The adjoining room was similarly crowded; it had to serve as bedroom for this large family. There was the mantel-piece with the familiar row of bright plates and vases,—the place where the family’s art sense finds concentrated expression. Fortunately, this room, too, had a window with other plants, and before it sat the grandmother in her black cap and shawl, who, as I entered, was just slipping her battered eye-glasses into the little side drawer beneath her cushion. She smiled a friendly greeting, and uncovered her lace, a filmy flounce of Valenciennes about four inches wide, firm and regular, and of a good old design. She had been making Valenciennes all her life; she would make it to the end. She was delighted to show me how she twisted four threads to form one side of the hexagon of the mesh, and four to form the opposite, and the union points where the eight met. Then she held up a length of her lace and told us that a facteur (neighborhood buyer for a large business house) had been there just before we arrived, to try to buy her flounce at nine francs the _aune_, which would be roughly, about $2.50 a meter. The committee has been giving her 19 fr. 50 c. ($3.90) for the same amount, and she asked anxiously, tho still smilingly, if she might not continue to hope for the committee price, even tho the war had stopt. It is pathetic, day after day, to hear that question repeated, and not yet to be certain of the answer. However, one can always reply truthfully, that the women of the “Friends of the Lace” will work unceasingly not only to hold wages where they are, but to advance them. I turned from this delicate lace to the granddaughter’s cushion—she was making guipure de Cluny, of coarse linen thread. Marie’s pattern happened to be a good one and she was working swiftly and evenly, sure of a fair day’s wage. Here, then, was a suggestive contrast, and however one may regret it, it exists in the large majority of lace-making households in Belgium, and is only to be expected. It is but the deserved penalty of a past and present economic blindness or callousness. Where they are not making Cluny, the younger women of this district give their time to ordinary varieties of guipure which they call Bruges and Milan, or Point de Bruges, and Point de Milan. [Illustration: BOBBIN LACES (1) Torchon (2) Cluny (3) Old Flemish (4) Binche] [Illustration: TABLE CLOTH SHOWING ARMS OF THE ALLIES Cut linen with squares of Venise surrounded by filet and cluny. Venise made with the needle, cluny with bobbins]