“This is what your loving Jenny Wren calls the best time in the day and night,” said the person of the house. Her real name was Fanny Cleaver; but she had long ago chosen to bestow upon herself the appellation of Miss Jenny Wren.

“I have been thinking,” Jenny went on, “as I sat at work today, what a thing it would be, if I should be able to have your company till I am married, or at least courted. Because when I am courted, I shall make Him do some of the things that you do for me. He couldn’t brush my hair like you do, or help me up and down stairs like you do, and he couldn’t do anything like you do; but he could take my work home, and he could call for orders in his clumsy way. And he shall too. I’ll trot him about, I can tell him!”

Jenny Wren had her personal vanities⁠—happily for her⁠—and no intentions were stronger in her breast than the various trials and torments that were, in the fullness of time, to be inflicted upon “him.”