ll--I never!'

And Alice went on, 'Would you like to taste it?'

'Thank you very much, I'm sure, miss,' said the butcher.

Alice poured some out.

The butcher tasted a very little. He licked his lips, and we thought
he was going to say how good it was. But he did not. He put down the
medicine glass with nearly all the stuff left in it (we put it back in
the bottle afterwards to save waste) and said, 'Excuse me, miss, but
isn't it a little sweet?--for sherry I mean?'

'The _Real_ isn't,' said Alice. 'If you order a dozen it will come quite
different to that--we like it best with sugar. I wish you _would_ order
some.' The butcher asked why.

Alice did not speak for a minute, and then she said--

'I don't mind telling _you_: you are in business yourself, aren't
you? We are trying to get people to buy it, because we shall have two
shillings for every dozen we can make any one buy. It's called a purr
something.'

'A percentage. Yes, I see,' said the butcher, looking at the hole in the
carpet.

'You see there are reasons,' Alice went on, 'why we want to make our
fortunes as quickly as we can.'

'Quite so,' said the butcher, and he looked at the place where the paper
is coming off the wall.

'And this seems a good way,' Alice went on. 'We paid two shillings for
the sample and instructions, and it says you can make two pounds a week
easily in your leisure time.'

'I'm sure I hope you may, miss,' said the butcher. And Alice said again
would he buy some?

'Sherry is my favourite wine,' he said. Alice asked him to have some
more to drink.

'No, thank you, miss,' he said; 'it's my favourite wine, but it doesn't
agree with me; not the least bit. But I've an uncle drinks it. Suppose I
ordered him half a dozen for a Christmas present? Well, miss, here's the
shilling commission, anyway,' and he pulled out a handful of money and
gave her the shilling.

'But I thought the wine people paid that,' Alice said.

But the butcher said not on half-dozens they didn't. Then he said he
didn't think he'd wait any longer for Father--but would Alice ask Father
to write him?

Alice offered him the sherry again, but he said something about 'Not
for worlds!'--and then she let him out and came back to us with the
shilling, and said, 'How's that?'

And we said 'A1.'

And all the evening we talked of our fortune that we had begun to make.

Nobody came next day, but the day after a lady came to ask for money to
build an orphanage