“Why, if we were all as industrious as you, little Busybody, we should begin to work as soon as we could crawl, and there would be a bad thing!”

“Do you mean,” returned the little creature, with a flush suffusing her face, “bad for your backs and your legs?”

“No, no, no,” said Eugene; shocked⁠—to do him justice⁠—at the thought of trifling with her infirmity. “Bad for business, bad for business. If we all set to work as soon as we could use our hands, it would be all over with the dolls’ dressmakers.”

“There’s something in that,” replied Miss Wren; “you have a sort of an idea in your noddle sometimes.” Then, in a changed tone; “Talking of ideas, my Lizzie,” they were sitting side by side as they had sat at first, “I wonder how it happens that when I am work, work, working here, all alone in the summertime, I smell flowers.”