"Can you make these broken things beautiful?" said Clorinda. "Then
indeed you shall. You may come here to mend them when you will."

"They are very fine hangings, though so old and ill cared for," said
Anne, looking up at them; "and I shall be only too happy sitting here
thinking of all you are doing while I am at my work."

"Thinking of all I am doing?" laughed Mistress Clorinda. "That would
give you such wondrous things to dream of, Anne, that you would have no
time for your needle, and my hangings would stay as they are."

"I can think and darn also," said Mistress Anne, "so I will come."




CHAPTER VII--'Twas the face of Sir John Oxon the moon shone upon


From that time henceforward into the young woman's dull life there came a
little change. It did not seem a little change to her, but a great one,
though to others it would have seemed slight indeed. She was an
affectionate, house-wifely creature, who would have made the best of
wives and mothers if it had been so ordained by Fortune, and something of
her natural instincts found outlet in the furtive service she paid her
sister, who became the empress of her soul. She darned and patched the
tattered hangings with a wonderful neatness, and the hours she spent at
work in the chamber were to her almost as sacred as hours spent at
religious duty, or as those nuns and novices give to embroidering altar-
cloths. There was a brightness in the room that seemed in no other in