Giles was reading a newspaper, standing under the light. The room was small and he looked very large in it; so did a pink, frilled ham on the sideboard and an engraving hanging over the mantelpiece of an old, erect gentleman, _en favoris_, his hands on a book and with a very high collar. When Aunt Bella came in a moment later, they all seemed quite crowded between the fog outside and the steam from the shining kettle on the table, and it was rather, Alix thought, as though they were floating in a little boat on a misty sea or suspended—this was a more exciting comparison—high in the air in an aeroplane. She was seated opposite the mantelpiece, Giles under it, and, following her eyes, Aunt Bella said: “That is our great Mr. Gladstone, Alix. You’ve heard of Mr. Gladstone.” Alix had to confess that she had not. “Well, you’ll have heard of George Washington, then,” said Aunt Bella. “There he is, behind you.” And Alix turned round to look up at the austere face in powdered hair. “He was an American, was he not, and your enemy?” she inquired. “He was the enemy of one of our foolish kings,” said Aunt Bella, “but an Englishman, and one we are all proud of. And that’s Cobden.” She completed her educational round with the third large engraving that hung near the window. “And now, perhaps,” said Giles, “you’ll like to hear what they all did and why Aunt Bella has them hanging here. By the time you do that you’ll have quite a good idea of modern English history.” Alix for a moment was afraid that Aunt Bella might really be going to instruct her, and she had not the least wish to know anything about any of the respectable gentlemen who presided over the breakfast-table. But Giles was going on, with his bantering smile. “If you go to Aunt Bella, you’ll get a one-sided impression, perhaps. She’s a great Liberal. We are all Liberals in my family. What you’d call Republicans.—Aunt Bella, you’re not asking this helpless French child to drink tea for her breakfast!” “Doesn’t she have tea?” Aunt Bella asked, and though Alix insisted that she did not mind it at all, there was much concerned conversation, and the elderly maid was summoned and told to ask cook to make some cocoa for the young lady. “You hate tea, I suppose,” said Giles, and Alix replied that she liked it very much at five o’clock, and Giles went on: “Whereas Aunt Bella likes it at all hours of the day and night; and Indian tea, I’m grieved to say; it’s the only rift within our lute, Aunt Bella’s Indian tea;—since we do agree about Gladstone. Now you’re a Royalist, I suppose, Alix?” “But surely no rational person in France is a Royalist any longer,” said Aunt Bella. “Grand-père did not love the Republic,” said Alix, “but Maman admires Napoleon and the Revolution.” “I sometimes think we shall get both a revolution and a Napoleon in this country,” said Aunt Bella, “at the rate things seem to be going.”