“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,” said Sloppy, glancing at the array of dolls in 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 something of a self-reproachful tone, “been a learning and a learning, and here has Mr. Boffin been a paying and a paying, ever so long!”