“God forgive her! By all means pray for both.”
Chapter Seven.
A Spice of Philosophy.
While Dan was thus detailing his troubles in Avice’s kitchen, his daughter Emma was finishing her day’s work. She was apprenticed to an embroideress; for all kinds of embroidery were in much greater use then than now. There was no sort of trimming except embroidery and fur; there were no such things as printed cottons; and not only ladies’ dresses, but gentlemen’s, and all kinds of curtains and hangings, were very largely ornamented with the needle. Mrs De la Laund kept eighteen apprentices, and they worked in a long, narrow room with windows at each end—not glass windows, but just square openings, where light, wind, and rain or snow, came in together. It was about half an hour before it would be time to stop work. There was no clock in the room, and there were only three in all Lincoln. Clocks such as we have were then unknown. They had but two measures of time—the clepsydra, or water-clock, and the sun-dial. When a man had neither of these, he employed all kinds of ingenious expedients for guessing what time it was, if the day were cloudy and the sun not to be seen. King Alfred had invented the plan, long before, of having candles to burn a certain time; the monks knew how long it took to repeat certain psalms. Mrs De la Laund stopped work when the cathedral bell tolled for vespers—that is, at four o’clock.
“You look tired, Antigone,” said Emma to her nearest neighbour, a pale girl of eighteen.
“Tired? Of course I’m tired,” was the unpromising answer. “Where’s the good? One must go on.”
“She does not like the work,” said the girl on the other side of her.
“Do you?” responded Antigone, turning to her.