Alice did wish there'd been a bit of life on the road though. Made her
feel so queer, having nobody behind her. Made her feel all weak in the
spine. She couldn't believe that some one wasn't watching her. And yet it
was silly to turn round; it gave you away. She pulled up her gloves,
hummed to herself and said to the distant gum-tree, "Shan't be long now."
But that was hardly company.

Mrs. Stubbs's shop was perched on a little hillock just off the road. It
had two big windows for eyes, a broad veranda for a hat, and the sign on
the roof, scrawled MRS. STUBBS'S, was like a little card stuck rakishly in
the hat crown.

On the veranda there hung a long string of bathing-dresses, clinging
together as though they'd just been rescued from the sea rather than
waiting to go in, and beside them there hung a cluster of sandshoes so
extraordinarily mixed that to get at one pair you had to tear apart and
forcibly separate at least fifty. Even then it was the rarest thing to
find the left that belonged to the right. So many people had lost patience
and gone off with one shoe that fitted and one that was a little too
big...Mrs. Stubbs prided herself on keeping something of everything. The
two windows, arranged in the form of precarious pyramids, were crammed so
tight, piled so high, that it seemed only a conjurer could prevent them
from toppling over. In the left-hand corner of one window, glued to the
pane by four gelatine lozenges, there was--and there had been from time
immemorial--a notice.

LOST! HANSOME GOLE BROOCH
SOLID GOLD
ON OR NEAR BEACH