‘Yes, it was truly sharp of you, godmother,’ resumed Miss Wren with great approbation, ‘to understand me. But, you see, you are so like the fairy godmother in the bright little books! You look so unlike the rest of people, and so much as if you had changed yourself into that shape, just this moment, with some benevolent object. Boh!’ cried Miss Jenny, putting her face close to the old man’s. ‘I can see your features, godmother, behind the beard.’
‘Does the fancy go to my changing other objects too, Jenny?’
‘Ah! That it does! If you’d only borrow my stick and tap this piece of pavement—this dirty stone that my foot taps—it would start up a coach and six. I say! Let’s believe so!’
‘With all my heart,’ replied the good old man.
‘And I’ll tell you what I must ask you to do, godmother. I must ask you to be so kind as give my child a tap, and change him altogether. O my child has been such a bad, bad child of late! It worries me nearly out of my wits. Not done a stroke of work these ten days. Has had the horrors, too, and fancied that four copper-coloured men in red wanted to throw him into a fiery furnace.’
‘But that’s dangerous, Jenny.’
‘Dangerous, godmother? My child is always dangerous, more or less. He might’—here the little creature glanced back over her shoulder at the sky—‘be setting the house on fire at this present moment. I don’t know who would have a child, for my part! It’s no use shaking him. I have shaken him till I have made myself giddy. “Why don’t you mind your Commandments and honour your parent, you naughty old boy?” I said to him all the time. But he only whimpered and stared at me.’
‘What shall be changed, after him?’ asked Riah in a compassionately playful voice.
‘Upon my word, godmother, I am afraid I must be selfish next, and get you to set me right in the back and the legs. It’s a little thing to you with your power, godmother, but it’s a great deal to poor weak aching me.’
There was no querulous complaining in the words, but they were not the less touching for that.