"Glad you think so, sir," returned Miss Wren. "And what do you think of Me?" The honesty of Mr. Sloppy being 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 color!" 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, Miss," said Sloppy, glancing at the array of dolls on hand, "before you came to work so neatly, Miss, and with such a pretty taste." "Never was taught a stitch, young man!" returned the dressmaker, 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 a self-reproachful tone, "been a-learning and a-learning at cabinet-making, ever so long! 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, "a handy set of nests to lay the dolls in. Or a 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," said 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. 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?" Miss Wren was in the act of handing it over to him when she paused. "But you had better see me use it," she said sharply. "This is the way. Hoppetty, kicketty, peg-peg-peg. Not pretty, is it?" "It seems to me that you hardly want it at all," said Sloppy. The little dressmaker sat down again, and gave it into his hand, saying with that better look upon her, and with a smile: "Thank you! You are a very kind young man, a really kind young man. I accept your offer--I suppose _He_ won't mind," she added as an afterthought, shrugging her shoulders; "and if he does, he may!" "Meaning him you call your father, Miss?" said Sloppy. "No, no," replied Miss Wren. "Him, _him_, HIM!"