feel that I particularly wished to see anybody.

"He wants a vote, or he is an agent for a special kind of
tea," thought I. "I don't know him; ask him to send a
message."

Presently the maid returned--

"He says he is Mr. Dodgson, of Oxford."

"Lewis Carroll!" I exclaimed; and somebody else had to
superintend the cooking that day.

My apologies were soon made and cheerfully accepted. I
believe I was unconventional enough to tell the exact truth
concerning my occupation, and matters were soon on a
friendly footing. Indeed I may say at once that the stately
college don we have heard so much about never made his
appearance during our intercourse with him.

He did not talk "Alice," of course; authors don't generally
_talk_ their books, I imagine; but it was undoubtedly
Lewis Carroll who was present with us.

A portrait of Ellen Terry on the wall had attracted his
attention, and one of the first questions he asked was, "Do
you ever go to the theatre?" I explained that such things
were done, occasionally, even among Quakers, but they were
not considered quite orthodox.

"Oh, well, then you will not be shocked, and I may venture
to produce my photographs." And out into the hall he went,
and soon returned with a little black bag containing
character portraits of his child-friends, Isa and Nellie
Bowman.

"Isa used to be Alice until she grew too big," he said.
"Nellie was one of the oyster-fairies, and Emsie, the tiny
one of all, was the Dormouse."

"When 'Alice' was first dramatised," he said, "the poem of
the 'Walrus and the Carpenter' fell rather flat, for people
did not know when it was finished, and did not clap in the
right place; so I had to write a song for the ghosts of the
oysters to sing, which made it all right."

[Illustration: Alice and the Dormouse. _From a photograph
by Elliott & Fry_.]

He was then on his way to London, to fetch Isa to stay with
him at Eastbourne. She was evidently a great favourite, and
had visited him before. Of that earlier time he said:--

"When people ask me why I have never married, I tell them I
have never met the young lady whom I could endure for a
fortnight--but Isa and I got on so well together that I said
I should keep her a month, the length of the honeymoon, and
we didn't get tired of each ot