I am goin' out marketing now, and when I come back I'll give you a fresh lesson in that feather-st.i.tching."

A dismayed look crept into Alison's face; she raised her delicate brows very slightly, and fixed her clear blue eyes on Grannie. She was about to speak, but something in the expression on Grannie's face kept her silent.

"You clear up and have the place tidy against I come back," said the little woman. "You might make the beds, and set everything in apple-pie order, ef you've a mind to."

She then walked into her little bedroom, and shut the door behind her.

In three minutes she was dressed to go out, not in the neat drawn black-silk bonnet, but in an old straw one which had belonged to her mother, and which was extremely obsolete in pattern. This bonnet had once been white, but it was now of the deepest, most dingy shade of yellow-brown. It had a little band of brown ribbon round it, which ended neatly in a pair of strings; these were tied under Grannie's chin. Instead of her black cashmere shawl she wore one of very rough material and texture, and of a sort of zebra pattern, which she had picked up cheap many and many years ago from a traveling peddler. She wore no gloves on her hands, but the poor, swollen, painful right hand was wrapped in a corner of the zebra shawl. On her left arm she carried her market basket.

"Good-by, child," she said, nodding to her granddaughter. Then she trotted downstairs and out into the street.

There was no fog to-day--the air was keen and bright, and there was even a very faint attempt at some watery sunbeams. There wasn't a better bargainer in all Sh.o.r.editch than Mrs. Reed, but to-day her purchases were very small--a couple of Spanish onions, half a pound of American cheese, some bread, a tiny portion of margarine--and she had expended what money she thought proper.

She was soon at home again, and dinner was arranged.

"I may as well get the dinner," said Alison, rising and taking the basket from the old woman.

"My dear, there aint nothing to get; it's all ready. The children must have bread for dinner to-day. I bought a stale quartern loaf--I got a penny off it, being two days old; here's a nice piece of cheese; and onions cut up small will make a fine relish. There, we'll put the basket in the scullery; and now, Alison, come over to the light and take a lesson in the feather-st.i.tching."

Alison followed Mrs. Reed without a word. They both took their places near the window.

"Thread that needle for me, child," said the old woman.

Alison obeyed. Mrs. Reed had splendid sight for her age; nothing had ever ailed her eyes, and she never condescended to wear gla.s.ses, old as she was, except by lamplight. Alison therefore felt some surprise when she was invited to thread the needle. She did so in gloomy and solemn silence, and gave it back with a suppressed sigh to her grandmother.

"I don't think there's much use, Grannie," she said.

"Much use in wot?" said Mrs. Reed.

"In my learning that feather-st.i.tching--I haven't it in me. I hate needlework."

"Oh, Ally!"

Grannie raised her two earnest eyes.

"All women have needlework in 'em if they please," she said; "it's born in 'em. You can no more be a woman without needlework than you can be a man without mischief--it's born in you, child, the same as bed-making is, and cleaning stoves, and washing floors, and minding babies, and coddling husbands, and bearing all the smaller worries of life--they are all born in a woman, Alison, and she can no more escape 'em than she can escape wearing the wedding-ring when she goes to church to be wed."

"Oh, the wedding-ring! that's different," said Alison, looking at her pretty slender finger as she spoke. "Oh, Grannie, dear Grannie, my heart's that heavy I think it 'll break! I can't see the feather-st.i.tching, I can't really." Her eyes brimmed up with tears.

"Grannie, don't ask me to do the fine needlework to-day."

Grannie's face turned pale.

"I wouldn't ef I could help it," she said. "Jest to please me, darling, take a little lesson; you will be glad bimeby, you really will. Why, this st.i.tch is in the family, and it 'ud be 'a burning shame for it to go out. Dear, dearie me, Alison, it aint a small thing that could make me cry, but I'd cry ef this beautiful st.i.tch, wot come down from the Simpsons to the Phippses, and from the Phippses to the Reeds, is lost. You must learn it ef you want to keep me cheerful, Ally dear."

"But I thought I knew it, Grannie," said the girl.

"Not to say perfect, love--the loop don't go right with you, and the loop's the p'int. Ef you don't draw that loop up clever and tight, you don't get the quilting, and the quilting's the feature that none of the workwomen in West London can master. Now, see yere, look at me. I'll do a bit, and you watch."

Grannie took up the morsel of cambric; she began the curious movements of the wrist and hand, the intricate, involved contortions of the thread. The magic loop made its appearance; the quilting stood out in richness and majesty on the piece of cambric. Grannie made three or four perfect st.i.tches in an incredibly short s.p.a.ce of time. She then put the cambric into her granddaughter's hand.

"Now, child," she said, "show me what you can do."

Alison yawned slightly, and took up the work without any enthusiasm.

She made the first correct mystic pa.s.sage with needle and thread; when she came to the loop she failed to go right, and the effect was bungled and incomplete.

"Not that way; for mercy's sake, don't twist the thread like that!"

called Grannie, in an agony. "Give it to me; I'll show yer."

