At last another singular event happened.

Alice beamingly put five sovereigns into Priam’s hand one evening.

“It’s been sold for five guineas,” she said, joyous.  “Mr. Aylmer didn’t want to keep anything for himself, but I insisted on his having the odd shillings.  I think it’s splendid, simply splendid!  Of course I always did think it was a beautiful picture,” she added.

The fact was that this astounding sale for so large a sum as five pounds, of a picture done in the attic by her Henry, had enlarged her ideas of Henry’s skill.  She could no longer regard his painting as the caprice of a gentle lunatic.  There was something in it.  And now she wanted to persuade herself that she had known from the first there was something in it.

The picture had been bought by the eccentric and notorious landlord of the Elk Hotel, down by the river, on a Sunday afternoon when he was—­not drunk, but more optimistic than the state of English society warrants.  He liked the picture because his public-house was so unmistakably plain in it.  He ordered a massive gold frame for it, and hung it in his saloon-bar.  His career as a patron of the arts was unfortunately cut short by an order signed by his doctors for his incarceration in a lunatic asylum.  All Putney had been saying for years that he would end in the asylum, and all Putney was right.

* * * * *

CHAPTER VIII

An Invasion

One afternoon, in December, Priam and Alice were in the sitting-room together, and Alice was about to prepare tea.  The drawn-thread cloth was laid diagonally on the table (because Alice had seen cloths so laid on model tea-tables in model rooms at Waring’s), the strawberry jam occupied the northern point of the compass, and the marmalade was antarctic, while brittle cakes and spongy cakes represented the occident and the orient respectively.  Bread-and-butter stood, rightly, for the centre of the universe.  Silver ornamented the spread, and Alice’s two tea-pots (for she would never allow even Chinese tea to remain on the leaves for more than five minutes) and Alice’s water-jug with the patent balanced lid, occupied a tray off the cloth.  At some distance, but still on the table, a kettle moaned over a spirit-lamp.  Alice was cutting bread for toast.  The fire was of the right redness for toast, and a toasting-fork lay handy.  As winter advanced, Alice’s teas had a tendency to become cosier and cosier, and also more luxurious, more of a ritualistic ceremony.  And to avoid the trouble and danger of going through a cold passage to the kitchen, she arranged matters so that the entire operation could be performed with comfort and decency in the sitting-room itself.