the winter noon
Across the sun-flooded back of the house were Alice 's little bedroom , nunlike in its rigid austerity , her nurse 's room adjoining , and a square sun-room , giving glimpses of roofs and trim back-gardens , full of flowers , with a little fountain and goldfish , a floor of dull pink tiling , and plants in great jars of Chinese enamel . Christopher had planned this delightful addition to Alice 's domain only a few years ago , and , with that knowledge of her secret heart that only Christopher could claim , had let her share the pleasure of designing and arranging it . It stretched out across the west side of the spacious backyard , almost touching the branches of the great plane tree , and when , after the painful move to her mother 's house , and the necessary absence during the building of it , Alice had been brought back to this new evidence of their love and goodness , she had buried her face against Christopher 's shoulder , and told him that she did n't think people with all the world to wander in had ever had anything lovelier than this ! One of the paintings that Alice might look at idly , in the silence of the winter noon , was of a daisied meadow , stretching between walls of heavy summer woodland to the roof of a half-buried farmhouse in the valley below . The other picture was of the very mother who was coming toward Alice now , in the jolting omnibus . But it was a younger mother , and a younger Alice , that had been captured by the painter 's genius . It was a stout , imperious , magnificently gowned woman , of not much more than thirty , in whose spreading silk lap a fair little girl was sitting .