“I a lady!” Lizzie went on in a low voice, with her eyes upon the fire. “I, with poor father’s grave not even cleared of undeserved stain and shame, and he trying to clear it for me! I a lady!”
“Only as a fancy, and for instance,” urged Miss Wren.
“Too much, Jenny, dear, too much! My fancy is not able to get that far.” As the low fire gleamed upon her, it showed her smiling, mournfully and abstractedly.
“But I am in the humour, and I must be humoured, Lizzie, because after all I am a poor little thing, and have had a hard day with my bad child. Look in the fire, as I like to hear you tell how you used to do when you lived in that dreary old house that had once been a windmill. Look in the—what was its name when you told fortunes with your brother that I don’t like?”
“The hollow down by the flare?”
“Ah! That’s the name! You can find a lady there, I know.”
“More easily than I can make one of such material as myself, Jenny.”
The sparkling eye looked steadfastly up, as the musing face looked thoughtfully down. “Well?” said the dolls’ dressmaker, “We have found our lady?”
Lizzie nodded, and asked, “Shall she be rich?”
“She had better be, as he’s poor.”
“She is very rich. Shall she be handsome?”
“Even you can be that, Lizzie, so she ought to be.”
“She is very handsome.”