On his roof-top garden, Jenny Wren and her friend Lizzie were sitting one day, together, when Mr. Fledgeby came up and joined the party, interrupting their conversation. For the girls, perhaps with some old instinct of his race, the gentle Jew had spread a carpet. Seated on it, against no more romantic object than a blackened chimney-stack, over which some humble creeper had been trained, they both pored over one book, while a basket of common fruit, and another basket of strings of beads and tinsel scraps were lying near. "This, sir," explained the old Jew, "is a little dressmaker for little people. Explain to the master, Jenny." "Dolls; that's all," said Jenny shortly. "Very difficult to fit too, because their figures are so uncertain. You never know where to expect their waists." "I made acquaintance with my guests, sir," pursued the old Jew, with an evident purpose of drawing out the dressmaker, "through their coming here to buy our damage and waste for Miss Jenny's millinery. They wear it in their hair, and on their ball-dresses, and even (so she tells me) are presented at court with it." "Ah!" said Fledgeby, "she's been buying that basketful to-day, I suppose." "I suppose she has," Miss Jenny interposed, "and paying for it too, most likely," adding, "we are thankful to come up here for rest, sir; for the quiet and the air, and because it's so high. And you see the clouds rushing on above the narrow streets, not minding them, and you see the golden arrows pointing at the mountains in the sky, from which the wind comes, and, you feel as if you were dead." "How do you feel when you are dead?" asked the practical Mr. Fledgeby, much perplexed. "Oh so tranquil!" cried the little creature smiling. "Oh so peaceful and so thankful! And you hear the people, who are alive, crying and working and calling to one another in the close dark streets and you seem to pity them so! And such a chain has fallen from you, and such a strange, good, sorrowful happiness comes upon you!" Her eyes fell upon the old man, who, with his hands folded, quietly looked on. "Why, it was only just now," said the little creature, pointing at him, "that I fancied I saw him come out of his grave! He toiled out at that low door, so bent and worn, and then he took his breath, and stood upright and looked all around him at the sky, and the wind blew upon him, and his life down in the dark was over!--Till he was called back to life," she added, looking round at Fledgeby with that lower look of sharpness, "Why did you call him back? But you are not dead, you know," said Jenny Wren. "Get down to life!"