The afternoon was devoted to sewing. Mademoiselle, like most Belgian ladies, was specially skilful with her needle. She by no means thought it waste of time to devote unnumbered hours to fine embroidery, sight-destroying lace-work, marvellous netting and knitting, and, above all, to most elaborate stocking-mending. She would give a day to the mending of two holes in a stocking any time, and think her "mission" nobly fulfilled when she had accomplished it. It was another of Caroline's troubles to be condemned to learn this foreign style of darning, which was done stitch by stitch, so as exactly to imitate the fabric of the stocking itself--a wearifu' process, but considered by Hortense Grard, and by her ancestresses before her for long generations back, as one of the first "duties of a woman." She herself had had a needle, cotton, and a fearfully torn stocking put into her hand while she yet wore a child's coif on her little black head; her "hauts faits" in the darning line had been exhibited to company ere she was six years old; and when she first discovered that Caroline was profoundly ignorant of this most essential of attainments, she could have wept with pity over her miserably-neglected youth.

The afternoon was devoted to sewing. Mademoiselle, like most Belgian ladies, was skilful with her needle, and devoted countless hours to fine embroidery, sight-destroying lace-work, netting, knitting, and, above all, elaborate stocking-mending. She would give a day to mending two holes in a stocking, and think it a mission nobly fulfilled.
Caroline was condemned to learn this style of darning, which had to imitate exactly the fabric of the stocking - a wearisome process, but considered by Hortense as one of the first duties of a woman. She herself had been expert at darning since she was six; and when she first discovered that Caroline was ignorant of this essential skill, she could have wept with pity. 