It seemed like profanation to see her exquisite work tortured and murdered. She s.n.a.t.c.hed the cambric from Alison, and set to work to make another perfect st.i.tch herself. At that moment there came the sudden and terrible pain--the shooting agony up the arm, followed by the partial paralysis of thumb and forefinger. Grannie could not help uttering a suppressed groan; her face turned white; she felt a pa.s.sing sense of nausea and faintness; the work dropped from her hand; the perspiration stood on her forehead. She looked at Alison with wide-open, pitiful eyes.

"Wot is it, Grannie--what is it, darlin'? For G.o.d's sake, wot's wrong?" said the girl, going on her knees and putting her arms round the little woman.

"It's writers' cramp, honey, writers' cramp, and me that never writes but twice a year; it's starvation, darlin'. Oh, darlin', darlin', it's starvation--that's ef you don't learn the st.i.tch."

All of a sudden Grannie's fort.i.tude had given way; she sobbed and sobbed--not in the loud, full, strong way of the young and vigorous, but with those low, suppressed, deep-drawn sobs of the aged. All in a minute she felt herself quite an old and useless woman--she, who had been the mainspring of the household, the breadwinner of the family!

All of a sudden she had dropped very low. Alison was full of consternation, but she did not understand grief like Grannie's. She was at one end of life, and Grannie was at the other; the old woman understood the girl--having past experience to guide her--but the girl could not understand the old woman. It was a relief to Grannie to tell out her fear, but Alison did not comprehend it; she was full of pity, but she was scarcely full of sympathy. It seemed impossible for her to believe that Grannie's cunning right hand was going to be useless, that the beautiful work must stop, that the means of livelihood must cease, that the old woman must be turned into a useless, helpless log--no longer the mainspring, but a helpless addition to the strained household.

Alison could not understand, but she did her best to cheer Grannie up.

"There, there," she said; "of course that doctor was wrong. In all my life I never heard of such a thing as writers' cramp. Writers'

cramp!--it's one of the new diseases, Grannie, that doctors are just forcing into the world to increase their earnings. I heard tell in the shop, by a girl what knows, that every year doctors push two new diseases into fashion, so as to fill their pockets. But for them, we'd never have had influenza, and now it's writers' cramp is to be the rage. Well, let them as writes get it; but you don't write, you know, Grannie."

"That's wot I say," replied Grannie, cheering up wonderfully. "No one can get a disease by writing two letters in a year. I don't suppose it is it, at all."

"I'm sure it isn't," said Alison; "but you are just tired out, and must rest for a day or two. It's a good thing that I'm at home, for I can rub your hand and arm with that liniment. You'll see, you'll be all right again in a day or two."

"To be sure I will," said Grannie; "twouldn't be like my luck ef I warn't." But all the same she knew in her heart of hearts that she would not.

CHAPTER VII.

Both Alison and Mrs. Reed were quite of the opinion that, somehow or other, the affair of the five-pound note would soon be cleared up. The more the two women talked over the whole occurrence, the more certain they were on that point. When Grannie questioned her carefully, Alison confessed that while she was attending to her two rather troublesome customers, it would have been quite within the region of possibility for someone to approach the till unperceived. Of course Alison had noticed no one; but that would not have prevented the deed being done.

"The more I think of it, the more certain I am it's that Clay girl,"

said Grannie. "Oh, yes, that Clay girl is at the bottom of it. I'll tell Jim so the next time he calls."

"But I don't expect Jim to call--at least at present," said Alison, heaving a heavy sigh, and fixing her eyes on the window.

"And why not, my dearie, why shouldn't you have the comfort of seeing him?"

"It aint a comfort at present, Grannie; it is more than I can bear. I won't engage myself to Jim until I am cleared, and I love him so much, Grannie, and he loves me so much that it is torture to me to see him and refuse him; but I am right, aint I? Do say as I'm right."

"Coming of the blood of the Simpsons, the Phippses and Reeds, you can do no different," said Grannie, in a solemn tone. "You'll be cleared werry soon, Alison, for there's a G.o.d above, and you are a poor orphin girl, and we have his promise that he looks out special for orphins; oh, yes, 'twill all come right, and in the meantime you might as well take a lesson in the feather-st.i.tching."

But though Grannie spoke with right good faith, and Alison cheered up all she could, things did not come right. The theft was not brought home to the wicked Clay girl, as Grannie now invariably called her; Shaw did not go on his knees to Alison to return; and one day Jim, who did still call at the Reeds' notwithstanding Alison's prohibition, brought the gloomy tidings that Shaw was seeing other girls with a view to filling up Alison's place in the shop. This was a dark blow indeed, and both Alison and Grannie felt themselves turning very pale, and their hearts sinking, when Jim brought them the unpleasant news.

"Set down, Jim Hardy, set down," said Grannie, but her lips trembled with pa.s.sion as she spoke. "I don't want to see anyone in my house that I don't offer a chair to, but I can't think much of your detective powers, lad, or you'd have got your own gel cleared long ere this."