A week after their happy holiday, Jenny was once more living alone with
only her "bad child," for Lizzie had been engaged to go and nurse a sick
man away in the east part of the city of London, and had given up her
place in the seaman's outfitter to do it.
The sick man was very ill indeed, and it would be days, and might be
weeks, before Lizzie could come back.
Early one foggy evening, when Lizzie had been two or three weeks away,
old Mr. Riah came to Church Street and the home of the little dolls'
dressmaker. Jenny expected him. He could see her through the window by
the light of the candle, sitting in her low chair with her bonnet tied
on, waiting for him.
"Good-evening, godmother," said the little creature, opening the door in
answer to his knock.
"Are you ready, Cinderella, my dear?"
Jenny laughed, locked the door on the outside, and put the key in her
pocket. It was a big key for such a little person, and Mr. Riah offered
to carry it.
"No, no, no," said Jenny; "I'll carry it myself. I'm awfully lopsided,
you know, and it helps to keep me even. I'll tell you a secret,
godmother; I wear my pocket on my high side on purpose."
He took her hand within his arm, and she worked her little crutch along
briskly with the other. She had already given him her basket, with a
doll in it in evening toilet, to carry, and so they set out through the
fog toward London.
[Illustration: "SHE TURNED HIM TO THE BRILLIANTLY LIGHTED TOY-SHOP
WINDOW."]
When they reached the great city they turned into one of the principal
streets, and with the pressure of her little hand on his arm she turned
him to the brilliantly lighted toy-shop window. There were dolls of all
sizes, with black hair, with white hair, brown hair, and yellow hair,
straight hair and curly hair and crimped hair; dressed in all the colors
of the rainbow, for presentation at court, for going to balls, for going
out driving, for going out on horseback, for going out walking, for
going to get married, for going to help other dolls to get married, for
all the gay events of life.
"Pretty! pretty! pretty!" said Mr. Riah, clapping his hands lightly.
"You have done it very daintily, Cinderella."
"Glad you like them," said Jenny, pleased and proud, her hair sparkling
like spun crystal through the gas-lighted fog. "But the fun is when I
make the great ladies try my dresses on. It's the hardest work I have to
do, too."
"How do you mean?"
"Bless you, godmother, I have to scud about town at all hours to do it.
When I sit at my bench cutting out and sewing, that's easy; but the
trying on!--_that's_ work."
"How trying on?" asked Mr. Riah, still puzzled.
"Why, godmother, look here. There's a Drawing-room, or a grand day in
the Park, or a show, or a fête, or what you like. Very well. I squeeze
among the crowd, and I look about. When I see a great lady dressed in
the height of the fashion, I say, 'You'll do, my dear,' and I take
particular notice of her, and run home and cut her out and baste her.
Then another day I come scudding back to try on, and then I take very
particular notice of her indeed. Sometimes she looks at me as she
thought, 'How that child stares!' and sometimes she seems to like it and
sometimes she don't, but more times she does than she don't; and all the
time I'm saying to myself, 'I must hollow out a bit here, I must slope
away there'; and you see I'm making a perfect slave of her. Evening
parties are the hardest for me, because there's only a doorway for a
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. But
there I have 'em just the same. There was Lady Belinda Whitrose. One
night when she came out of her carriage to go in to a party I said,
'You'll do,' and I ran straight home, and cut her out and basted her,
and then I hurried back and waited behind the men that called the
carriages. Very bad night it was, too. At last they called, 'Lady
Belinda Whitrose's carriage!' and didn't I make her try on, and take
pains about it too, before she got seated. That's Lady Belinda hanging
up by the waist--and much too near the gas-light for a wax one--with her
toes turned in."
The little doll in evening toilet in Jenny's basket had been ordered for
a rich banker's little daughter; and when they went into the shop, Jenny
took it out herself, and wouldn't let the rather pert young man behind
the counter touch it.
"Give me a box, young man," said she, with the little hitch of her eyes
and chin, and the sharp old look on her tiny face; and when he obeyed,
with a sly wink at old Mr. Riah, she cut him short with: "Mind your
tricks and your manners, young man. Now tie this up, so, and find out if
there's any change to be made in the ladies' wardrobe, and I'll take the
order when I come again, and I'll take my pay now."
