Chapter 58

Chapter 8

A FEW GRAINS OF PEPPER

The dolls' dressmaker went no more to the business-premises of
Pubsey and Co. in St Mary Axe, after chance had disclosed to her
(as she supposed) the flinty and hypocritical character of Mr Riah.
She often moralized over her work on the 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