de, and surrounding them, 'A Present from Clacton-on-Sea,' or,
alliteratively, 'A Memento of Margate.' Of these many were broken, but
they had been mended with glue, and it is well known that pottery in
the eyes of the connoisseur loses none of its value by a crack or two.
Then there were portraits innumerable--little yellow cartes-de-visite
in velvet frames, some of which were decorated with shells; they
showed strange people with old-fashioned clothes, the women with
bodices and sleeves fitting close to the figure, stern-featured
females with hair carefully parted in the middle and plastered down on
each side, firm chins and mouths, with small, pig-like eyes and
wrinkled faces, and the men were uncomfortably clad in Sunday
garments, very stiff and uneasy in their awkward postures, with large
whiskers and shaved chins and upper lips and a general air of
horny-handed toil. Then there were one or two daguerreotypes, little
full-length figures framed in gold paper. There was one of Mrs. Kemp's
father and one of her mother, and there were several photographs of
betrothed or newly-married couples, the lady sitting down and the man
standing behind her with his hand on the chair, or the man sitting and
the woman with her hand on his shoulder. And from all sides of the
room, standing on the mantelpiece, hanging above it, on the wall and
over the bed, they stared full-face into the room, self-consciously
fixed for ever in their stiff discomfort.

The walls were covered with dingy, antiquated paper, and ornamented
with coloured supplements from Christmas Numbers--there was a very
patriotic picture of a soldier shaking the hand of a fallen comrade
and waving his arm in defiance of a band of advancing Arabs; there was
a 'Cherry Ripe,' almost black with age and dirt; there were two
almanacks several years old, one with a coloured portrait of the
Marquess of Lorne, very handsome and elegantly dressed, the object of
Mrs. Kemp's adoration since her husband's demise; the other a Jubilee
portrait of the Queen, somewhat losing in dignity by a moustache which
Liza in an irreverent moment had smeared on with charcoal.

The furniture consisted of a wash-hand stand and a little deal chest
of drawers, which acted as sideboard to such pots and pans and
crockery as could not find room in the grate; and besides the bed
there was nothing but two kitchen chairs and a lamp. Liza looked at it
all and felt perfectly satisfied; she put a pin into one