Bobbins of Belgium; a book of Belgian lace, lace-workers, lace-schools and lace-villages . children ofHolland showering flowers of abundanceupon the martyred children of their sis-ter kingdom. 208 BOBBINS OF BELGIUM It would have been pleasant to talk ofother master-works, but we had alreadysat too long before the fire and wehurried now to reach the large, airy class-room across the court before dark. Whenstarting on my lace journey, I had beenwarned that, once I had visited thebobbin-lace work-room with all the pic-turesqueness of the cushion with itsmounds of bobbins and clustered pins,and o
Bobbins of Belgium; a book of Belgian lace, lace-workers, lace-schools and lace-villages . children ofHolland showering flowers of abundanceupon the martyred children of their sis-ter kingdom. 208 BOBBINS OF BELGIUM It would have been pleasant to talk ofother master-works, but we had alreadysat too long before the fire and wehurried now to reach the large, airy class-room across the court before dark. Whenstarting on my lace journey, I had beenwarned that, once I had visited thebobbin-lace work-room with all the pic-turesqueness of the cushion with itsmounds of bobbins and clustered pins,and of the flying fingers and the con-tinuous cadences of the clinking wood, Iwould find needle-lace classes uninterest-ing. In the beginning this was true;there was nothing particularly dramaticor stirring in a great room filled withgirls and young women holding littleblack paper patterns in their hands andplying a needle above them. But themore I watched these little patterns andthe fingers directing the needle andthread, the more marvelous the ac-complishment appeared—cotton and linen. s> . « -a o u b£ be o c a. - OPBRAKEL 209 so fine that it seemed impossible that anyfinger should control them—cobwebby,diaphanous meshes, richly petalled tinyflowers, and delicately veined leavesgrowing beneath just a common needleand a single thread. In the end I lookedeagerly for the needle rooms. And this was the most rewarding oneI had yet visited. It happened that themajority of the pupils were busy on thedetails of a tablecloth recently designedby Madame Allard, in which the linencenter is encircled by a family of littlebeasts as gay as any ever gathered to-gether to cheer a dinner company. Ilaughed outright, as a little girl, herselflaughing, held up an exquisitely workedand most vividly real group of happyducks floating on a pond. The nextshowed her enchanting rabbits, anotherher deer—all along the line they werechuckling over the success of their par-ticular pets. They had capt
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