FullReads

Jenny Wren had her personal vanities–happily for her–and no intentions were stronger in her breast than the various trials and torments that were, in the fulness of time, to be inflicted upon “him.”

“Wherever he may happen to be just at present, or whoever he may happen to be,” said Miss Wren, ” I know his tricks and his manners, and I give him warning to look out.”

“Don’t you think you’re rather hard upon him?” asked her friend smiling, and smoothing her hair.

“Not a bit,” replied the sage Miss Wren, with an air of vast experience. “My dear, they don’t care for you, those fellows, if you’re not hard upon ’em?”

In such light and playful conversation, which was the dear delight of Jenny Wren, they continued until interrupted by Mr. Wrayburn, a friend of Lizzie’s, who fell to talking playfully with Jenny Wren.

“I think of setting up a doll, Miss Jenny,” he said.

“You had better not,” replied the dressmaker.

“Why not?”

“You are sure to break it. All you children do.”

“But that makes good for trade, you know, Miss Wren,” he returned.

“I don’t know about that,” Miss Wren retorted; “but you’d better by half set up a pen-wiper, and turn industrious, and use it.”

“Why, if we were all as industrious as you, little Busy Body, we should begin to work as soon as we could crawl, and there would be a bad thing!”

“Do you mean,” returned the little creature with a flush suffusing her face, “bad for your backs and your legs?”

“No, no,” said the visitor, shocked at the thought of trifling with her infirmity. “Bad for business. If we all set to work as soon as we could use our hands, it would be all over with the dolls’ dressmakers.

“There’s something in that,” replied Miss Wren, “you have a sort of an idea in your noddle sometimes!” Then, resting one arm upon the elbow of her chair, resting her chin upon that hand, and looking vacantly before her, she said in a changed tone: “Talking of ideas, my Lizzie, I wonder how it happens that when I am working here all alone in the summer-time, I smell flowers. This is not a flowery neighborhood. It’s anything but that. And yet as I sit at work, I smell miles of flowers; I smell rose-leaves till I think I see the rose-leaves lying in heaps, bushels, on the floor; I smell fallen leaves, till I put down my hand–so–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 have seen very few flowers indeed in my life.”

“Pleasant fancies to have, Jenny dear!” said her friend with a glance toward their visitor, as if she would have asked him whether they were given the child in compensation for her losses.

“So I think, Lizzie, when they come to me. And the birds I hear! Oh!” cried the little creature, holding out her hand and looking upward, “How they sing!”

There was something in the face and action for the moment quite inspired and beautiful. Then the chin dropped musingly upon the hand again.

“I dare say my birds sing better than other birds, and my flowers smell better than other flowers. For when I was a little child,” in a tone as though it were ages ago, “the children that I used to see early in the morning were very different from any others I ever saw. They were not like me; they were not chilled, anxious, ragged, or beaten; they were never in pain. They were not like the children of the neighbors; they never made me tremble all over, by setting up shrill noises; and they never mocked me. Such numbers of them too! All in white dresses, and with something shining on the borders, and on their heads, that I have never been able to imitate with my work, though I know it so well. They used to come down in long, bright, slanting rows, and say all together, ‘Who is this in pain! Who is this in pain!’ When I told them who it was, they answered, ‘Come and play with us!’ When I said ‘I never play! I can’t play,’ they swept about me and took me up, and made me light. Then it was all delicious ease and rest till they laid me down, and said all together, ‘Have patience, and we will come again.’ Whenever they came back, I used to know they were coming before I saw the long bright rows, by hearing them ask, all together a long way off, ‘Who is this in pain! Who is this in pain!’ And I used to cry out, ‘Oh my blessed children, it’s poor me. Have pity on me. Take me up and make me light!'”