Mary Anne with her face to the window, held her arm
up.
‘Well, Mary Anne?’
‘Mr Headstone coming home, ma’am.’
In about a minute, Mary Anne again hailed.
‘Yes, Mary Anne?’
‘Gone in and locked his door, ma’am.’
Miss Peecher repressed a sigh as she gathered her
work together for bed, and transfixed that part of
her dress where her heart would have been if she had
had the dress on, with a sharp, sharp needle.
STILL EDUCATIONAL
The person of the house, doll’s dressmaker and
manufacturer of ornamental pincushions and pen-wipers,
sat in her quaint little low arm-chair, singing in
the dark, until Lizzie came back. The person
of the house had attained that dignity while yet of
very tender years indeed, through being the only trustworthy
person in the house.
‘Well Lizzie-Mizzie-Wizzie,’ said she,
breaking off in her song, ’what’s the
news out of doors?’
‘What’s the news in doors?’ returned
Lizzie, playfully smoothing the bright long fair hair
which grew very luxuriant and beautiful on the head
of the doll’s dressmaker.
’Let me see, said the blind man. Why the
last news is, that I don’t mean to marry your
brother.’
‘No?’
‘No-o,’ shaking her head and her chin.
‘Don’t like the boy.’
‘What do you say to his master?’
‘I say that I think he’s bespoke.’
Lizzie finished putting the hair carefully back over
the misshapen shoulders, and then lighted a candle.
It showed the little parlour to be dingy, but orderly
and clean. She stood it on the mantelshelf, remote
from the dressmaker’s eyes, and then put the
room door open, and the house door open, and turned
the little low chair and its occupant towards 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
in a chair 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 in the day and night,’ said the person
of the house. Her real name was Fanny Cleaver;
but she had long ago chosen to bestow upon herself
the appellation of Miss Jenny Wren.
‘I have been thinking,’ Jenny went on,
’as I sat at work 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 am 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 down stairs 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!’
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.’
