Y WREN

[Illustration: JENNY WREN]

JENNY WREN

Her real name was Fanny Cleaver, but she had long ago dropped it, and
chosen to bestow upon herself the fanciful appellation of Miss Jenny
Wren, by which title she was known to the entire circle of her friends
and business acquaintances.

Miss Wren's home was in a certain little street called Church Street,
running out from a certain square called Smith Square, at Millbank, and
there the little lady plied her trade, early and late, having for
companions her father and a lodger, Lizzie Hexam. Her father had once
been a good workman at his own trade, but unfortunately for poor little
Jenny Wren, was so weak in character and so confirmed in bad habits that
she could place no trust in him, and had come to consider herself the
head of the family, and to speak of him as "my child," or "my bad boy,"
ordering him about as if he were in truth, a child.

When Lizzie Hexam's brother and a friend, Bradley Headstone, paid their
first visit to the house on Church Street, they knocked at the door,
which promptly opened and disclosed a child--a dwarf, a girl--sitting on
a little, low, old-fashioned arm-chair, which had a kind of little
working-bench before it.

"I can't get up," said the child, "because my back's bad and my legs are
queer. But I'm the person of the house."

"Who else is at home?" asked Charley Hexam, staring?

"Nobody's at home at present," returned the child, with a glib
assertion of her dignity, "except the person of the house."

The queer little figure, and the queer, but not ugly little face, with
its bright grey eyes, was so sharp that the sharpness of the manner
seemed unavoidable.

The person of the house continued the conversation: "Your sister will be
in," she said, "in about a quarter of an hour. I'm very fond of your
sister. Take a seat. And would you please to shut the street door first?
I can't very well do it myself, because my back's so bad and my legs are
so queer."

They complied, and the little figure went on with its work of gumming or
gluing together pieces of cardboard and thin wood, cut into various
shapes. The scissors and knives upon the bench, showed that the child
herself had cut them; and the bright scraps of velvet and silk and
ribbon also strewn upon the bench showed that when duly stuffed, she was
to cover them smartly. The dexterity of her nimble fingers was
remarkable, and as she brought two thin edges accurately toget