THE LOOM
“I remember,” said Delbert, “that on the carpet the lady wove, this part was all red and green. She had a wide stripe of red in the middle and a wide stripe of green out a little way from it on both sides, and in between were narrow stripes, but, on the very outside, on each edge, there was a stripe of red just half as wide as the one in the center, and she explained it to me. She said it was so that when the carpet was all sewed together it would make a red stripe just the same size as the one in the middle. The rags that she put in the other way were all kinds of colors.”
“How came you to remember all that?” asked Jennie.
“Dunno, but I do.”
When the warp was all ready, Marian tried weaving in the cross-thread with her darning-needle, as she would have mended a sock; but that was altogether too long and tedious a process, so she hunted for a thin flat stick such as the Indians have, to weave in and turn up on edge to hold the threads apart, while she slipped through a shuttle which she made of a weed stalk. That did better, but was not wholly satisfactory, and Delbert kept thinking and thinking, trying to remember how that part of the work had been done on the carpet-loom. He could not get it entirely clear in his head, but he finally evolved a plan that answered the purpose.
He arranged a pair of harnesses—though neither he nor Marian knew that that was their name—of two sticks wound with thread that looped down round the threads of the warp. These harnesses were connected by a rope that ran over a spool pulley that he fixed in the roof. Marian pulled this rope a little; and that lifted one of the harnesses and with it every other thread of the warp; she thrust through her weed-stalk shuttle, then pulled that harness down, which released the upheld threads, at the same time lifting the harness and with it all the other threads.
With this device she could accomplish two or three times as much in the same space of time, and she was not at all niggardly in her praise. Delbert glowed in consequence and, of course, Esther glowed with him. Even Jennie, who was most apt to be a little skeptical of Delbert’s abilities, had nothing but the most respectful remarks to offer on the subject.
With this crude loom they could weave a piece of cloth about a foot wide by six feet long, and the children were all so interested and eager to work at it, and it was such a simple process, that they all easily learned; so Marian did not have all the weaving to do.
Marian had kept Davie’s leg bandaged till she was very sure that it must be well knit together, and then she would not have him bear his weight on it for almost a week after. She was so very ignorant as to how such things should be attended to that she simply did not know what might happen. So she would undo it every day and bathe and rub and work with it and then do it up again, leaving it more and more loose and finally gave him permission to walk on it a little, but even then she kept the splints on it and provided him with a sort of a crutch.
When at last she discarded all bindings and allowed him to go free, they watched him most jealously. There was a queer little half-limp that Marian saw immediately. She hoped it would pass off in a week or so, and it did get better, but it never entirely disappeared. In spite of all her care, something had not been just right, and little King David never walked quite straight again.