"Why, of course you would! Ever so useful! Useful to me and useful to yourself at the same time!" And she clapped her hands with pleasure at having thought of something easy upon which he could try his energies; "Basket-making pays well here,--the farmers want baskets for their fruit, and the fishermen want baskets for their fish,--and its really quite easy work. As soon as you're a bit stronger, you shall begin--and you'll be able to earn quite a nice little penny!" He looked stedfastly into her radiant face. "I'd like to earn enough to pay you back all the expense you've been put to with me,"--he said, and his voice trembled--"But your patience and goodness--that--I can never hope to pay for--that's heavenly!--that's beyond all money's worth----" He broke off and put his hand over his eyes. Mary feigned not to notice his profound emotion, and, taking up a paper parcel on the table, opened it, and unrolled a long piece of wonderful old lace, yellow with age, and fine as a cobweb. "Do you mind my going on with my work?" she asked, cheerily--"I'm mending this for a Queen!" And as he took away his hand from his eyes, which were suspiciously moist, and looked at her wonderingly, she nodded at him in the most emphatic way. "Yes, truly, David!--for a Queen! Oh, it's not a Queen who is my direct employer--no Queen ever knows anything about me! It's a great firm in London that sends this to me to mend for a Queen--they trust me with it, because they know me. I've had lace worth thousands of pounds in my hands,--this piece is valued at eight hundred, apart from its history--it belonged to Marie Louise, second wife of Napoleon the First. It's a lovely bit!--but there are some cruel holes in it. Ah, dear me!" And, sitting down near the door, she bent her head closely over the costly fabric--"Queens don't think of the eyes that have gone out in blindness doing this beautiful work!--or the hands that have tired and the hearts that have broken over it! They would never run pins into it if they did!"