Page:Samantha on Children's Rights.djvu/74

 lace to trim underclothes for her two sister-in-laws."

"Isn't it bad for her eyes, Fidelia!" sez I, lookin' at the worn, red eyelids of Elinor.

"Yes," sez Fidelia, "it wuz very hard on her; but she wanted to do it, for she thought they would prize 'em higher; and then," sez Fidelia, "she has made two dozen doilies for Louis' mother out of that same thread."

"How long did it take you to do it!" sez I dryly.

"Oh," sez she, "I had them for work all summer; I begun 'em the 1st of June, so I could be sure to get them done for Christmas. I think that I could have done them in two months if I had worked all the time."

And I sez to myself, all these long golden summer hours, sweet with bird-song, fragrant with flowers and beauty, she had sot over her one-hundred-and-twenty thread patiently weavin' cobwebs, hopin' mebby to ketch Happiness in it; but 'tennyrate doin' this slow work, stitch by stitch, and lettin' all the beauty and glory of summer and life go by. For I begun to see plainer than ever why Louis Arnold wuz a defaulter in the bank of love.

"Afterwards in her room," sez Fidelia, "I want you to see the slippers she has embroidered for Louis—I never see the beat of it; they are so fine you can't tell where the stitches are put; each one took her three weeks of stiddy work; they are a design of pink roses on a sky-blue ground."

Sez I, "She could have bought a pair for five dollars that would have done jest as well, and I would have loved to have seen some of the pink roses on her cheeks, and some of the bright sky-blue in her eyes. They used to look like bits of the sky peeping out of rosy clouds."