"Pen-wipers?"
"Ha! ha! What else? Oh, you'll never guess," laughed Jenny.
"You do something with straw, but I don't know what," said Lizzie,
pointing to one corner of the bench.
"Well done!" cried Jenny. "Now I'll tell you. I only make pincushions
and pen-wipers to use up my waste, but my straw really does belong to my
business. Try again. What do I make with my straw?"
"Bonnets?" said Lizzie, after thinking a moment.
"Yes. Fine ladies' bonnets," Jenny said, with a proud nod. "Dolls. I'm a
dolls' dressmaker." She put her tiny hand in a very small apron pocket
and drew out a card. "There," said she, "read that."
Lizzie took the card, which looked like this:
_Miss Jenny Wren,_
_Dolls' Dressmaker._
_Dolls attended at their own residences._
"I hope it's a good business," said Lizzie, smiling at the little
creature.
"No. Poorly paid," said Jenny. "And I'm often pressed for time. I had a
doll married last week, and was obliged to work all night to get her
ready in time, and it's not good for me, on account of my back being so
bad and my legs so queer. And they don't take care of their clothes, and
they want new fashions every month. One doll I work for has three
daughters. Bless you! she's enough to ruin her husband."
Here Jenny laughed, and gave such a sharp look at Lizzie, and hitched
her little chin, as if her eyes and chin worked together by the pulling
of a wire.
"Are you always so busy?" Lizzie asked, looking with wonder at the small
fingers cutting, gumming, and stitching so fast.
"Oh, busier," said Jenny, tossing her head. "I'm slack just now. I
finished a large order for mourning clothes the day before yesterday.
The doll I worked for had lost a canary-bird, and she wanted very deep
mourning." She laid down her work, and reached for a crutch that leaned
against the bench. "Come," said she, "I'll show you the room. It's not
large, but it's nice, and very cheap."
They went up a small and narrow staircase, and Jenny threw open a small
door, and with one step down they were in a little box of a room, but it
was neat as wax, and had one white-curtained window just over the front
door. Lizzie hired the room at once, and then followed her queer little
landlady down into the parlor again.
"Are you alone all day?" said Lizzie. "Don't any of the children in this
street--"
"Oh, don't!" said Jenny, with a little cry, as if the word had pricked
her. "Don't talk to me of children! I can't bear children! Oh, I know
their tricks and their manners!" She said this with an angry shake of
her tiny right fist close before her eyes. "Always running about and
screeching, they are; always playing and fighting; always
skip-skip-skipping on the walk, and chalking it for their games. And
that's not all"--shaking her little fist as before. "They go a-calling
names through a person's key-hole, and imitating a person's back and
legs. Oh, I'll tell you what I'd do to punish 'em if I could. There's
doors under the church in the square, black doors leading into dark
vaults. I'd like to open one of those doors, and cram 'em all in; and
then I'd lock the door, and blow in pepper through the key-hole."
The little creature stopped, quite out of breath.
"Blow in pepper!" said Lizzie. "Why should you do that?"
"To set 'em snee-ee-eezing, and make their eyes water; and then I'd mock
'em through the key-hole, just as they mock a person through a person's
key-hole. No; no children for me. Give _me_ grown-ups."
From all this the little dressmaker's new lodger could very well
understand that the children of the street, who were strong and well,
and could romp and play merrily all day, had not been as thoughtful and
kind as they might have been to little Jenny Wren, whose life was so
unlike and so much braver than theirs.
In a few days the two girls had become warm friends. Lizzie, who was
eighteen years old, earned her living by working in a seamen's
outfitter; that is, a shop where sailors' clothes are made. During the
daytime Lizzie was away at her work, and Jenny sat at her little
work-bench at home, except when she had to peg away on her little crutch
to the milliners', or the doll shops, or to the house of some customer
for whom she had dressed a doll. At night-fall, when her work was done,
the dolls' dressmaker would lean back in her little low arm-chair, with
her arms crossed, and sing in a sweet, thoughtful voice, and wait for
Lizzie, who at about the same time would come out of her shop in
Millbank, and hurry along in the sunset by the river-side until she came
to Church Street, and the small house, and the small housekeeper who
loved her so much.
"Well, Lizzie-Mizzie-Wizzie," Jenny would say, breaking off in her song,
"what's the news out-of-doors?"
[Illustration: "SOMETIMES A VISITOR WOULD DROP IN."]
"And what's the news in-doors?" Lizzie would answer, laying her gentle
hand on the bright hair, which grew very long and thick and wavy on the
head of the little dolls' dressmaker. Then they would have tea together,
Lizzie spreading the cloth on the low work-bench, because Jenny could
sit at that more easily than at the table, and while they ate they would
talk over the day and its work. After supper, Lizzie would move Jenny,
chair and all, so that she could look out over the square and into the
evening sky, and then sit down beside her. Sometimes a visitor would
drop in, perhaps one of Jenny's patrons who took an interest in her, or
who had an order to give the little dressmaker.
"This is what I call the best time of the whole day," said Jenny one
night, when they were sitting in the pleasant twilight; and then she
continued, in a soft, low tone, "I wonder, Lizzie, how it happens that
sometimes when I am working here, all alone, in the summer-time, I smell
flowers. It isn't a flowery place, you know--it's anything but that. And
yet as I sit at work I smell miles of flowers. I smell roses until I
think I see them in great heaps--bushels of them around me on the
floor--and I put down my hand 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've seen very few flowers indeed in my life, my
Lizzie-Mizzie-Wizzie."
"You must find it very pleasant, my dear Jenny."
"So I think when it comes. And the birds I hear! Oh!" cried the little
creature, holding out her hand and looking up, "how they sing!"
As Jenny talked in this way, with her hand raised, and her eyes wide and
bright, she looked quite beautiful, Lizzie thought. They sat silent for
some moments, until they heard a shaky, shuffling step on the sidewalk.
Then Jenny spoke in such a different voice. "That's my child coming
home, and my child's a bad, troublesome child."
Jenny was speaking of her drunken father. She always called him her
child. It seemed as if the little creature felt that the name "father"
would in some way be wronged and spoiled in her own thoughts if she gave
it to the poor wretch who stumbled over the door-sill where they sat.
The name "child" seemed to give her a sort of patience to bear her
trouble.
"I would rather you didn't see my child," Jenny said; and Lizzie rose
and went up stairs.
[TO BE CONTINUED.]
[Illustration: Thro' the daisy-spotted Meadow]
[Illustration: OUR POST-OFFICE BOX.]
Little correspondents the wide world round have sent the missives which
greet our young readers this week. Some of the letters have been a long
while in reaching their destination, and others are from friends not far
away. We are sure that every letter will be eagerly read, not excepting
the doleful one from a new contributor, which bright eyes will discover
tucked snugly in among epistles from more fortunate writers.
* * * * *