"Oh yes. Tell them, godmother, he's my child. Oh, my poor bad boy! And he doesn't know me! Oh, what shall I do?" wildly beating her hands together.
She leaned again over the wretched, ragged figure, and Mr. Riah whispered to the men who held it: "It's her drunken father. She calls him her child, and she has taken care of him ever since she can remember."
"He is dead," they answered, looking at her with eyes full of pity! One of them spread a covering over him, and as they walked on, the little dolls' dressmaker followed, hiding her face in Mr. Riah's coat. The men carried their burden home, and it was put down in the parlor.
Many dolls had to be gayly dressed before Jenny could get money enough to buy the last garments he would ever wear for her father. As old Mr. Riah sat by helping in such ways as he could, he wondered whether she understood that the dead man had been really her father.
"It's so hard to bring up a child well, godmother," she said, as her needle flew along the little seams, "when you have to work, work, work all day! When my child was out of work, I couldn't keep him always near me. He got fretful and nervous, and I had to let him go into the streets. But he never did well out of sight. How often that happens with children! But how can I say what I might have turned out to be myself if my back hadn't been so bad and my legs so queer?" The little dressmaker went on: "I had nothing to do but work. I couldn't play, and it turned out the worse for him."
"Not for him alone, Jenny."
"Well, I don't know, godmother. Perhaps if I could have played with him— He suffered a great deal, poor child, and I called him names." She shook her head over her work, and tears fell on it, but her needle never stopped for a moment.
And so, talking and weeping and working, the brave little creature had at last dressed dolls enough to pay for all that was needed for the dead father who had so long been her "troublesome child."
"I must have a cry before I can cheer up for good," said little Jenny, coming in from the funeral, a day or two later, "for a child is a child, after all, you know."
She went away by herself, and sunset had faded into evening before she came down and made the tea. Her eyes were red, but she pattered her little crutch across the floor as briskly as ever, and when tea was over, she spread out a quantity of bright silks and lace and beads upon her work bench, and began to work just as usual.