In those times there were knees to your stockings, knees with holes in them at the end of the day, with the soiled skin showing through.
"Just look!" Mother would cry. "Just look there! And I'd only just mended them."
"Well, you see, Mother, when you play Black Bear—"
"I see," she said, and before you went to bed you would be sitting on the edge of a tub, paddling your feet in the water.
"BEFORE YOU WENT TO BED"
"You dirty boy," she would be saying, scrubbing at the scratched, black knees; but when you were shining again she would be saying—
"You darling!"
And though your stockings were whole in the clean of morning when you scampered out into the sun, in the dirt of night when you scampered back again—O skein, where is thy yarn? O darning-needle, where is thy victory?
Summer mornings, in the arbor-seat of the garden, Mother would be sewing, her lap brimming, her work-basket at her feet, the sun falling golden through the trellised green. In the nap of the afternoon, when even the birds drowsed and the winds slept, she would be sewing, ever sewing. And when night fell and the dishes were put away, she would be sewing still, in the lamp-light's yellow glow.