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?”

“Should if it’s good,” returned Miss Wren.

“You shall try.  Put your little feet on the fender.  It’s a cold, cold night, and the fog clings so.”  As Miss Abbey helped her to turn her chair, her loosened bonnet fell on the floor.  “Why, what lovely hair!” cried Miss Abbey.  “And enough to make wigs:  for all the dolls in the world.  What a quantity!”

“Call that a quantity?” returned Miss Wren. “Poof!  What do you say to the rest of it?” As she spoke, she untied a band, and the golden stream fell over herself, and over the chair, and flowed down to the ground.  Miss Abbey’s admiration seemed to increase her perplexity.  She beckoned the Jew towards her, and whispered: 

“Child or woman?”

“Child in years,” was the answer; “woman in self-reliance and trial.”

“You are talking about me, good people,” thought Miss Jenny, sitting in her golden bower, warming her feet.  “I can’t hear what you say, but I know your tricks and your manners!”

The shrub, mixed by Miss Potterson’s skilful hands, was perfectly satisfactory to Miss Jenny’s palate, and she sat and sipped it leisurely while the interview between Mr. Riah and Miss Potterson proceeded, keenly regretting when the bottom of the glass was reached, and the interview at an end.

There was at this time much curiosity among Lizzie Hexam’s acquaintances to discover her hiding-place, and many of them paid visits to the dolls’ dressmaker in hopes of obtaining from her the desired address.  Among these was Mr. Wrayburn, whom we find calling upon Miss Wren one evening: