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"I'd rather not know about sad things, since I can't help to make them any better," answered Ella Carver, softly patting the apple blossoms she was embroidering on a bit of blue satin.
The scenes in the villages through which we passed were very lively and characteristic, all the population seeming to be out of doors: some at the butcher's shop, others at the well; a tailor sewing in the open air, with a young priest sitting sociably beside him; children at play; women mending clothes, embroidering, spinning with the distaff at their own doorsteps; many idlers, letting the pleasant morning pass in the sweet-do-nothing; all assembling in the street, as in the common room of one large household, and thus brought close together, and made familiar with one another, as they can never be in a different system of society.
One afternoon early in April, when they were all busily engaged there, Marie, who sat embroidering at the table in front of Mere-Grand, raised her eyes to the window and suddenly burst into a cry of admiration: "Oh! look at Paris under that rain of sunlight!" Pierre drew near; the play of light was much the same as that which he had witnessed at his first visit.
Lily began: 'I meant to have two parts about Sir Maurice going out to fight when he was very young, and then about his brothers being killed, and King Charles knighting him, and his betrothed, Phyllis Crossthwayte, embroidering his black engrailed cross on his banner, and then the taking the castle, and his being wounded, and escaping, and Phyllis not thinking it right to leave her father; but I have not finished that, so now you must hear about his return home.
It had been used latterly as a sewing-room, and Agnes Darling sat at the other window embroidering a handkerchief for Rose. There had been a long silence the seamstress never talked much; and Eeny was off in a daydream. Presently, a big dog came bounding tumultuously up the avenue, and a tall man in an overcoat followed leisurely. "There!" exclaimed Eeny, "there's Tiger and Tiger's master.
No more was Sigurd's heart empty of memory: it was filled with the memory of Gudrun as he saw her by the lake when the wild swans were building their nests. And now he watched her in the hall, sitting with her mother embroidering, or serving her father or her brothers, and tenderness for the maiden kept growing in his heart.
On the day of the Feast, Virgilia was glad to go out into the fresh air, to leave the seamstresses busy sewing in the inner courtyard. They were embroidering fine garments of silk so soft that it could be drawn through a ring. They were hemming and drawing threads, draping and cutting the rich material from Tyre which was to form part of Virgilia's wedding outfit.
Beside such varied ministrations, the woman of the Middle Ages rode to the chase, went out hawking, snared birds with nets, ferreted rabbits, spun, wove, and embroidered. Embroidering was a really formidable occupation, for the great hall, and each room, had its special hangings, and on fête-days every inch of wall-space was covered.
But what were the sober pleasures of housekeeping and cooking beside the rough, deep-living exhilaration of gypsy life on the plains! She looked back pityingly at those days of stagnant peace, compared the entertainment to be extracted from embroidering a petticoat frill to the exultant joy of a ride in the morning over the green swells.
The embroidering is done in this wise: I received the cut cloth from the wholesale dealer; drew the pattern upon each cap; gave them, with three cents' worth of silk, to the embroiderer, who received three cents for her work; then pressed and returned them; thus making one cent on each for myself. By working steadily for sixteen hours, a girl could embroider fifteen in a day.
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