Carpet

by Peppy Barlow

 

lemonade with ice

There was a woman who made carpets.  She sat by the side of the road all day, everyday, weaving.  And she sold her carpets to the people passing on the road.   But there was one carpet she wove only for herself, threading the bright colours a stitch or two everyday.  It took her twenty years to make her carpet and when she had finished she took it inside and put it on the floor of her house.  Her family walked on it, sat on it, slept and ate off it for another twenty years and then the woman died, leaving all she had to her two sons.

“Let’s get rid of that old carpet,” was the first thing they said and threw it out onto the roadside where their children played in the dust.  

“Look,” cried the youngest girl, “Its grandmother’s carpet,” and she turned a corner of the warn cloth to see the colours still bright on the other side.

So the children turned the carpet over and sat on blue and green and fiery red and found a thousand games to play on the pattern the old woman had made when her life was new.