The little creature had been leaning back, attentive, with her elbows resting on the elbows of her chair, and her chin upon her hands. Without changing her attitude, she answered, 'Yes!' so suddenly that it rather seemed as if she had chopped the monosyllable than spoken it.
'For myself and for Jenny, I thankfully accept your kind offer.'
'Agreed! Dismissed!' said Eugene, giving Lizzie his hand before lightly waving it, as if he waved the whole subject away. 'I hope it may not be often that so much is made of so little!'
Then he fell to talking playfully with Jenny Wren. 'I think of setting up a doll, Miss Jenny,' he said.
'You had better not,' replied the dressmaker.
'Why not?'
'You are sure to break it. All you children do.'
'But that makes good for trade, you know, Miss Wren,' returned Eugene. 'Much as people's breaking promises and contracts and bargains of all sorts, makes good for MY trade.'
'I don't know about that,' Miss Wren retorted; 'but you had better by half set up a pen-wiper, and turn industrious, and use it.'
'Why, if we were all as industrious as you, little Busy-Body, we should begin to work as soon as we could crawl, and there would be a bad thing!'
'Do you mean,' returned the little creature, with a flush suffusing her face, 'bad for your backs and your legs?'
'No, no, no,' said Eugene; shocked--to do him justice--at the thought of trifling with her infirmity. 'Bad for business, bad for business. If we all set to work as soon as we could use our hands, it would be all over with the dolls' dressmakers.'
'There's something in that,' replied Miss Wren; 'you have a sort of an idea in your noddle sometimes.' Then, in a changed tone;'Talking of ideas, my Lizzie,' they were sitting side by side as they had sat at first, 'I wonder how it happens that when I am work, work, working here, all alone in the summer-time, I smell flowers.'
'As a commonplace individual, I should say,' Eugene suggested languidly--for he was growing weary of the person of the house--'that you smell flowers because you DO smell flowers.'
'No I don't,' said the little creature, resting one arm upon the elbow of her chair, resting her chin upon that hand, and looking vacantly before her; 'this is not a flowery neighbourhood. It's anything but that. And yet as I sit at work, I smell miles of flowers. I smell roses, till I think I see the rose-leaves lying in heaps, bushels, on the floor. I smell fallen leaves, till I put down my hand--so--and expect to make them rustle. I smell the white and the pink May in the hedges, and all sorts of flowers that I never was among. For Ihave seen very few flowers indeed, in my life.'
'Pleasant fancies to have, Jenny dear!' said her friend: with a glance towards Eugene as if she would have asked him whether they were given the child in compensation for her losses.
'So I think, Lizzie, when they come to me. And the birds I hear!
Oh!' cried the little creature, holding out her hand and looking upward, 'how they sing!'
There was something in the face and action for the moment, quite inspired and beautiful. Then the chin dropped musingly upon the hand again.
'I dare say my birds sing better than other birds, and my flowers smell better than other flowers. For when I was a little child,' in a tone as though it were ages ago, 'the children that I used to see early in the morning were very different from any others that Iever saw. They were not like me; they were not chilled, anxious, ragged, or beaten; they were never in pain. They were not like the children of the neighbours; they never made me tremble all over, by setting up shrill noises, and they never mocked me. Such numbers of them too! All in white dresses, and with something shining on the borders, and on their heads, that I have never been able to imitate with my work, though I know it so well. They used to come down in long bright slanting rows, and say all together, "Who is this in pain! Who is this in pain!" When I told them who it was, they answered, "Come and play with us!" When I said "Inever play! I can't play!" they swept about me and took me up, and made me light. Then it was all delicious ease and rest till they laid me down, and said, all together, "Have patience, and we will come again." Whenever they came back, I used to know they were coming before I saw the long bright rows, by hearing them ask, all together a long way off, "Who is this in pain! Who is this in pain!" And I used to cry out, "O my blessed children, it's poor me. Have pity on me. Take me up and make me light!"'
By degrees, as she progressed in this remembrance, the hand was raised, the late ecstatic look returned, and she became quite beautiful. Having so paused for a moment, silent, with a listening smile upon her face, she looked round and recalled herself.
'What poor fun you think me; don't you, Mr Wrayburn? You may well look tired of me. But it's Saturday night, and I won't detain you.'
'That is to say, Miss Wren,' observed Eugene, quite ready to profit by the hint, 'you wish me to go?'
'Well, it's Saturday night,' she returned, and my child's coming home. And my child is a troublesome bad child, and costs me a world of scolding. I would rather you didn't see my child.'
'A doll?' said Eugene, not understanding, and looking for an explanation.
But Lizzie, with her lips only, shaping the two words, 'Her father,' he delayed no longer. He took his leave immediately. At the corner of the street he stopped to light another cigar, and possibly to ask himself what he was doing otherwise. If so, the answer was indefinite and vague. Who knows what he is doing, who is careless what he does!
A man stumbled against him as he turned away, who mumbled some maudlin apology. Looking after this man, Eugene saw him go in at the door by which he himself had just come out.
On the man's stumbling into the room, Lizzie rose to leave it.
'Don't go away, Miss Hexam,' he said in a submissive manner, speaking thickly and with difficulty. 'Don't fly from unfortunate man in shattered state of health. Give poor invalid honour of your company. It ain't--ain't catching.'