Chapter 9

Miss Wren was busy with her work, by candlelight, and Mr. Wrayburn, half amused and half vexed, stood by her bench looking on, while her troublesome child was in the corner, in deep disgrace on account of his bad behavior, and as Miss Jenny worked, she rated him severely, accompanying each reproach with a stamp of her foot.

"Pay five shillings for you indeed!" she exclaimed in response to his appeal for money. "How many hours do you suppose it costs me to earn five shillings, you infamous boy? Don't cry like that, or I'll throw a doll at you. Pay five shillings fine for you, indeed! Fine in more ways than one, I think! I'd give the dustman five shillings to carry you off in the dust-cart."

The figure in the corner continuing to whine and whimper, Miss Wren covered her face with her hand. "There!" she said, "I can't bear to look at you. Go upstairs and get me my bonnet and shawl. Make yourself useful in some way, bad boy, and let me have your room instead of your company, for one half minute."

Obeying her, he shambled out, and Mr. Wrayburn, pitying, saw the tears exude between the little creature's fingers, as she kept her hand before her eyes.

"I am going to the Italian Opera to try on," said Miss Wren, taking away her hand, and laughing satirically to hide that she had been crying. "But let me first tell you, Mr. Wrayburn, once for all, that it's no use your paying visits to me. You wouldn't get what you want of me, no, not if you brought pincers with you to tear it out."

With which statement, and a further admonition to her father, who had come back, she blew her candles out, and taking her big door-key in her pocket, and her crutch-stick in her hand, marched off.

Not many months later, one day while Miss Wren was waiting in the office of Pubsey and Co., for Mr. Riah to come in and sell her the waste she was accustomed to buy, she overheard a conversation between Mr. Fledgeby, who had apparently happened in, and a friend who was also waiting for Mr. Riah.

This conversation led her to infer that her old friend was both a treacherous and dishonest man, and entirely unworthy to be trusted in any capacity. Seemingly the conversation was not meant for her ears, but Mr. Fledgeby had planned that she should hear it, and that it should have the very effect upon her which it had. This was Mr. Fledgeby's retort upon Miss Wren for the over-sharpness with which she always treated him, and also a pleasant instance of his humor as regarded the old Jew. "He has got a bad name as an old Jew, and he is paid for the use of it, and I'll have my money's worth out of him." Thus ran Mr. Fledgeby's reflections on the subject, and Miss Wren sat listening to the conversation with a fallen countenance, until Mr. Riah came in, when Mr. Fledgeby led the old man to make statements which seemed further to emphasize his hard-heartedness and dishonesty.

Then Mr. Riah filled Miss Wren's little basket with such scraps as she could buy, saying:

"There, my Cinderella dear, the basket's full now. Bless you, and get you gone!"

"Don't call me your Cinderella dear," returned Miss Wren, "Oh, you cruel godmother!"

She shook that emphatic little forefinger of hers in his face at parting, and as he did not attempt to vindicate himself, went on her way, to return no more to Saint Mary Axe; chance having 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. But during several interviews which she chanced to have later with Mr. Fledgeby, the clever little creature made him by his own words, disclose his system of treachery and trickery, and prove that the aged Jew had been screening his employer at his own expense. Thereupon Miss Jenny lost no time in once again proceeding to the place of business of Pubsey and Co., where she found the old man sitting at his desk. In less time than it takes to tell it, she had folded her arms about his neck, and kissed him, imploring his forgiveness for her lack of faith in him, adding: "It did look bad, now, didn't it?"

"It looked so bad, Jenny," responded the old man with gravity, "that I was hateful in mine own eyes. I perceived that the obligation was upon me to leave this service. Whereupon I indited a letter to my master to that effect, but he held me to certain months of servitude, which were his lawful term of notice. They expire to-morrow. Upon their expiration--not before--I had meant to set myself right with my Cinderella."

While they were thus conversing, the aged Jew received an angry communication from Mr. Fledgeby, releasing Mr. Riah at once from his service, to the great satisfaction of the old man, who then got his few goods together in a black bag, closed the shutters, pulled down the office blind, and issued forth upon the steps. There, while Miss Jenny held the bag, the old man locked the house door, and handed the key over to the messenger who had brought the note of dismissal.

