With this, having more immediately practical questions before
them, they dropped the subject, to bend their entire attention
upon the dress; and when the lunch-gong sounded downstairs Alice
was still sketching repairs and alterations. She continued to
sketch them, not heeding the summons.

"I suppose we'd better go down to lunch," Mrs. Adams said,
absently. "She's at the gong again." "In a minute, mama. Now
about the sleeves----" And she went on with her planning.
Unfortunately the gong was inexpressive of the mood of the person
who beat upon it. It consisted of three little metal bowls upon
a string; they were unequal in size, and, upon being tapped with
a padded stick, gave forth vibrations almost musically pleasant.
It was Alice who had substituted this contrivance for the brass
"dinner-bell" in use throughout her childhood; and neither she
nor the others of her family realized that the substitution of
sweeter sounds had made the life of that household more
difficult. In spite of dismaying increases in wages, the Adamses
still strove to keep a cook; and, as they were unable to pay the
higher rates demanded by a good one, what they usually had was a
whimsical coloured woman of nomadic impulses. In the hands of
such a person the old-fashioned "dinner-bell" was satisfying;
life could instantly be made intolerable for any one dawdling on
his way to a meal; the bell was capable of every desirable
profanity and left nothing bottled up in the breast of the
ringer. But the chamois-covered stick might whack upon Alice's
little Chinese bowls for a considerable length of time and
produce no great effect of urgency upon a hearer, nor any other
effect, except fury in the cook. The ironical impossibility of
expressing indignation otherwise than by sounds of gentle harmony