A short chapter this time. Reconnecting with an old friend is whole buckets of fun. Reconnecting with an old vague acquaintance is less fun, but it can be interesting.


"I say, your mouth is open again," said the young man after a long time had passed and Alice had failed to make any reply. "– are you troubled with weakness about the jaw?"

Alice's stare had become almost comical. The young man was forced to wait while she struggled to speak. "But you couldn't have known I was coming," she said with some effort.

"Why not?" asked the gentleman, who wasn't even minding her reply but brushing a bit of lint from his immaculate waistcoat.

"Because I didn't even know it myself!"

The young man waved his hand dismissively. "Oh, tosh. People will latch onto their little fancies. Whether you knew it or not is utterly beside the point, which is that –" he stopped, squinting. He'd lost where he was going. When he'd recoupled his train of thought, he blinked and continued. "Which is that I knew you were coming."

"But how - how?"

"Logic!" burst the other in profound exasperation. "There – you've done it again and I'm going to repeat myself: I knew you were coming because I knew you were going to be here. Can I make myself plainer?" He took a few breaths and was calm again at the end of them. "And anyway, I got your note."

"My note?" Alice, searching for something, anything that made even a morsel of sense, caught hold of this at once and grasped it firmly. Yes, she knew about notes; had seen dozens of them in her lifetime. "What note?"

"The one that you sent me," said the young man, eyeing her with great suspicion.

"But I didn't send you any –"

"Ah-HA!" cried the young man, giving a little hop and pointing an accusing finger at the space between her eyes. "I knew you'd pull out that old chestnut sooner or later! Well it won't work on me, my girl – just look you here." With a triumphant flourish, he reached into his coat pocket and produced a folded piece of paper, which he shook open and thrust before Alice's nose. "Is this, or is this not written in your own hand?"

Alice took the note and examined it. "Why – yes it is, but how could you know that?"

"I didn't," he said cordially. "Is it? Well, that's a relief – thought I might have made a fumble." He leaned around over her shoulder to take a look at the note himself. "Not very neat, is it?" Alice shot him a withering look and he drew back meekly, allowing her to peruse the note for herself. The handwriting was certainly her own, but this answered very few of Alice's questions, because the content of the note ran:

Ina,

while I'm come to stay with the Fields on holiday, please remind Richard to feed the cats. I've forgot to tell him.

Alice

"But I wrote this for my sister," Alice cried. "It wasn't meant for you at all!"

"Don't be absurd," he scoffed, and leaned back over her shoulder to trace the words with his finger. "Look here – 'In a while, I'm come' – terrible grammar – 'come to stay with the fields on holiday. Please remind Richard to feed the cats, I've forgot to tell him.' Well, it has been a while, and I dare even your contrary self to deny that these are the fields. Of course, I was meaning to ask you what you mean in going on about cats, but I hadn't yet perceived an opening –"

"But that's all wrong," Alice fairly wailed. "That's not what it says at all – I wrote this to Lorina, my sister – look, this is the salutation here, "Ina" – and the Fields are the family I spent a fortnight with in the spring. Look! Look!" Alice had half-turned in his direction, jabbing her finger at each point of interest in turn, overcome with an insane desperation that she must make him understand. And indeed, it seemed as though her struggles were not entirely in vain, because he looked at her for a very long time in silence, while she breathed heavily, then he took the note from her and looked at that for a very long time, and then he looked at her again.

"Your sister?" he said at last. Alice nodded. His eyes went back to the note. He lifted his free hand to his hat, removed it, tucked it into the hand holding the note, riffled the free hand mercilessly through the unkempt explosion of whiteness that he probably called his hair, put his hat back on. "Oh," he concluded after a full minute had passed. "That's very interesting," he elaborated after another thirty seconds or so.

"Well?" Alice demanded with a warm rush of holy vindication. He scratched the end of his substantial nose.

"'Ina', eh. Sure it isn't some sort of pet-name?" he suggested hopefully. Alice tilted her golden head, one eyebrow angling higher than the other. She'd gained the high ground and was surveying her spoils with a tyrannical eye.

"It is," she said archly, "a pet-name. For my sister." He looked sheepish, and Alice put her hands on her sides. In a moment, she would draw her saber and demand his surrender. "And now, just suppose I ask how you came to have this – this private, personal – article - in your possession?"