"Well, godmother," said Miss Wren, "and so you're thrown upon the world!"

"It would appear so, Jenny, and rather suddenly."

"Where are you going to seek your fortune?" asked Miss Wren. The old man smiled, but gazed about him with a look of having lost his way in life, which did not escape the dolls' dressmaker.

"The best thing you can do," said Jenny, "for the time being, at all events, is to come home with me, godmother. Nobody's there but my bad child, and Lizzie's lodging stands empty."

The old man, when satisfied that no inconvenience could be entailed on any one by this move, readily complied, and the singularly assorted couple once more went through the streets together.

And it was a kindly Providence which placed the child's hand in the aged Jew's protecting one that night. Before they reached home, they met a sad party, bearing in their arms an inanimate form, at which the dolls' dressmaker needed but to take one look.

"Oh gentlemen, gentlemen," she cried, "He belongs to me!" "Belongs to you!" said the head of the party, stopping;--"Oh yes, dear gentlemen, he's my child, out without leave. My poor, bad, bad boy! And he don't know me, he don't know me! Oh, what _shall_ I do?" cried the little creature, wildly beating her hands together, "when my own child don't know me!"

The head of the party looked to the old Jew for explanation. He whispered, as the dolls' dressmaker bent over the still form, and vainly tried to extract some sign of recognition from it; "It's her drunken father."

Then the sad party with their lifeless burden went through the streets. After it, went the dolls' dressmaker, hiding her face in the Jewish skirts, and clinging to them with one hand, while with the other she plied her stick, and at last the little home in Church Street was reached.

Many flaunting dolls had to be gaily dressed, before the money was in the dressmaker's pocket to get mourning for her father. As Mr. Riah sat by, helping her in such small ways as he could, he found it difficult to make out whether she realized that the deceased had really been her father.

"If my poor boy," she would say, "had been brought up better, he might have done better. Not that I reproach myself. I hope I have no cause for that."

"None, indeed, Jenny, I am very certain."

"Thank you, godmother. It cheers me to hear you say so. But you see it is so hard to bring up a child well, when you work, work, work, all day. When he was out of employment, I couldn't always keep him near me. He got fractious and nervous, and I was obliged to let him go into the streets. And he never did well in the streets, he never did well out of sight. How often it happens with children! How can I say what I might have turned out myself, but for my back having been so bad and my legs so queer, when I was young!" the dressmaker would go on. "I had nothing to do but work, so I worked. I couldn't play. But my poor, unfortunate child could play, and it turned out worse for him."

"And not for him alone, Jenny."

"Well, I don't know, godmother. He suffered heavily, did my unfortunate boy. He was very, very ill sometimes. And I called him a quantity of names;" shaking her head over her work, and dropping tears.

"You are a good girl, you are a patient girl."

"As for patience," she would reply with a shrug, "not much of that, godmother. If I had been patient, I should never have called him names. But I hope I did it for his good. And besides, I felt my responsibility as a mother so much. I tried reasoning, and reasoning failed. I tried coaxing, and coaxing failed. I tried scolding, and scolding failed. But I was bound to try everything, with such a charge on my hands. Where would have been my duty to my poor lost boy, if I had not tried everything?"

With such talk, mostly in a cheerful tone on the part of the industrious little creature, the day work and the night work were beguiled, until enough of smart dolls had gone forth to bring in the sombre stuff that the occasion required, and to bring into the house the other sombre preparations. "And now," said Miss Jenny, "having knocked off my rosy-cheeked young friends, I'll knock off my white-cheeked self." This referred to her making her own dress which at last was done, in time for the simple service, the arrangements for which were of her own planning. The service ended, and the solitary dressmaker having returned to her home, she said:

"I must have a very short cry, godmother, before I cheer up for good. Because after all, a child is a child, you know."

It was a longer cry than might have been expected. Howbeit, it wore itself out in a shadowy corner, and then the dressmaker came forth, and washed her face, and made the tea.

"You wouldn't mind my cutting out something while we are at tea, would you?" she asked with a coaxing air.

"Cinderella, dear child," the old man expostulated. "Will you never rest?"

