Alice and Beatrice

								

what was the old woman doing with them?’
‘Mrs. Miller is making lace, dear Alice, and these sticks are called
bobbins, and there is some very fine thread which she braids and twists
together into a pretty pattern.’
The kind old woman came and took her cushion, and sitting down, began to
show Alice and Beatrice how she twisted the little bobbins backwards and
forwards, and threw them from one side the cushion to the other. She did
this at first very slowly, that the little girls might see it more
easily; but when they had looked enough, she threw her bobbins backwards
and forwards so quickly that the children were quite surprised. Mrs.
Miller then told them that all the little girls in the village begin to
learn to make lace when they are seven or eight years old, and learn
soon to make it nicely.
‘How very pretty it is!’ said Alice. ‘I should like to learn to make
lace. May I, grandmamma, when I am older?’
‘Yes, you may, if you wish it; but you must first learn to sew neatly,
for that is more useful than making lace.’
‘But why do all the little girls here learn to make lace, grandmamma?’
‘Because they can help to earn money for their father and mother. Among
the poor people in the village, very young children begin to help to
earn their own bread.’
Before the little girls went home, they ran about on the green meadow,
and gathered a handful of yellow cowslips and other wild flowers; but
when the sun went behind the opposite hill, and the clouds above the sun
were red and bright like gold, and the sea looked nearly the same colour
as the clouds, grandmamma said—
‘We will go back now, for it is time for my little girls to go to bed.’
Then they all returned down the zig-zag path, and were soon home again,
and Alice and Beatrice went to bed, after telling Mary first of all that
they had seen.

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CHAPTER III.



               A RAINY DAY—STORY OF PRETTY AND THE BEAR.

‘WHAT a rainy day!’ said Alice, one morning, when Mary came to call
them, and to help them to dress. ‘We cannot go out at all to-day.’
‘What a pity!’ said her little sister. ‘I am so sorry.’
‘What shall we do all day, if we cannot go out?’ said Alice.
‘The rain will make all your flowers grow, miss,’ said Mary, ‘and make
the weather a little cooler.’
‘But I want to go out and dig in the sand,’ said Alice.
‘And so do I,’ said Beatrice.
Mary took no further notice of the children’s words; but when they were
at breakfast, Alice said, ‘Grandmamma, is it not very tiresome that the
rain is come to-day? We cannot go out. I wish that it would never rain.’
‘Nasty rain,’ said Beatrice; ‘I can’t bear the rain!’
‘You must not say that the rain is nasty, for it does a great deal of