* * * * *
Jenny had an errand into the city the very next day, and when it was
done she went to St. Mary Axe to call on Mr. Riah. She found him
standing on the door-step of the yellow house, with a clumsy black bag
in his hand. Something in the way he looked up and down the street
before he saw her put a quick suspicion in Jenny's keen little mind. In
the front window, drawing down the blind, stood the foxy-faced young
man, with his mouth stretched as if he laughed, but his eyes squinted as
if he did not feel merry at all.
"Boh! you're a beast," exclaimed Jenny, shaking her small fist at him.
"I knew it. Well, godmother"--stopping in front of him, with her head on
one side, and looking like an owl and wren in one--"so the wolf's been
too much for you, and you're thrown on the world?"
"It seems so, Jenny," the old man answered.
"Sudden, ain't it, godmother?"
"Rather." He stepped down into the street, and they moved on together
slowly.
"Where are you going to seek your fortune?"
The old man smiled at this question, but Jenny saw that he looked about
him as if he had lost his way in life.
"Come," said she, "the best thing you can do now, at any rate,
godmother, is to come right home with me. There's nobody there but my
bad child, and Lizzie's room's empty."
Mr. Riah had been asked by his employer to help do a mean and wicked
thing, and because he would not do it he had been turned instantly from
his place. But he had a little money, and could accept the little
dressmaker's offer, for a time at least, without making her any poorer;
so he went with her willingly, and was as pleased as she.
Now when Jenny had started on her errand into the city she had left her
drunken father in the house, where he had promised to stay. But he
didn't often keep such promises, or indeed any promises at all, and this
time he took some coin he had managed to hide away, and crawled out
through the window, and went into the city, and to places where drink
could be had.
As Jenny and Mr. Riah were coming up the street toward Westminster
Bridge, they met four men carrying a strange bundle between them. Mr.
Riah would have passed, but Jenny stopped.
"Oh, let me see what it is! Let us make haste and look, godmother." She
broke away, and with one quick look, "Oh, gentlemen, gentlemen, he
belongs to me!" she cried, and threw up her little trembling hands.
"Belongs to you!" exclaimed one of them.
"Oh yes. Tell them, godmother, he's my child. Oh, my poor bad boy! And
he doesn't know me! Oh, what shall I do?" wildly beating her hands
together.
She leaned again over the wretched, ragged figure, and Mr. Riah
whispered to the men who held it: "It's her drunken father. She calls
him her child, and she has taken care of him ever since she can
remember."
"He is dead," they answered, looking at her with eyes full of pity! One
of them spread a covering over him, and as they walked on, the little
dolls' dressmaker followed, hiding her face in Mr. Riah's coat. The men
carried their burden home, and it was put down in the parlor.
Many dolls had to be gayly dressed before Jenny could get money enough
to buy the last garments he would ever wear for her father. As old Mr.
Riah sat by helping in such ways as he could, he wondered whether she
understood that the dead man had been really her father.
"It's so hard to bring up a child well, godmother," she said, as her
needle flew along the little seams, "when you have to work, work, work
all day! When my child was out of work, I couldn't keep him always near
me. He got fretful and nervous, and I had to let him go into the
streets. But he never did well out of sight. How often that happens with
children! But how can I say what I might have turned out to be myself if
my back hadn't been so bad and my legs so queer?" The little dressmaker
went on: "I had nothing to do but work. I couldn't play, and it turned
out the worse for him."
"Not for him alone, Jenny."
"Well, I don't know, godmother. Perhaps if I could have played with
him-- He suffered a great deal, poor child, and I called him names." She
shook her head over her work, and tears fell on it, but her needle never
stopped for a moment.
And so, talking and weeping and working, the brave little creature had
at last dressed dolls enough to pay for all that was needed for the dead
father who had so long been her "troublesome child."
"I must have a cry before I can cheer up for good," said little Jenny,
coming in from the funeral, a day or two later, "for a child is a child,
after all, you know."
She went away by herself, and sunset had faded into evening before she
came down and made the tea. Her eyes were red, but she pattered her
little crutch across the floor as briskly as ever, and when tea was
over, she spread out a quantity of bright silks and lace and beads upon
her work bench, and began to work just as usual.
"Cinderella, dear child, will you never rest?"
"Cutting out a pattern isn't much work, godmother," said Jenny, her
little scissors snipping into tissue-paper.
A knock was heard at the door, and Mr. Riah rose and opened it.
[TO BE CONTINUED.]
[Illustration]