FullReads

“Where are you going to seek your fortune?” asked Miss Wren. The old man smiled, but gazed about him with a look of having lost his way in life, which did not escape the dolls’ dressmaker.

“The best thing you can do,” said Jenny, “for the time being, at all events, is to come home with me, godmother. Nobody’s there but my bad child, and Lizzie’s lodging stands empty.”

The old man, when satisfied that no inconvenience could be entailed on any one by this move, readily complied, and the singularly assorted couple once more went through the streets together.

And it was a kindly Providence which placed the child’s hand in the aged Jew’s protecting one that night. Before they reached home, they met a sad party, bearing in their arms an inanimate form, at which the dolls’ dressmaker needed but to take one look.

“Oh gentlemen, gentlemen,” she cried, “He belongs to me!” “Belongs to you!” said the head of the party, stopping;–“Oh yes, dear gentlemen, he’s my child, out without leave. My poor, bad, bad boy! And he don’t know me, he don’t know me! Oh, what shall I do?” cried the little creature, wildly beating her hands together, “when my own child don’t know me!”

The head of the party looked to the old Jew for explanation. He whispered, as the dolls’ dressmaker bent over the still form, and vainly tried to extract some sign of recognition from it; “It’s her drunken father.”

Then the sad party with their lifeless burden went through the streets. After it, went the dolls’ dressmaker, hiding her face in the Jewish skirts, and clinging to them with one hand, while with the other she plied her stick, and at last the little home in Church Street was reached.

Many flaunting dolls had to be gaily dressed, before the money was in the dressmaker’s pocket to get mourning for her father. As Mr. Riah sat by, helping her in such small ways as he could, he found it difficult to make out whether she realized that the deceased had really been her father.

“If my poor boy,” she would say, “had been brought up better, he might have done better. Not that I reproach myself. I hope I have no cause for that.”

“None, indeed, Jenny, I am very certain.”

“Thank you, godmother. It cheers me to hear you say so. But you see it is so hard to bring up a child well, when you work, work, work, all day. When he was out of employment, I couldn’t always keep him near me. He got fractious and nervous, and I was obliged to let him go into the streets. And he never did well in the streets, he never did well out of sight. How often it happens with children! How can I say what I might have turned out myself, but for my back having been so bad and my legs so queer, when I was young!” the dressmaker would go on. “I had nothing to do but work, so I worked. I couldn’t play. But my poor, unfortunate child could play, and it turned out worse for him.”

“And not for him alone, Jenny.”

“Well, I don’t know, godmother. He suffered heavily, did my unfortunate boy. He was very, very ill sometimes. And I called him a quantity of names;” shaking her head over her work, and dropping tears.

“You are a good girl, you are a patient girl.”

“As for patience,” she would reply with a shrug, “not much of that, godmother. If I had been patient, I should never have called him names. But I hope I did it for his good. And besides, I felt my responsibility as a mother so much. I tried reasoning, and reasoning failed. I tried coaxing, and coaxing failed. I tried scolding, and scolding failed. But I was bound to try everything, with such a charge on my hands. Where would have been my duty to my poor lost boy, if I had not tried everything?”