Two little girls take tea at a blue table on the lawn of a garden in blossom. One, in a white mob cap and apron, pours from a jug, while the other, in a pink dress, sits on a rush-seated chair; a cake, strawberries and cups wait on the table, with a cottage and dark hedges behind. Below runs a printed rhyme with a single rose, and the initials K.G.

are at lower left. Kate Greenaway drew it for Under the Window: Pictures and Rhymes for Children, published by George Routledge and Sons. The rhyme begins "You see, merry Phillis, that dear little maid, / Has invited Belinda to tea," and goes on to a cake full of plums, strawberries and a blackbird watching the two girls talk. The pictures are color wood engravings made from photographic transfers of her designs, engraved and printed by Edmund Evans; their simple outlines and flat colors made them cheap to reproduce. Evans took the risk of printing the book in large numbers, and though it cost six shillings, it sold out at Christmas 1878.

Greenaway drew from life and made the clothes her models wore, and the craze for her children brought dolls, wallpaper, fabrics, christening sets and clothes. Under the Window was first published in London for Christmas 1878.