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She kissed him swiftly, but with a sort of passion, and went out of the room. The studio, where they had been sorting and labelling, had once been Holly's schoolroom, devoted to her silkworms, dried lavender, music, and other forms of instruction. Now, at the end of July, despite its northern and eastern aspects, a warm and slumberous air came in between the long-faded lilac linen curtains.
So I am learning all I can about the classifying and reeling of cocoons; and I have also raised a few silkworms so as to be familiar with the very beginnings of the industry. Soon I am to go into the filature to help with the reeling; and after that they have promised to send me on into the throwing mills, where the filament is twisted into thread preparatory to weaving.
The dangling crows which illustrated the pages of his Burnouf grammar were all dated the previous year, and he had entirely renounced feeding silkworms in his desk. Everything pointed to his not being a very practical man. Geometry disgusted him, and as for dates, he could not remember one.
"You are a good child, Marie," the old priest called after her. "Now make haste to put my things away, and then you and Pierre shall come here and tell me how your silk-raising is getting on. Have you begun to hatch out your silkworms yet?" The boy and girl nestled at his side. Had not Father Benedict brought them up; and was he not friend as well as teacher?
In spring they feed their silkworms, and wind their silk. In summer they reap their crops, and hang the maize-heads from their rafters for their own winter food, while they sell the wheat to the poor creatures, objects of their pity, who live in towns, and are forced to eat white bread.
But none of these things, vital as they appeared, were of first importance in the community. It was from quite a different source that the peasants of Bellerivre derived their livelihood a source peculiar if one was unfamiliar with it, but which had been the primary interest of the valley ever since its people could remember. They raised silkworms!
Here in Pont-de-Saint-Michel almost every one is employed in the Gaspard filature, or in the throwing mills; and if not, the people raise silkworms. Since the men have been called to the colors practically all the work of this big manufacturing plant is being done by women, boys, and children.
He had catered for silkworms, guinea-pigs, dormice, canary-birds, and dogs, without number, during his boyhood, but he had never been called upon to provide for a young person of five years old. He looked back five-and-twenty years, and tried to remember his own diet at the age of five.
And after all they were but doing what many another household in Paterson was doing. Why should it be any less dignified for her to labor in a mill than at raising silkworms? Besides, it might not be for long.
"For how on earth can the poor creature, if he be really still alive, have remained in those clothes for a year and travelled half across Europe in them?" "It is monstrous. And yet there he stood and I saw him as clearly as I see you. He was certainly not in my thoughts. I was thinking of nothing and talking to Assunta about the silkworms, when suddenly he appeared, not twenty yards away."
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