Their grandmamma spoke to an old woman who was sitting outside the cottage door, and said to her that she was glad to see her up and looking better; and the old woman replied that the warm weather had done her a great deal of good, and that she was very glad to see her and the little children.
Whilst their grandmamma was talking to the old woman, Alice and Beatrice looked about them, and examined with wonder a cushion that the old woman had had on her lap when they came.
They then played with a little kitten that was in the garden till their grandmamma had finished talking. Then Alice asked, ‘What is this cushion for, with all those little sticks hanging down on each side of it, and what was the old woman doing with them?’
‘Mrs. Miller is making lace, dear Alice, and these sticks are called bobbins, and there is some very fine thread which she braids and twists together into a pretty pattern.’
The kind old woman came and took her cushion, and sitting down, began to show Alice and Beatrice how she twisted the little bobbins backwards and forwards, and threw them from one side the cushion to the other. She did this at first very slowly, that the little girls might see it more easily; but when they had looked enough, she threw her bobbins backwards and forwards so quickly that the children were quite surprised. Mrs. Miller then told them that all the little girls in the village begin to learn to make lace when they are seven or eight years old, and learn soon to make it nicely.
‘How very pretty it is!’ said Alice. ‘I should like to learn to make lace. May I, grandmamma, when I am older?’
‘Yes, you may, if you wish it; but you must first learn to sew neatly, for that is more useful than making lace.’
‘But why do all the little girls here learn to make lace, grandmamma?’
‘Because they can help to earn money for their father and mother. Among the poor people in the village, very young children begin to help to earn their own bread.’
Before the little girls went home, they ran about on the green meadow, and gathered a handful of yellow cowslips and other wild flowers; but when the sun went behind the opposite hill, and the clouds above the sun were red and bright like gold, and the sea looked nearly the same colour as the clouds, grandmamma said—