he tricks and the manners of that venerable
cheat, but made her little purchases elsewhere, and lived a secluded
life. After much consultation with herself, she decided not to put
Lizzie Hexam on her guard against the old man, arguing that the
disappointment of finding him out would come upon her quite soon enough.
Therefore, in her communication with her friend by letter, she was
silent on this theme, and principally dilated on the backslidings of her
bad child, who every day grew worse and worse.

'You wicked old boy,' Miss Wren would say to him, with a menacing
forefinger, 'you'll force me to run away from you, after all, you will;
and then you'll shake to bits, and there'll be nobody to pick up the
pieces!'

At this foreshadowing of a desolate decease, the wicked old boy would
whine and whimper, and would sit shaking himself into the lowest of low
spirits, until such time as he could shake himself out of the house and
shake another threepennyworth into himself. But dead drunk or dead
sober (he had come to such a pass that he was least alive in the latter
state), it was always on the conscience of the paralytic scarecrow that
he had betrayed his sharp parent for sixty threepennyworths of rum,
which were all gone, and that her sharpness would infallibly detect his
having done it, sooner or later. All things considered therefore, and
addition made of the state of his body to the state of his mind, the bed
on which Mr Dolls reposed was a bed of roses from which the flowers
and leaves had entirely faded, leaving him to lie upon the thorns and
stalks.

On a certain day, Miss Wren was alone at her work, with the house-door
set open for coolness, and was trolling in a small sweet voice a
mournful little song which might have been the song of the doll she was
dressing, bemoaning the brittleness and meltability of wax, when whom
should she descry standing on the pavement, looking in at her, but Mr
Fledgeby.

'I thought it was you?' said Fledgeby, coming up the two steps.

'Did you?' Miss Wren retorted. 'And I thought it was you, young man.
Quite a coincidence. You're not mistaken, and I'm not mistaken. How
clever we are!'

'Well, and how are you?' said Fledgeby.

'I am pretty much as usual, sir,' replied Miss Wren. 'A very unfortunate
parent, worried out of my life and senses by a very bad child.'

Fledgeby's small eyes opened so wide that they might have passed for
ordinary-sized eyes, as he stared about him for th