y--"it was dropsy that
carried him off at the larst. Many's the time they drawn one and a half
pints from 'im at the 'ospital... It seemed like a judgmint."

Alice burned to know exactly what it was that was drawn from him. She
ventured, "I suppose it was water."

But Mrs. Stubbs fixed Alice with her eyes and replied meaningly, "It was
liquid, my dear."

Liquid! Alice jumped away from the word like a cat and came back to it,
nosing and wary.

"That's 'im!" said Mrs. Stubbs, and she pointed dramatically to the
life-size head and shoulders of a burly man with a dead white rose in
the buttonhole of his coat that made you think of a curl of cold mutting
fat. Just below, in silver letters on a red cardboard ground, were the
words, "Be not afraid, it is I."

"It's ever such a fine face," said Alice faintly.

The pale-blue bow on the top of Mrs. Stubbs's fair frizzy hair quivered.
She arched her plump neck. What a neck she had! It was bright pink where
it began and then it changed to warm apricot, and that faded to the
colour of a brown egg and then to a deep creamy.

"All the same, my dear," she said surprisingly, "freedom's best!" Her
soft, fat chuckle sounded like a purr. "Freedom's best," said Mrs.
Stubbs again.

Freedom! Alice gave a loud, silly little titter. She felt awkward. Her
mind flew back to her own kitching. Ever so queer! She wanted to be back
in it again.

Chapter 1.IX.

A strange company assembled in the Burnells' washhouse after tea. Round
the table there sat a bull, a rooster, a donkey that kept forgetting it
was a donkey, a sheep and a bee. The washhouse was the perfect place for
such a meeting because they could make as much noise as they liked, and
nobody ever interrupted. It was a small tin shed standing apart from the
bungalow. Against the wall there was a deep trough and in the corner a
copper with a basket of clothes-pegs on top of it. The little window,
spun over with cobwebs, had a piece of candle and a mouse-trap on the
dusty sill. There were clotheslines criss-crossed overhead and, hanging
from a peg on the wall, a very big, a huge, rusty horseshoe. The table
was in the middle with a form at either side.

"You can't be a bee, Kezia. A bee's not an animal. It's a ninseck."

"Oh, but I do want to be a bee frightfully," wailed Kezia... A tiny bee,
all yellow-furry, with striped legs. She drew her legs up under her and
leaned over the table. She felt she was a bee.

"A ninseck must