Mrs. Reed left the shop, and went home as quickly as her small, active
feet could carry her. She was feeling quite brisked up by her
interview with Shaw, and her indignation supplied her with strength.
She got back to the model lodging in Sparrow Street, mounted to her own
floor, and opened the door with a latch-key. Alison was sitting by the
window, busy over the needlework which Grannie would have done had she
been at home. Alison was but an indifferent worker, whereas Grannie
was a very beautiful one. Few people could do more lovely hand work
than Mrs. Reed. She was famous for her work, and got, as such things
go, good prices for it. The very best shops in the West End employed
her. She was seldom without a good job on hand. She had invented a
new pattern in feather-stitching which was greatly admired, and which
she was secretly very proud of--it was an intricate pattern, and it
made a very good show. No other workwoman knew how to do it, and
Grannie was very careful not to impart her secret to the trade. This
feather-stitching alone gave her a sort of monopoly, and she was too
good a woman of business not to avail herself of it. It was the
feather-stitching which had mostly tried her poor hand and arm, and
brought on the horrid pain which the doctor had called writers' cramp.
"Some doctors are out-and-out fools," murmured the old woman to
herself. "He were a very nice spoke gentleman--tall and genteel, and
he treated me like a lady, which any true man would; but when he said I
had got writers' cramp in this hand, it must have been nonsense. For
there, I never write; ef I spell through a letter once in six months to
my poor sister's only child in Australia, it's the very most that I can
do. Writers' cramp, indeed! Well, it's a comfort to know that he must
be wrong. I wonder how Ally has got on with the work. Poor dear!
I'll have to do more of that feather-stitching than ever, now that Ally
has lost her situation."
Alison looked up and saw her grandmother standing near her. She had,
of course, been taught the feather-stitching. Mrs. Reed had confided
this important secret to her once in a time of serious illness.
"For I may die, and it may go out of the fam'ly," she said. "It was
begun by my grandmother, who got the first notion of it in the sort of
trail of the leaves. My grandmother was a Simpson--most respectable
folk--farmers of the best sort. She had wonderful linen, as fine as
silk. She made it all herself, and then she hemmed it and marked it
and feather-stitched it with them trailing leaves. She taught the
trail to my mother, who married Phipps, and mother had a turn for
needlework, and she gave it that little twist and rise which makes it
so wonderful pretty and neat; but 'twas I popped on the real finish,
quilting it, so to speak, and making it the richest trimming, and the
most dainty you could find. You must learn it, Alison; it would be a
sin and a shame for it to die with me. It must stay in the fam'ly, and
you must 'ave it on yer wedding linen, that you must."
Grannie had taken great pains teaching Alison, and Alison had tried
hard to learn, but, unlike the Phippses and the Simpsons, she had no
real turn for fine needlework. She learned the wonderful stitch, it is
true, but only in a sort of fashion.
Now, the secret of that stitch it is not for me to disclose. It had to
be done with a twist here, and a loop there, and a sudden clever
bringing round of the thread from the left to the right at a critical
moment; then followed a still more clever darting of the needle through
a loop, which suddenly appeared just when it was least expected. The
feather-stitching involved many movements of the hand and arm, and
certainly gave a splendid effect to the fine linen or cambric on which
it was worked. Grannie could do it almost with her eyes shut, but
Alison, who thought she knew all about it, found when she began to
practice that she had not taken the right loop nor the proper twist,
and she quite forgot the clever under-movement which brought the thread
from left to right, and made that sort of crinkled scroll which all the
other workwomen in West London tried to imitate in vain. Grannie was
trimming some beautiful underlinen for a titled lady; it was made of
the finest cambric, and the feather-stitching was to be a special
feature.
She stood now, looked down at her pretty grandchild, and saw that she
had ruined the work.
"Poor dear," muttered the old woman to herself, "she dint got the turn
of it, or maybe her head is confused. No wonder, I'm sure; for a
cleverer nor neater girl than Alison don't live."
"There, my love," she said, speaking aloud, "I've come back. You can
put away the work now."
"Oh, Grannie!" said the girl, looking up with flushed cheeks, "have I
done it right? It looks wrong somehow; it aint a bit rich like what
you do."
"Dearie me," said the old woman, "as ef that mattered. You pop it back
into my drawer now."
"But have I done any harm?"
"Of course not, lovey. Pop it into the drawer and come and make
yourself smart for Jim."
"For Jim?" said Alison, looking up with a glow on her cheeks, her eyes
shining. "You speak as if you had good news; has anything been
discovered?"
Grannie had made up her mind to cheer Alison by every means in her
power. She sat down now on the nearest chair, untied her
bonnet-strings, and looked affectionately at the girl.
"I have good news," she said; "yes, all things considered, I have."
"Is the money found, grandmother?"
"You couldn't expect it to be yet. Of course, _she_ wot took it hid
it--wot else can you expect?"
"Oh, then nothing matters!" said Alison, her head drooping.
"Dearie me, child, that's no way to take misfortin. The whole thing
from first to last was just a bit of bad luck, and luck's the queerest
thing in life. I have thought over luck all my long years, and am not
far from seventy, thank the Lord for his goodness, and I can't
understand it yet. Luck's agen yer, and nothing you can do will make
it for yer, jest for a spell. Then, for no rhyme or reason, it 'll
turn round, and it's for yer, and everything prospers as yer touches,
and you're jest as fort'nate as you were t'other way. With a young
thing like you, Ally, young and pretty and genteel, luck aint never
'ard; it soon turns, and it will with you. No, the money's not found
yet," continued the old woman, rising and taking off her bonnet and
giving it a little shake; "but it's sure to be to-night or to-morrow,
for I've got the promise of the master that he won't leave a stone
unturned to find out the thief. I did give him my mind, Alison. I
wish you could have heard me. I let out on him. I let him see what
sort of breed I am'--a Phipps wot married a Reed."
"Oh, as if that mattered!" groaned Alison.
"Well, it did with him, love. Breed allers tells. You may be low-born
and nothing will 'ide it--not all the dress and not all the, by way of,
fine manners. It's jest like veneer--it peels off at a minute's
notice. But breed's true to the core; it wears. Alison, it wears to
the end."
"Well, Grannie," said Alison, who had often heard these remarks before,
"what did Mr. Shaw really say?"
"My love, he treated me werry respectful. He told me the whole story,
calm and quiet, and then he said that he was quite sure himself that
you was innocent."
"He didn't say that, really?"
"I tell you he did, child; and wot's more, he offered you the place
back again."
It was Alison's turn now to rise to her feet. She laughed hysterically.
"And does he think I'll go," she said, "with this hanging over me? No!
I'd starve first. If that's all, he has his answer. I'll never go
back to that shop till I'm cleared. Oh, I don't know where your good
news is," she continued; "everything seems very black and dreadful. If
it were not for----" Her rosy lips trembled; she did not complete her
sentence.
"I could bear it," she said, in a broken voice, "if it were not
for----" Again she hesitated, rushed suddenly across the room, and
locked herself into the little bedroom which she shared with one of her
sisters.