I was not a little astonished to hear this, and I was still more so as the Thimble proceeded.
“Look around you, and, even in this room, you will see wonderful proofs of the malleability of gold—that is the name given to this curious property which it possesses. See the picture-frames glittering in the light, the shining pattern on the paper on the wall, the edge of all those gaily bound books; they owe their beauty to a layer of gold so thin that, though that metal is one of the heaviest known, the gentlest sigh would have blown the leaves away.”
“And is gold useful for anything but gilding?” said I.
“It is much used in various ways,” she replied; “amongst others, it was formerly much employed in medicine, and is now used in giving a fine red colour to glass.”
“And is this beautiful and wonderful metal also dug out of the earth?”
“It is procured in some places,” answered the Thimble, “by washing carefully sand drawn from the beds of some rivers, which is mixed with particles of gold; but it is chiefly found by digging.”
“Well, then,” cried I, rather triumphantly, “though silver and gold be both esteemed more perfect and more precious than iron and steel, man would have very little chance of gaining either of them without the help of a humbler metal! If silver be like knowledge, and virtue like gold, to what shall iron be compared.”
“To firm resolution,” said the Thimble thoughtfully, “without which man would acquire little of either.”
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THE next day I found that the lesson of work was to be omitted. Little Miss Lizzie Baker came to spend the day with my young mistress, who was, therefore, excused from performing her tasks; which, I could not help imagining, would be felt quite as great a relief by the teacher as by the pupil.
I was not, however, to be left in complete idleness. Mrs. Ellerslie entered the sitting-room in which the work-box of her daughter was kept. She was dressed in her bonnet and shawl; and seeing me close at hand, sticking in Lily’s piece of work, she threaded me with a piece of dark silk, and mended a small hole in her glove. There was a great sound over head, as of little feet running about, and now and then a fretful cry from the baby. The lady rose and opened the door, and then I could plainly distinguish a voice speaking from an upper room in the house.