ge 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 the background towered a gaunt mountain, pale with
snow.

"It is a nice style, isn't it?" shouted Mrs. Stubbs; and Alice had
just screamed "Sweetly" when the roaring of the Primus stove died
down, fizzled out, ceased, and she said "Pretty" in a silence that was
frightening.

"Draw up your chair, my dear," said Mrs. Stubbs, beginning to pour out.
"Yes," she said thoughtfully, as she handed the tea, "but I don't care
about the size. I'm having an enlargemint. All very well for Christmas
cards, but I never was the one for small photers myself. You get no
comfort out of them. To say the truth, I find them dis'eartening."

Alice quite saw what she meant.

"Size," said Mrs. Stubbs. "Give me size. That was what my poor dear
husband was always saying. He couldn't stand anything small. Gave him
the creeps. And, strange as it may seem, my dear"--here Mrs. Stubbs
creaked and seemed to expand herself at the memor