Go fetch your box and work
things."

Matilda slowly went. It was so pleasant to be out of that perfumed room
and out of sight of the Rev. Mr. Orderly's writings. She lingered in
the passages; looked over the balusters and listened, hoping that by
some happy chance Maria might make some demand upon her. None came; the
house was still; and Matilda had to go back to her aunt. She felt like
a prisoner.

"Now I suppose you have no darning cotton," said Mrs. Candy. "Here is a
needleful. Thread it, and then I will show you what next."

"This is three or four needlefuls, aunt Candy. I will break it. I
cannot sew with such a thread."

"Stop. Yes, you can. Don't break it. I will show you. Thread your
needle."

"I haven't one big enough."

That want was supplied.

"Now you shall begin with running this heel," said Mrs. Candy. "See,
you shall put this marble egg into the stocking, to darn upon. Now look
here. You begin down here, at the middle, so--and take up only one
thread at a stitch, do you see? and skip so many threads each time----"

"But there is no hole there, Aunt Erminia."

"I know that. Heels should always be run before they come to holes.
There are half-a-dozen heels here, I should think, that require to be
run. Now, do you see how I do it? You may take the stocking, and when
you have darned a few rows, come and let me see how you get on."

Matilda in a small fit of despair took the stocking to a little
distance and sat down to work. The marble egg was heavy to hold. It
took a long while to go up one side of the heel and down the other. She
was tired of sitting under constraint and so still. And her Aunt Candy
seemed like a jailer, and that perfumed room like a prison. The quicker
her work could be done, the better for her. So Matilda reflected, and
her needle went accordingly.

"I have done it, Aunt Erminia," she proclaimed at last.

"Done the heel?"

"Yes, ma'am."

"You cannot possibly. Come here and let me look at it. Why, of course!
That is not done as I showed you, Tilly; these rows of darning should
be close together, one stitch just in the middle between two other
stitches; you have just gone straggling over the whole heel. That will
have to come all out."

"But there is no hole in it," said Matilda.

"Always darn _before_ the holes come. That will not do. You must pick
it all out, Tilly."

"Now?" said Matilda, despairingly.

"Certainly now. You make yourself trouble in that way. I am so