"Oh! It's not work, cutting out a pattern isn't," said Miss Jenny, with her busy little scissors already snipping at some paper; "The truth is, godmother, I want to fix it, while I have it correct in my mind."

"Have you seen it to-day, then?" asked Riah.

"Yes, godmother. Saw it just now. It's a surplice, that's what it is. Thing our clergymen wear, you know," explained Miss Jenny, in consideration of his professing another faith.

"And what have you to do with that, Jenny?"

"Why, godmother," replied the dressmaker, "you must know that we professors, who live upon our taste and invention, are obliged to keep our eyes always open. And you know already that I have many extra expenses to meet. So it came into my head, while I was weeping at my poor boy's grave, that something in my way might be done with a clergyman. Not a funeral, never fear;" said Miss Jenny. "The public don't like to be made melancholy, I know very well. But a doll clergyman, my dear,--glossy black curls and whiskers--uniting two of my young friends in matrimony," said Miss Jenny shaking her forefinger, "is quite another affair. If you don't see those three at the altar in Bond Street, in a jiffy, my name's Jack Robinson!"

With her expert little ways in sharp action, she had got a doll into whitey-brown paper orders, before the meal was over, and displayed it for the edification of the Jewish mind, and Mr. Riah was lost in admiration for the brave, resolute little soul, who could so put aside her sadness to meet and face her pressing need.

And many times thereafter was he likewise lost in admiration of his little friend, who continued her business as of old, only without the burden of responsibility by which her life had heretofore been clouded, and more able to give her imagination free play along the lines of her interests, without the pressure of home care resting upon her poor shoulders.

Our last glimpse of her, is as usual, before her little workbench, at work upon a full-dressed, large sized doll, when there comes a knock upon the door. When it is opened there is disclosed a young fellow known to his friends and employer, as Sloppy.

Sloppy was full private No 1 in the Awkward Squad of the rank and file of life, and yet had his glimmering notions of standing true to his colors, and in instinctive refinement of feeling was much above others who outranked him in birth and education.

"Come in, sir," said Miss Wren, "and who may you be?"

Mr. Sloppy introduced himself by name and buttons.

"Oh, indeed," cried Jenny, "I have heard of you."

Sloppy, grinning, was so glad to hear it that he threw back his head and laughed.

"Bless us!" exclaimed Miss Wren, with a start, "Don't open your mouth as wide as that, young man, or it'll catch so, and not shut again, some day."

Mr. Sloppy opened it, if possible, wider, and kept it open, until his laugh was out.

"Why, you're like the giant," said Miss Wren, "when he came home in the land of Beanstalk, and wanted Jack for supper."

"Was he good looking, Miss?" asked Sloppy.

"No," said Miss Wren. "Ugly."

Her visitor glanced round the room--which had many comforts in it now, that it had not had before--and said:

"This is a pretty place, Miss.

"Glad you think so, sir," returned Miss Wren. "And what do you think of Me?"

The honesty of Mr. Sloppy being severely taxed by the question, he twisted a button, grinned, and faltered.

"Out with it," said Miss Wren, with an arch look. "Don't you think me a queer little comicality?" In shaking her head at him after asking the question, she shook her hair down.

"Oh!" cried Sloppy in a burst of admiration. "What a lot, and what a color!"

Miss Wren with her usual expressive hitch, went on with her work. But left her hair as it was, not displeased by the effect it had made.

"You don't live here alone, do you, Miss?" asked Sloppy.

"No," said Miss Wren with a chop. "Live here with my fairy godmother."

"With;" Mr. Sloppy couldn't make it out; "with, who did you say, Miss?"

"Well!" replied Miss Wren more seriously. "With my second father. Or with my first, for that matter." And she shook her head and drew a sigh. "If you had known a poor child I used to have here," she added, "you'd have understood me. But you didn't and you can't. All the better!"

"You must have been taught a long time, Miss," said Sloppy, glancing at the array of dolls on hand, "before you came to work so neatly, Miss, and with such a pretty taste."

"Never was taught a stitch, young man!" returned the dressmaker, tossing her head. "Just gobbled and gobbled, till I found out how to do it. Badly enough at first, but better now."

"And here have I," said Sloppy, in a self-reproachful tone, "been a-learning and a-learning at cabinet-making, ever so long! I'll tell you what, Miss, I should like to make you something."

