And so we went our ways, and did the work that fell to us. Some nights I pranced cheerily about the stage in country dances, and made announcements anent that carriage that always seemed to be waiting for some one in the old plays, particularly the comedies. “My Lord, the carriage waits!” It is a famous line, a short one, I know, but powerful enough to produce temporary paralysis of the limbs and complete dumbness, for the moment, in strong and lusty youths and maidens. Well, I was on most friendly terms with that line, and some nights said nothing more, while on other nights I went on and played really first-class parts, that being the manner in which we used to work our way upward from the very bottom, and felt no shame in it either; but _nous avons changés tout cela_.
While I was thus bobbing up and down upon the restless waters of my profession, my strange “old lady,” who had grown to be my friend, was sitting “like a gray, old Fate, toiling, toiling, weaving” the fairy-like stitches that made whole again the torn or injured among rare and precious laces. Her knowledge of them was wonderful, her love for them almost tender. She would shake her head and croon over them, when they were, in her words, “badly hurt.” The day she came nearest to loving me was the day I said I thought laces were the poetry of a woman’s wardrobe. “Aye, aye,” she answered, “that’s a good word and well said, girl Clara. It’s strange that, without teaching or information, your keen instinct guides you to the _real_ beauties of life as surely as the sense of smell guides a young hound on the trail. There’s nothing made by the hand of poverty that is so beautiful as lace; so delicate yet so strong. Ah! girl Clara, some day, may you see a bit of Venetian ‘point,’ ‘round point,’ but if you do, you’ll smash a commandment, mark my words!”
Laces were sent to her from distant cities, and the package I had caught up from under the horses’ feet came, as did many others, from the then greatest merchant of New York. She had received much work from the South, but the war deprived her of that. So she went on cutting her expenses down to meet her earnings, starving quite slowly and making her moan to no man.