‘Miss Jenny! Instead of coming up and being dead, let’s come out and look alive. It’ll pay better, I assure you,’ said Fledgeby, bestowing an inveigling twinkle or two upon the dressmaker. ‘You’ll find it pay better.’
‘Perhaps,’ said Miss Jenny, holding out her doll at arm’s length, and critically contemplating the effect of her art with her scissors on her lips and her head thrown back, as if her interest lay there, and not in the conversation; ‘perhaps you’ll explain your meaning, young man, which is Greek to me.—You must have another touch of blue in your trimming, my dear.’ Having addressed the last remark to her fair client, Miss Wren proceeded to snip at some blue fragments that lay before her, among fragments of all colours, and to thread a needle from a skein of blue silk.
‘Look here,’ said Fledgeby.—‘Are you attending?’
‘I am attending, sir,’ replied Miss Wren, without the slightest appearance of so doing. ‘Another touch of blue in your trimming, my dear.’
‘Well, look here,’ said Fledgeby, rather discouraged by the circumstances under which he found himself pursuing the conversation. ‘If you’re attending—’
(‘Light blue, my sweet young lady,’ remarked Miss Wren, in a sprightly tone, ‘being best suited to your fair complexion and your flaxen curls.’)
‘I say, if you’re attending,’ proceeded Fledgeby, ‘it’ll pay better in this way. It’ll lead in a roundabout manner to your buying damage and waste of Pubsey and Co. at a nominal price, or even getting it for nothing.’
‘Aha!’ thought the dressmaker. ‘But you are not so roundabout, Little Eyes, that I don’t notice your answering for Pubsey and Co. after all! Little Eyes, Little Eyes, you’re too cunning by half.’
‘And I take it for granted,’ pursued Fledgeby, ‘that to get the most of your materials for nothing would be well worth your while, Miss Jenny?’
‘You may take it for granted,’ returned the dressmaker with many knowing nods, ‘that it’s always well worth my while to make money.’