"Much obliged, but what?"

"I could make you," said Sloppy, surveying the room, "a handy set of nests to lay the dolls in. Or a little set of drawers to keep your silks and threads and scraps in. Or I could turn you a rare handle for that crutch-stick, if it belongs to him you call your father."

"It belongs to me," said the little creature, with a quick flush of her face and neck. "I am lame."

Poor Sloppy flushed too, for there was an instinctive delicacy behind his buttons. He said perhaps, the best thing in the way of amends that could be said. "I am very glad it's yours, because I'd rather ornament it for you than for any one else. Please, may I look at it?"

Miss Wren was in the act of handing it over to him when she paused. "But you had better see me use it," she said sharply. "This is the way. Hoppetty, kicketty, peg-peg-peg. Not pretty, is it?"

"It seems to me that you hardly want it at all," said Sloppy.

The little dressmaker sat down again, and gave it into his hand, saying with that better look upon her, and with a smile:

"Thank you! You are a very kind young man, a really kind young man. I accept your offer--I suppose _He_ won't mind," she added as an afterthought, shrugging her shoulders; "and if he does, he may!"

"Meaning him you call your father, Miss?" said Sloppy.

"No, no," replied Miss Wren. "Him, _him_, HIM!"

"_Him_, HIM, HIM?" repeated Sloppy, staring about, as if for him.

"Him who is coming to court and marry me," returned Miss Wren. "Dear me, how slow you are!"

"Oh! HIM!" said Sloppy, "I never thought of him. When is he coming, Miss?"

"What a question!" cried Miss Wren. "How should I know?"

"Where is he coming from, Miss?"

"Why, good gracious, how can I tell! He is coming from somewhere or other, I suppose, and he is coming some day or other, I suppose. I don't know any more about him, at present."

This tickled Mr. Sloppy as an extraordinarily good joke, and he threw back his head and laughed with measureless enjoyment. At the sight of him laughing in that absurd way, the dolls' dressmaker laughed very heartily indeed. So they both laughed till they were tired.

"There, there, there!" said Miss Wren. "For goodness sake, stop, Giant, or I shall be swallowed up alive, before I know it. And to this minute you haven't said what you've come for?"

"I have come for little Miss Harmonses' doll," said Sloppy.

"I thought as much," remarked Miss Wren, "and here is little Miss Harmonses' doll waiting for you. She's folded up in silver paper, you see, as if she was wrapped from head to foot in new banknotes. Take care of her--and there's my hand--and thank you again."

"I'll take more care of her than if she was a gold image," said Sloppy, "and there's _both_ my hands, Miss, and I'll soon come back again!"

Here we leave the little dolls' dressmaker, under the protecting care of her "godmother," the first real guardian she has ever known, and with a new friendship to supply her life with that youthful intercourse which has never been hers. And so in leaving her our hearts are light, for Miss Jenny Wren is brighter now, and happier now, and younger now, than ever before.

SISSY JUPE

SISSY JUPE

"Now, what I want is, Facts. Teach these boys and girls nothing but Facts. Facts alone are wanted in life. Plant nothing else, and root out everything else. You can only form the minds of reasoning animals upon Facts: nothing else will be of any service to them. This is the principle on which I bring up my own children, and this is the principle on which I bring up these children. Stick to Facts, sir!"

The scene was a bare, plain, monotonous vault of a schoolroom, and the speaker's square forefinger emphasized his observation. The emphasis was helped by his square wall of a forehead, by his thin and hardset mouth, by his inflexible and dictatorial voice, and by the hair which bristled on the skirts of his bald head, as if the head had scarcely warehouse room for the hard facts stowed inside. The speaker's obstinate carriage, square coat, square legs, square shoulders,--nay, his very neckcloth, trained to take him by the throat with an unaccommodating grasp, like a stubborn fact, as it was,--all helped the emphasis.

"In this life, we want nothing but Facts, sir! Nothing but Facts!"

The speaker, Mr. Thomas Gradgrind, and the schoolmaster, Mr. M'Choakumchild, and the third grown person present, all backed a little, and swept with their eyes the inclined plane of little vessels then and there arranged in order, ready to have imperial gallons of Facts poured into them until they were full to the brim.

