FullReads

“Are you always as busy as you are now?”

“Busier. I’m slack just now. I finished a large mourning order the day before yesterday. Doll I work for lost a canary bird.”

“Are you alone all day?” asked Bradley Headstone. “Don’t any of the neighboring children–?”

“Ah,” cried the person of the house, with a little scream as if the word had pricked her. “Don’t talk of children. I can’t bear children. I know their tricks and their manners!” She said this with an angry little shake of her right fist, adding:

“Always running about and screeching, always playing and fighting, always skip–skip–skipping on the pavement, and chalking it for their games! Oh–I know their tricks and their manners!” Shaking the little fist as before. “And that’s not all. Ever so often calling names in through a person’s keyhole, and imitating a person’s back and legs. Oh! I know their tricks and their manners. And I tell you what I’d do to punish ’em. There’s doors under the church in the Square–black doors leading into black vaults. Well! I’d open one of those doors, and I’d cram ’em all in, and then I’d lock the door and through the keyhole I’d blow in pepper.”

“What would be the good of blowing in pepper?” asked Charley Hexam.

“To set ’em sneezing,” said the person of the house, “and make their eyes water. And when they were all sneezing and inflamed, I’d mock ’em through the keyhole. Just as they, with their tricks and their manners, mock a person through a person’s keyhole!”

An emphatic shake of her little fist, seemed to ease the mind of the person of the house; for she added with recovered composure, “No, no, no. No children for me. Give me grown-ups.”

It was difficult to guess the age of this strange creature, for her poor figure furnished no clue to it, and her face was at once so young and so old. Twelve, or at the most thirteen, might be near the mark.

“I always did like grown-ups,” she went on, “and always kept company with them. So sensible. Sit so quiet. Don’t go prancing and capering about! And I mean always to keep among none but grown-ups till I marry. I suppose I must make up my mind to marry, one of these days!”

At that moment Lizzie Hexam entered, and the visitors after saying farewell to the dolls’ dressmaker, took Lizzie out with them for a short walk.

The person of the house, dolls’ dressmaker, and manufacturer of ornamental pincushions and penwipers, sat in her quaint little low arm-chair, singing in the dark, until Lizzie came back.

“Well, Lizzie–Mizzie–Wizzie,” said she, breaking off in her song. “What’s the news out of doors?”

“What’s the news indoors?” returned Lizzie playfully, smoothing the bright long fair hair, which grew very luxuriant and beautiful on the head of the dolls’ dressmaker. It being Lizzie’s regular occupation when they were alone of an evening to brush out and smooth the long fair hair, she unfastened a ribbon that kept it back while the little creature was at work, and it fell in a beautiful shower over the poor shoulders that were much in need of such adorning rain.

Lizzie then lighted a candle, put the room door and the house door open, and turned the little low chair and its occupant toward the outer air. It was a sultry night, and this was a fine weather arrangement when the day’s work was done. To complete it, she seated herself by the side of the little chair, and protectingly drew under her arm the spare hand that crept up to her.

“This is what your loving Jenny Wren calls the best time of the day and night,” said the person of the house; adding, “I have been thinking to-day what a thing it would be, if I should be able to have your company till I am married, or at least courted. Because when I’m courted, I shall make him do some of the things that you do for me. He couldn’t brush my hair like you do, or help me up and downstairs like you do, and he couldn’t do anything like you do; but he could take my work home, and he could call for orders in his clumsy way. And he shall too. I’ll trot him about, I can tell him!”