Explore "A Lantern in her Hand" by Bess Streeter Aldrich on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
By the time Abbie was eleven, she was doing more work. Life was not all play now. One of her tasks was to thread the wicks into candle molds, for her slim fingers were more agile than her mother's short, thick ones. She had to poke the long wick-string through all of the six molds, and carefully loop the tops over a stick to keep them from slipping. Her mother would then pour the hot tallow into the molds and set it away to harden. Abbie was always anxious to see the finished product slip out. She would watch her mother plunge the molds into hot water to loosen the hard grease, and then, "Let me, . let me, " she would call, and sometimes Maggie Mackenzie would let her carefully work the shining cream-colored candles out of their containers.
There were a dozen other tasks for her to perform,--drive the cows to drink, gather eggs from the chickens' stolen nests among the sheds and stacks, and the daily one of going to school.