‘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,’ said Sloppy, glancing at the array of dolls in hand, ‘before you came to work so neatly, Miss, and with such a pretty taste.’
‘Never was taught a stitch, young man!’ returned the dress-maker, 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 something of a self-reproachful tone, ‘been a learning and a learning, and here has Mr Boffin been a paying and a paying, ever so long!’
‘I have heard what your trade is,’ observed Miss Wren; ‘it’s cabinet-making.’
Mr Sloppy nodded. ‘Now that the Mounds is done with, it is. I’ll tell you what, Miss. I should like to make you something.’
‘Much obliged. But what?’