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At the Bay 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 button-hole 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.

A strange company assembled in the Burnells’ washhouse after tea. Round the table 46