thrift that pervaded the dull and gloomy home.

The old woman's pale, withered face was quite in harmony with the
darkness of the street and the mustiness of the place. As she sat
there, motionless, in her chair, it might have been thought that she
was as inseparable from the house as a snail from its brown shell; her
face, alert with a vague expression of mischief, was framed in a flat
cap made of net, which barely covered her white hair; her fine, gray
eyes were as quiet as the street, and the many wrinkles in her face
might be compared to the cracks in the walls. Whether she had been
born to poverty, or had fallen from some past splendor, she now seemed
to have been long resigned to her melancholy existence.

From sunrise till dark, excepting when she was getting a meal ready,
or, with a basket on her arm, was out purchasing provisions, the old
woman sat in the adjoining room by the further window, opposite a
young girl. At any hour of the day the passer-by could see the
needlewoman seated in an old, red velvet chair, bending over an
embroidery frame, and stitching indefatigably.

Her mother had a green pillow on her knee, and busied herself with
hand-made net; but her fingers could move the bobbin but slowly; her
sight was feeble, for on her nose there rested a pair of those
antiquated spectacles which keep their place on the nostrils by the
grip of a spring. By night these two hardworking women set a lamp
between them; and the light, concentrated by two globe-shaped bottles
of water, showed the elder the fine network made by the threads on her
pillow, and the younger the most delicate details of the pattern she
was embroidering. The outward bend of the window had allowed the girl
to rest a box of earth on the window-sill, in which grew some sweet