He squirmed and Alice watched him squirming with malicious pleasure. When he could delay it no more, he jabbed his shoulders upward in a sulky shrug. "Well – er – oh – well, if you put it like that, I suppose I - hmm - might have found it lying on the ground and picked it up."

"Ah -!"

"-Which isn't so very unusual, you know," he thrust in defensively. "Because it just so happens that I receive most of my correspondence that way, at least since the little pests appropriated the mailbox, and – " he paused here, and then straightened his lapels with a firm tug, one eyebrow lifting above the other. "Well, of course, there is a certain sort of person who leaves letters strewn about like autumn leaves, but...." He trailed off, and in doing so managed, somehow, to create the very strong impression that he was too entirely a gentleman to sully himself by continuing. Alice resented this.

"I did not leave it strewn like an autumn leaf," she said petulantly. "And even if I had, you shouldn't read letters that haven't got your name on them. It's bad manners."

This was too much even for the young man to take. He opened his mouth, closed it, then slouched forward, kicking at a clump of grass that hadn't previously involved itself in the argument at all, hands taking up refuge in his pockets again. "Well all right, all right. If you won't be a sport about it, I guess there's nothing to be done. I'll say sorry, then."

"Thank you," said Alice, a little surprised by this sudden, if vaguely sulky surrender. Equally surprising was the realization that the conquest gave her little pleasure in light of the awkward silence that followed immediately after. And why was it awkward? They were strangers, after all – they shouldn't have had enough to feel awkward about in the first place. It was absurd, and Alice was about to do something or other about it when the young man took in a breath and sighed it out, looking up at her again as he attacked the grass with his foot a second time.

"Still," he said, as if halfway through his thoughts already, "you ought to stay to tea. Set a place for you and everything, silly waste of resources if you don't come."

"Oh." Alice blinked. "Well, I – I suppose I ... that is ... thank you."

The young man brightened. "Topping. Well, come on, then." He inclined his head forward and Alice turned to follow him. They'd gone several yards before it occurred to her that this didn't make any sense, either.

"But I don't even know you," she realized aloud. He gave her an odd look, although it wasn't so much the look that was odd as the shape his eyebrows went into while he did it. In any case, it was so striking that Alice's brow furrowed. "That is, we've never met... have we?"

The young man turned his head away, and Alice saw clearly enough that she had offended him, which was ridiculous, but this was ceasing to be a surprise. "Typical," he announced at length. "Some people take it upon themselves to remember little details like personal identity and others don't, that's all."

"But who are you?" Alice pressed, when it became apparent that this was all he intended to say. He looked at her silently for some seconds before shrugging.

"Might as well tell you, although it seems a fruitless exercise, since I anticipate repeating myself. Mad Hatter is my name."

"Mad Hat – not the Mad Hatter!" Alice cried, a burst of recognition tingling her brain. The Mad Hatter looked pleased.

"So you have heard of me!" he crowed, to which Alice shook her head.

"Oh no, no – that is, I haven't heard of you. But I do remember you. Only you were... you were... different."

"Of course I was different," he scoffed. "That was years ago. You were naught but a plump runny nose at the time, as I recall." He squinted at her. "-Not so runny though, now," he added generously. Alice's hand flew to her waist, although she knew perfectly well that it was fashionably slim. "Anyway, Mad Hatter isn't a proper name," she shot resentfully. He was instantly defensive.

"Yes, it is."

"No, it's not. It's a title – it's a what, not a who."

Now he was so insulted that he stopped short. Alice did too. "Not a – not a – and what, pray, is an Alice? Because being entirely frank, if you are going to stand there in the sunlight and tell me that you are not an Alice, I am going to rip this hat from my head and consume it."

In Alice's opinion, this would not have been such a very bad idea. Admitting so wouldn't help anything, however, so she kept it to herself and merely shook her head. "But – that's different. I'm not an Alice, I'm Alice."

"And I am Mad Hatter. Moreover, I'm the only one I know, while I daresay the country is pretty well overrun with Alices."

"But – but – "

The Mad Hatter waved a hand. "No more of this – I have a headache." So did Alice, she found, but just as she was thinking how utterly stupid it was to have an argument like this with anybody, let alone somebody who went around calling himself Mad Hatter, he turned and shot her a beaming smile. "So! Shall we on to tea?"

"I – oh – er – why, yes."

He did not offer her his arm. They strolled along side by side, as if they were old chums.