One evening, as they were standing beside her, the little boy said to her: 'Grandmother'—for that was the name by which she liked that these children should call her—'grandmother, how often you are forced to get up from your spinning-wheel, and to follow the chaises and coaches up that steep hill, to put stones underneath the wheels to hinder them from rolling back! The people who are in the carriages give you a halfpenny or a penny for doing so, don't they?'
'Yes, child.'
'But it is very hard work for you to go up and down that hill. You often say that you are tired. And then you know that you cannot spin all that time. Now, if we might go up the hill, and put the stones behind the wheels, you could sit still at your work; and would not the people give us the halfpence? and could not we bring them all to you? Do, pray, dear grandmother, try us for one day—to-morrow will you?'
'Yes,' said the old woman, 'I will try what you can do; but I must go up the hill along with you for the first two or three times, for fear you should get yourselves hurt.'
So the next day the little boy and girl went with their grandmother, as they used to call her, up the steep hill, and she showed the boy how to prevent the wheels from rolling back by putting stones behind them, and she said: 'This is called scotching the wheels,' and she took off the boy's hat and gave it to the little girl to hold up to the carriage-windows ready for the halfpence.
When she thought that the children knew how to manage by themselves she left them and returned to her spinning-wheel. A great many carriages happened to go by this day, and the little girl received a great many halfpence. She carried them all in her brother's hat to her grandmother in the evening, and the old woman smiled and thanked the children. She said that they had been useful to her, and that her spinning had gone on finely, because she had been able to sit still at her wheel all day.
'But, Paul, my boy,' said she, 'what is the matter with your hand?'
'Only a pinch—only one pinch that I got as I was putting a stone behind a wheel of a chaise. It does not hurt me much, grandmother, and I've thought of a good thing for to-morrow. I shall never be hurt again if you will only be so good as to give me the old handle of the broken crutch, grandmother, and the block of wood that lies in the chimney-corner, and that is of no use. I'll make it of some use, if I may have it.'
'Take it, then, dear,' said the old woman, 'and you'll find the handle of the broken crutch under my bed.'
Paul went to work immediately, and fastened one end of the pole into the block of wood, so as to make something like a dry-rubbing brush.