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Thus conversing, they pursued their way over London Bridge, and struck down the river, and held their still foggier course that way. As they were going along, Jennie twisted her venerable friend aside to a brilliantly lighted toy-shop window, and said: “Now, look at ’em! All my work!”

This referred to a dazzling semicircle of dolls in all the colors of the rainbow, who were dressed for all the gay events of life.

“Pretty, pretty, pretty!” said the old man with a clap of his hands. “Most elegant taste!”

“Glad you like ’em,” returned Miss Wren loftily. “But the fun is, godmother, how I make the great ladies try my dresses on. Though it’s the hardest part of my business, and would be, even if my back were not bad and my legs queer.”

He looked at her as not understanding what she said.

“Bless you, godmother,” said Miss Wren, “I have to scud about town at all hours. If it was only sitting at my bench, cutting out and sewing, it would be comparatively easy work; but it’s the trying-on by the great ladies that takes it out of me.”

“How the trying-on?” asked Riah.

“What a moony godmother you are, after all!” returned Miss Wren. “Look here. There’s a Drawing-room, or a grand day in the Park, or a show or a fete, or what you like. Very well. I squeeze among the crowd, and I look about me. When I see a great lady very suitable for my business, I say, ‘You’ll do, my dear!’ and I take particular notice of her again, and run home and cut her out, and baste her. Then another day I come scudding back again to try on. Sometimes she plainly seems to say, ‘How that little creature is staring!’ All the time I am only saying to myself, ‘I must hollow out a bit here; I must slope away there’; and I am making a perfect slave of her, making her try on my doll’s dress. Evening parties are severer work for me, because there’s only a doorway for 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. Whenever they go bobbing into the hall from the carriage, and catch a glimpse of my little physiognomy poked out from behind a policeman’s cape in the rain, I daresay they think I am wondering and admiring with all my eyes and heart, but they little think they’re only working for my dolls! There was Lady Belinda Whitrose. I said one night when she came out of the carriage. ‘You’ll do, my dear!’ and I ran straight home, and cut her out, and basted her. Back I came again, and waited behind the men that called the carriages. Very bad night too. At last, ‘Lady Belinda’s Whitrose’s carriage!’ Lady Belinda Whitrose coming down! And I made her try on–oh! and take pains about it too–before she got seated. That’s Lady Belinda hanging up by the waist, much too near the gas-light for a wax one, with her toes turned in.”

When they had plodded on for some time, they reached a certain tavern, where Mr. Riah had some business to transact with its proprietress, Miss Abbey Potterson, to whom he presented himself, and was about to introduce his young companion when Miss Wren interrupted him:

“Stop a bit,” she said, “I’ll give the lady my card.” She produced it from her pocket with an air, and Miss Abbey took the diminutive document, and found it to run thus:

Miss JENNY WREN.

Dolls’ Dressmaker..

Dolls attended at their own residences.
So great were her amusement and astonishment, and so interested was she in the odd little creature that she at once asked:

“Did you ever taste shrub, child?”

Miss Wren shook her head.

“Should you like to?”