“Some beloved companionship fades out of most lives, my dear,” said the Jew, “that of a wife, and a fair daughter, and a son of promise, has faded out of my own life—­but the happiness was”

“Ah!” said Miss Wren thoughtfully, by no means convinced.  “Then I tell you what change I think you had better begin with, godmother.  You had better change Is into Was, and Was into Is, and keep them so.”

“Would that suit your case?  Would you not be always in pain then?” asked the old man tenderly.

“Right!” exclaimed Miss Wren.  “You have changed me wiser, godmother.  Not,” she added, with a quaint hitch of her chin and eyes, “that you need to be a very wonderful godmother to do that, indeed!”

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,