The dolls' dressmaker went no more to the business-premises of Pubsey and Co. in St Mary Axe, after chance had disclosed to her (as she supposed) the flinty and hypocritical character of Mr Riah.
She often moralized over her work on the tricks and the manners of that venerable cheat, but made her little purchases elsewhere, and lived a secluded life. After much consultation with herself, she decided not to put Lizzie Hexam on her guard against the old man, arguing that the disappointment of finding him out would come upon her quite soon enough. Therefore, in her communication with her friend by letter, she was silent on this theme, and principally dilated on the backslidings of her bad child, who every day grew worse and worse.
'You wicked old boy,' Miss Wren would say to him, with a menacing forefinger, 'you'll force me to run away from you, after all, you will; and then you'll shake to bits, and there'll be nobody to pick up the pieces!'
At this foreshadowing of a desolate decease, the wicked old boy would whine and whimper, and would sit shaking himself into the lowest of low spirits, until such time as he could shake himself out of the house and shake another threepennyworth into himself. But dead drunk or dead sober (he had come to such a pass that he was least alive in the latter state), it was always on the conscience of the paralytic scarecrow that he had betrayed his sharp parent for sixty threepennyworths of rum, which were all gone, and that her sharpness would infallibly detect his having done it, sooner or later. All things considered therefore, and addition made of the state of his body to the state of his mind, the bed on which Mr Dolls reposed was a bed of roses from which the flowers and leaves had entirely faded, leaving him to lie upon the thorns and stalks.
On a certain day, Miss Wren was alone at her work, with the house-door set open for coolness, and was trolling in a small sweet voice a mournful little song which might have been the song of the doll she was dressing, bemoaning the brittleness and meltability of wax, when whom should she descry standing on the pavement, looking in at her, but Mr Fledgeby.
'I thought it was you?' said Fledgeby, coming up the two steps.
'Did you?' Miss Wren retorted. 'And I thought it was you, young man. Quite a coincidence. You're not mistaken, and I'm not mistaken. How clever we are!'
'Well, and how are you?' said Fledgeby.
'I am pretty much as usual, sir,' replied Miss Wren. 'A very unfortunate parent, worried out of my life and senses by a very bad child.'
Fledgeby's small eyes opened so wide that they might have passed for ordinary-sized eyes, as he stared about him for the very young person whom he supposed to be in question.
'But you're not a parent,' said Miss Wren, 'and consequently it's of no use talking to you upon a family subject.--To what am I to attribute the honour and favour?'
'To a wish to improve your acquaintance,' Mr Fledgeby replied.
Miss Wren, stopping to bite her thread, looked at him very knowingly.
'We never meet now,' said Fledgeby; 'do we?'
'No,' said Miss Wren, chopping off the word.
'So I had a mind,' pursued Fledgeby, 'to come and have a talk with you about our dodging friend, the child of Israel.'
'So HE gave you my address; did he?' asked Miss Wren.
'I got it out of him,' said Fledgeby, with a stammer.
'You seem to see a good deal of him,' remarked Miss Wren, with shrewd distrust. 'A good deal of him you seem to see, considering.'
'Yes, I do,' said Fledgeby. 'Considering.'
'Haven't you,' inquired the dressmaker, bending over the doll on which her art was being exercised, 'done interceding with him yet?'
'No,' said Fledgeby, shaking his head.
'La! Been interceding with him all this time, and sticking to him still?' said Miss Wren, busy with her work.
'Sticking to him is the word,' said Fledgeby.
Miss Wren pursued her occupation with a concentrated air, and asked, after an interval of silent industry:
'Are you in the army?'
'Not exactly,' said Fledgeby, rather flattered by the question.
'Navy?' asked Miss Wren.
'N--no,' said Fledgeby. He qualified these two negatives, as if he were not absolutely in either service, but was almost in both.
'What are you then?' demanded Miss Wren.
'I am a gentleman, I am,' said Fledgeby.
'Oh!' assented Jenny, screwing up her mouth with an appearance of conviction. 'Yes, to be sure! That accounts for your having so much time to give to interceding. But only to think how kind and friendly a gentleman you must be!'
Mr Fledgeby found that he was skating round a board marked Dangerous, and had better cut out a fresh track. 'Let's get back to the dodgerest of the dodgers,' said he. 'What's he up to in the case of your friend the handsome gal? He must have some object.
What's his object?'
'Cannot undertake to say, sir, I am sure!' returned Miss Wren, composedly.
'He won't acknowledge where she's gone,' said Fledgeby; 'and Ihave a fancy that I should like to have another look at her. Now Iknow he knows where she is gone.'
'Cannot undertake to say, sir, I am sure!' Miss Wren again rejoined.
'And you know where she is gone,' hazarded Fledgeby.
'Cannot undertake to say, sir, really,' replied Miss Wren.
The quaint little chin met Mr Fledgeby's gaze with such a baffling hitch, that that agreeable gentleman was for some time at a loss how to resume his fascinating part in the dialogue. At length he said:
'Miss Jenny!--That's your name, if I don't mistake?'
'Probably you don't mistake, sir,' was Miss Wren's cool answer;'because you had it on the best authority. Mine, you know.'
'Miss Jenny! Instead of coming up and being dead, let's come out and look alive. It'll pay better, I assure you,' said Fledgeby, bestowing an inveigling twinkle or two upon the dressmaker.
'You'll find it pay better.'