ng severely taxed by the question, he
twisted a button, grinned, and faltered.

'Out with it!' said Miss Wren, with an arch look. 'Don't you think me
a queer little comicality?' In shaking her head at him after asking the
question, she shook her hair down.

'Oh!' cried Sloppy, in a burst of admiration. 'What a lot, and what a
colour!'

Miss Wren, with her usual expressive hitch, went on with her work. But,
left her hair as it was; not displeased by the effect it had made.

'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?'

'I could make you,' said Sloppy, surveying the room, 'I could make you
a handy set of nests to lay the dolls in. Or I could make you a handy
little set of drawers, to keep your silks and threads and scraps in. Or
I could turn you a rare handle for that crutch-stick, if it belongs to
him you call your father.'

'It belongs to me,' returned the little creature, with a quick flush of
her face and neck. 'I am lame.'

Poor Sloppy flushed too, for there was an instinctive delicacy behind
his buttons, and his own hand had struck it. He said, perhaps, the best
thing in the way of amends that could be said. 'I am very glad it's
yours, because I'd rather ornament it for you than for any one else.
Please may I look at it?'