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Alice pressed open the door. The bell jangled, the red serge curtains
parted, and Mrs. Stubbs appeared. With her broad smile and the long bacon
knife in her hand, she looked like a friendly brigand. Alice was welcomed
so warmly that she found it quite difficult to keep up her "manners." They
consisted of persistent little coughs and hems, pulls at her gloves, tweaks
at her skirt, and a curious difficulty in seeing what was set before her or
understanding what was said.

Tea was laid on the parlour table--ham, sardines, a whole pound of butter,
and such a large johnny cake that it looked like an advertisement for
somebody's baking-powder. But the Primus stove roared so loudly that it
was useless to try to talk above it. Alice sat down on the edge of a
basket-chair while Mrs. Stubbs pumped the stove still higher. Suddenly
Mrs. Stubbs whipped the cushion off a chair and disclosed a large brown-
paper parcel.

"I've just had some new photers taken, my dear," she shouted cheerfully to
Alice. "Tell me what you think of them."

In a very dainty, refined way Alice wet her finger and put the tissue back
from the first one. Life! How many there were! There were three dozzing
at least. And she held it up to the light.

Mrs. Stubbs sat in an arm-chair, leaning very much to one side. There was
a look of mild astonishment on her large face, and well there might be.
For though the arm-chair stood on a carpet, to the left of it, miraculously
skirting the carpet-border, there was a dashing water-fall. On her right
stood a Grecian pillar with a giant fern-tree on either side of it, and in