Page:RMBallantyne--Martin Rattler.djvu/20

12 and resolute. A residence of six years in Germany had taught her to knit stockings at a rate that cannot be described, neither conceived unless seen. She knitted two dozen pairs. The vicar took one dozen, the doctor took the other. The fact soon became known. Shops were not numerous in the village in those days, and the wares they supplied were only second-rate. Orders came pouring in; Mrs. Grumbit's knitting-wires clicked, and her little old hands wagged with incomprehensible rapidity and unflagging regularity; and Martin Rattler was sent to school.

While occupied with her knitting she sat in a high-backed chair in a very small deep window, through which the sun streamed nearly the whole day, and out of which there was the most charming imaginable view of the gardens and orchards of the villagers, with a little dancing brook in the midst, and the green fields of the farmers beyond, studded with sheep and cattle and knolls of woodland, and bounded in the far distance by the bright blue sea. It was a lovely scene, such an one as causes the eye to brighten and the heart to melt as we gaze upon it and think, perchance, of its Creator.

Yes, it was a scene worth looking at; but Mrs. Grumbit never looked at it, for the simple reason that