"Girl number twenty," said Mr. Gradgrind, squarely pointing with his square forefinger, "I don't know that girl. Who is that girl?"

"Sissy Jupe, sir," explained number twenty, blushing, standing up, and curtseying.

"Sissy is not a name," said Mr. Gradgrind. "Call yourself Cecilia."

"It's father as calls me Sissy, sir," returned the young girl with another curtsey.

"Then he has no business to do it," said Mr. Gradgrind. "Tell him he mustn't. Cecilia Jupe. Let me see. What is your father?"

"He belongs to the horse-riding, if you please, sir."

Mr. Gradgrind frowned, and waved off the objectionable calling with his hand.

"We don't want to know anything about that here. Your father breaks horses, don't he?"

"If you please, sir, when they can get any to break, they do break horses in the ring."

"You mustn't tell us about the ring here. Very well, then. Describe your father as a horse-breaker. He doctors sick horses, I dare say?"

"Oh, yes, sir."

"Very well, then. He is a veterinary surgeon, a farrier and horse-breaker. Give me your definition of a horse."

(Sissy Jupe thrown into the greatest alarm by this demand).

"Girl number twenty unable to define a horse!" said Mr. Gradgrind, for the general behoof of all the little pitchers. "Girl number twenty possessed of no facts in reference to one of the commonest of animals! Some boy's definition of a horse. Bitzer, yours!"

"Quadruped. Graminivorous. Forty teeth, namely twenty-four grinders, four eye-teeth, and twelve incisive. Sheds coat in the spring; in marshy countries, sheds hoofs too. Hoofs hard, but requiring to be shod with iron. Age known by marks in mouth." Thus (and much more) Bitzer.

"Now, girl number twenty," said Mr. Gradgrind, "you know what a horse is."

She curtsied again, blushed, and sat down, and the third gentleman present stepped forth, briskly smiling and folding his arms. "That's a horse," he said. "Now, let me ask you, boys and girls, would you paper a room with representations of horses?"

After a pause, one-half of the children cried in chorus, "Yes, sir!" Upon which the other half, seeing in the gentleman's face that Yes was wrong, cried out in chorus, "No, sir!"

"Of course, No. Why wouldn't you?"

A pause. One boy ventured the answer, because he wouldn't paper a room at all, but would paint it.

"You must paper it," said Thomas Gradgrind, "whether you like it or not. Don't tell us you wouldn't paper it. What do you mean, boy?"

"I'll explain to you then," said the gentleman, after another pause, "why you wouldn't paper a room with a representation of horses. Do you ever see horses walking up and down the sides of rooms in reality--in fact? Of course, No. Why then, you are not to see anywhere what you don't see in fact; you are not to have anywhere what you don't have in fact. This is a new principle, a great discovery," said the gentleman. "Now I'll try you again. Would you use a carpet having a representation of flowers upon it?"

"There being a general conviction by this time that, 'No sir!' was always the right answer to this gentleman, the chorus of No was very strong. Only a few feeble stragglers said Yes; among them Sissy Jupe."

"Girl number twenty," said the gentleman, "why would you carpet your room with representations of flowers?"

"If you please, sir, I'm very fond of flowers," returned the girl.

"And is that why you would put tables and chairs upon them, and have people walking over them with heavy boots?"

"It wouldn't hurt them, sir. They wouldn't crush and wither, please sir. They would be the pictures of what was very pretty and pleasant, sir, and I would fancy--"

"Ay, ay, ay! but you mustn't fancy," cried the gentleman, quite elated by coming so happily to his point. "You are never to fancy."

"You are not, Cecilia Jupe," Thomas Gradgrind solemnly repeated, "to do anything of that kind. You don't walk upon flowers in fact; you cannot be allowed to walk upon flowers in carpets. You don't find that foreign birds and butterflies come and perch upon your crockery; you cannot be permitted to paint foreign birds and butterflies upon your crockery. You never meet with quadrupeds going up and down walls; you must not have quadrupeds represented upon walls. You must use," said the gentleman, "for all these purposes, combinations and modifications in primary colors of mathematical figures which are susceptible of proof and demonstration. This is the new discovery. This is fact. This is taste."