Philomène was not a pretty child, but neither was she exactly plain, for she had small hands and feet, and a trim little figure, hazel eyes and plenty of soft mouse-coloured hair. And if there was nothing unusual about her appearance, there was certainly nothing unusual about her home, for she lived in a commonplace suburb of London, in a commonplace villa called Sideview. The house undoubtedly had two sides, but scarcely any view, unless the strip of back-garden counted as such. The drawing-room and dining-room opened out of a narrow hall, and both had about them the chill and mustiness of disuse, for since the death of Philomène’s mother the drawing-room had seen no more parties, and her father, who was a hard-working doctor, as often as not snatched his hurried meals in the study, rather than in the dining-room. Philomène’s own bedroom and schoolroom, on the upper landing, were large airy rooms for the size of the house. At the foot of her bed stood a screen, upon which Froggy went a-wooing, and Little Red Ridinghood carried her covered basket through the wood, and on the wall opposite hung a picture of a young shepherdess, clasping her crook, and kneeling in the shade of a spreading oak-tree. As there was no flock in sight, Philomène at first supposed her to be Bo-peep before her sheep came home, but Godmother had told her that it was Joan, the Maid of Orleans, who died for love of France and of the truth; and from that time forward, on winter evenings when the salamanders began their torch-light revels on the hearth, Philomène would lie in bed and watch the ruddy reflection brighten and broaden among the branches of the oak, wrapping the frail young figure in a winding-sheet of flame, and placing the hard-won wreath of martyrdom upon her hair. Over the mantelpiece in the schoolroom next door, hung another picture, one which had belonged to Philomène’s mother. There was a road white with dust in the foreground, disappearing amidst a clump of trees, above which floated a wreath of blue smoke. Down to the road there sloped a bank of grass, and here sat a woman with a child in her lap, while a bird on the wing paused to peck from an ear of corn which the baby held in his hand. Beside the two an old man with kind eyes and work-worn hands was unsaddling a small grey donkey, and a little further down the road stood a ruined shrine with a broken idol. Philomène liked the donkey with its long ears and sad eyes, and felt grateful to the old man for allowing it to nibble the grass at will.