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Updated: June 6, 2025
In Belgium, female industry presents itself under aspects alike interesting to the painter, the poet, and the philanthropist. Here and there may be seen a happy-looking girl, seated at an open window, turning her spinning-wheel or working at her lace-pillow, whilst at intervals she indulges in the relaxation of a curious gaze at the passers-by in the street.
How it came to pass that Lamps sang comic songs, of his own composition, to his bed-ridden daughter Phoebe, by way of enlivening her solitude, and how Phoebe, while manipulating the threads on her lace-pillow, as though she were playing a musical instrument, taught her little band of children to chant to a pleasant tune the multiplication-table, and so fix it and other useful knowledge indelibly upon the tablets of their memory, the Author-Reader would then relate, as no other Reader, however gifted, who was not also the Author, would have been allowed to do, supposing this latter had had the hardihood to attempt the relation.
That was what he had really said, and Ortensia had laughed sweetly and cruelly; and even Pina, busy with her lace-pillow, had smiled with evil satisfaction in her corner, for she was a clever woman, who had been educated above her present station, and she understood.
It seemed so pretty and pleasant, and to treat them so like the merry Robins they are, that I took up with it in my little way. You don't need to be told what a very little way mine is, sir," she added with a glance at the small forms and round the room. All this time her hands were busy at her lace-pillow.
By-and-by the door opened, and two men, neighbours of theirs, entered with an invalid's litter; and, Humility directing, brought down old Mrs. Venning. She wore the corner of a Paisley shawl over her white cap, and carried a nosegay of flowers in place of her lace-pillow; but otherwise looked much as usual. "Quite the traveller, you see!" she cried gaily to Taffy.
They were entitled "The free maids that weave their thread with bones," and one called "the Ideal," represented a latticed cottage window, with roses, honeysuckles, cat, beehives, and all conventional rural delights, around a pretty maiden singing at her lace-pillow; while the other yclept the "Real," showed a den of thin, wizened, half-starved girls, cramped over their cushions in a lace-school.
It might have been merely through the association of these words with their sacredly quiet time, or it might have been through the larger association of the words with the Redeemer's presence beside the bedridden; but here her dexterous fingers came to a stop on the lace-pillow, and clasped themselves around his neck as he bent down.
Her face, which was wreathed in a round white goffered cap, had the smooth, yellow, waxen pallor of the statue of Our Lady, in church, and her features the severe, sober kindliness of nuns'. She was dressed in modest, stiffly-falling folds of unrumpled lilac silk, like the queens in old prints. She spent those long, quiet days at her lace-pillow.
When she was back at home, she began her little Sunday duties: the lace-pillow was put away that day and she did nothing but arrange things, put things in their places, gather a fresh nosegay for the porcelain vase before Our Lady's statue and see to her cooking.
Laughing playfully at the strange nature of the request, she did so. "Keep them shut," said Barbox Brothers, going softly to the door, and coming back. "You are on your honour, mind, not to open you eyes until I tell you that you may?" "Yes! On my honour." "Good. May I take your lace-pillow from you for a minute?" Still laughing and wondering, she removed her hands from it, and he put it aside.
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