"Bless you, godmother, I have to scud about town at all hours to do it. When I sit at my bench cutting out and sewing, that's easy; but the trying on!—that's work."
"How trying on?" asked Mr. Riah, still puzzled.
"Why, godmother, look here. There's a Drawing-room, or a grand day in the Park, or a show, or a fête, or what you like. Very well. I squeeze among the crowd, and I look about. When I see a great lady dressed in the height of the fashion, I say, 'You'll do, my dear,' and I take particular notice of her, and run home and cut her out and baste her. Then another day I come scudding back to try on, and then I take very particular notice of her indeed. Sometimes she looks at me as she thought, 'How that child stares!' and sometimes she seems to like it and sometimes she don't, but more times she does than she don't; and all the time I'm saying to myself, 'I must hollow out a bit here, I must slope away there'; and you see I'm making a perfect slave of her. Evening parties are the hardest for me, because there's only a doorway for a full view, and what with hobbling among the wheels of the carriages and the legs of the horses, I fully expect to be run over some night. But there I have 'em just the same. There was Lady Belinda Whitrose. One night when she came out of her carriage to go in to a party I said, 'You'll do,' and I ran straight home, and cut her out and basted her, and then I hurried back and waited behind the men that called the carriages. Very bad night it was, too. At last they called, 'Lady Belinda Whitrose's carriage!' and didn't I make her try on, and take pains about it too, before she got seated. That's Lady Belinda hanging up by the waist—and much too near the gas-light for a wax one—with her toes turned in."
The little doll in evening toilet in Jenny's basket had been ordered for a rich banker's little daughter; and when they went into the shop, Jenny took it out herself, and wouldn't let the rather pert young man behind the counter touch it.
"Give me a box, young man," said she, with the little hitch of her eyes and chin, and the sharp old look on her tiny face; and when he obeyed, with a sly wink at old Mr. Riah, she cut him short with: "Mind your tricks and your manners, young man. Now tie this up, so, and find out if there's any change to be made in the ladies' wardrobe, and I'll take the order when I come again, and I'll take my pay now."
Jenny had an errand into the city the very next day, and when it was done she went to St. Mary Axe to call on Mr. Riah. She found him standing on the door-step of the yellow house, with a clumsy black bag in his hand. Something in the way he looked up and down the street before he saw her put a quick suspicion in Jenny's keen little mind. In the front window, drawing down the blind, stood the foxy-faced young man, with his mouth stretched as if he laughed, but his eyes squinted as if he did not feel merry at all.
"Boh! you're a beast," exclaimed Jenny, shaking her small fist at him. "I knew it. Well, godmother"—stopping in front of him, with her head on one side, and looking like an owl and wren in one—"so the wolf's been too much for you, and you're thrown on the world?"
"It seems so, Jenny," the old man answered.
"Sudden, ain't it, godmother?"