The board being at length cleared of food; and punch, wine, and spirits being placed upon it, and handed about, speeches were made, and health drunk to Mr. and Mrs. Vincent Crummles and the young Crummleses, after which ceremony, with many adieus and embraces, the company dispersed.

Nicholas waited until he was alone with the family, to give his little presents, and then with honest warmth of feeling said farewell to Mr. and Mrs. Crummles, the Master Crummleses, and the Infant Phenomenon,—­and history has not chronicled their further career, nor recorded to what greater heights of popularity the Infant Phenomenon has since attained.

JENNY WREN

[Illustration:  Jenny Wren]

JENNY WREN

Her real name was Fanny Cleaver, but she had long ago dropped it, and chosen to bestow upon herself the fanciful appellation of Miss Jenny Wren, by which title she was known to the entire circle of her friends and business acquaintances.

Miss Wren’s home was in a certain little street called Church Street, running out from a certain square called Smith Square, at Millbank, and there the little lady plied her trade, early and late, having for companions her father and a lodger, Lizzie Hexam.  Her father had once been a good workman at his own trade, but unfortunately for poor little Jenny Wren, was so weak in character and so confirmed in bad habits that she could place no trust in him, and had come to consider herself the head of the family, and to speak of him as “my child,” or “my bad boy,” ordering him about as if he were in truth, a child.

When Lizzie Hexam’s brother and a friend, Bradley Headstone, paid their first visit to the house on Church Street, they knocked at the door, which promptly opened and disclosed a child—­a dwarf, a girl—­sitting on a little, low, old-fashioned arm-chair, which had a kind of little working-bench before it.

“I can’t get up,” said the child, “because my back’s bad and my legs are queer.  But I’m the person of the house.”

“Who else is at home?” asked Charley Hexam, staring?

“Nobody’s at home at present,” returned the child, with a glib assertion of her dignity, “except the person of the house.”

The queer little figure, and the queer, but not ugly little face, with its bright grey eyes, was so sharp that the sharpness of the manner seemed unavoidable.

The person of the house continued the conversation:  “Your sister will be in,” she said, “in about a quarter of an hour.  I’m very fond of your sister.  Take a seat.  And would you please to shut the street door first?  I can’t very well do it myself, because my back’s so bad and my legs are so queer.”