me! have pity on me,
and take me up and then the pain will go.'"
[Illustration: JENNIE WREN.
"THE BEAUTIFUL CHILDREN THAT COME TO ME."]
Lizzie sat stroking and brushing the beautiful hair, when they were at
home again, and as she kissed her good-night, a miserable old man
stumbled into the room. "How's my Jenny Wren, best of children?" he
mumbled, as he shuffled unsteadily towards her, but Jenny pointed her
small finger towards him exclaiming--"Go along with you, you bad,
wicked, old child, you troublesome, wicked, old thing, _I_ know where
you have been; ain't you ashamed of yourself, you disgraceful boy?"
"Yes; my dear, yes," stammered the tipsy old father, tumbling into a
corner. One day when Jenny was on her way home with Riah, they came on a
small crowd of people. A tipsy man had been knocked down and badly
hurt--"Let us see what it is!" said Jennie. The next moment she
exclaimed--"Oh, gentlemen--gentlemen, he is my child, he belongs to me,
my poor, bad, old child!"
"Your child--belongs to you--" repeated the man who was about to lift
the helpless figure on to a stretcher. "Aye, it's old Dolls--tipsy old
Dolls--" cried some one in the crowd, for it was by this name that they
knew the old man.
"He's her father, sir," said Riah in a low tone to the doctor who was
now bending over the stretcher.
"So much the worse," answered the doctor, "for the man is dead."
Yes, "Mr. Dolls" was dead, and many were the dresses which the weary
fingers of the sorrowful little worker must make in order to pay for his
humble funeral, and buy a black frock for herself. Often the tears
rolled down on to her work. "My poor child," she said to Riah, "my poor
old child, and to think I scolded him so."
"You were always a good, brave, patient girl," returned Riah, "always
good and patient, however tired."
And so the poor little "person of the house" was left alone but for the
faithful affection of the kind Jew, and her friend Lizzie. Her room grew
pretty comfortable, for she was in great request in her "profession" as
she called it, and there was now no one to spend and waste her earnings.
But nothing could make her life otherwise than a suffering one till the
happy morning, when her child-angels visited her for the last time and
carried her away to the land where all such pain as hers is healed for
evermore.