Ornamental lace design with hanging leaf

Nell counted the scallops first, the way her grandmother had taught her, then the rings inside them. Seven rings in the top leaf, six in the next, the circles shrinking like ripples that had lost their pond. Every dot was a pin hole in the making. Where the strings of beads hung down from the base she worked slowly, because one bobbin sewn wrong could drag a whole row out of true, and she had watched that happen to a better lacemaker than herself.

On Wednesday night the candle guttered and she went to fetch fresh wax from the kitchen. When she came back Mrs Hesketh was standing over the board with the paper held to the light, tracing the last leaf with one finger. "You've drawn it the same as the old one," she said. Nell had not known there was an old one. The leaf at the bottom had a vein running through it that nobody in the village had ever sewn, only ever drawn, and the tiny stitched veins on Nell's copy matched it exactly.

Mrs Hesketh rolled the original back into its tissue and handed it over. "Keep the pattern," she said. "Sew the leaf last. Leave the vein for whoever comes after you." Nell pinned her last bobbin to the lace and left the leaf half finished on the board overnight, the way she had been told to, so the morning would have something to do.