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Again the Hatter laughed.

“What foolishness!” he ejaculated. “That’s the great trouble with the private ownership of children. It worries their poor mothers, keeps ’em from their daily Bridge parties, interferes with that freedom of action which is guaranteed to the individual by the contravention of the United States—-“

“Constitution, I guess you mean,” suggested Alice.

“It used to be the Constitution,” returned the Hatter, “but now it’s the Contravention. It has been contravened so often in the past few years that our Reformed Language Commission at Washington has named it accordingly.”

“It simply bears out what you said in your message approving the Public Ownership of Children Act passed by the Common Council last November, which I wrote for you, and consequently consider a very able document,” said the White Knight.

“The Public Ownership of Children?” cried Alice, with a look of alarm on her face.

“Yes,” said the Hatter. “Just as the Nation has gone in for paternalism, we here in Blunderland have gone in for maternalism. The children here belong to the city—-“

“But–” Alice began.

“Now, don’t bother,” said the Hatter kindly. “It works very well. It has reduced children to a state of scientific control which is as careful and as effective as that of the street cleaning department or the public parks, and it has emancipated the mothers as well as materially decreased the financial obligations of the fathers.”

Alice’s lip quivered slightly, and she began to feel a little bit afraid of the Hatter.

“I want to go home,” she whimpered.

“Certainly–as you wish,” said the Hatter. “We’ll take you there at once. Come along.”

Reassured by the Hatter’s kindly manner Alice took her companion’s outstretched hand and they walked along the highway together until they came to a handsome apartment house fronting upon a beautiful park, where the Hatter pressed an electric button at one side of the massive entrance. The response to the bell was immediate, and Alice was pleased to find that the person to answer was none other than the Duchess herself.

“Why, how-di-doo,” said the Duchess affably. “Glad to see you again, Miss Alice.”

“Thank you,” said Alice. “It is very nice to be here. Do you live in this beautiful building?”

“Yes,” said the Duchess. “You see, I’ve just been appointed Commissioner of Maternity. I’m what you might call the official mother of the town. Since that great Statesman, the Hatter”–here the Duchess winked graciously at the March Hare–“devised his crowning achievement in the Municipal Control of the Children and appointed me to be the Head of the Department, I have been stationed here.”

“And a mighty good old mother she is!” ejaculated the Hatter with fervour.

“Palaverer!” said the Duchess coyly.

“Not at all,” said the Hatter. “I speak not as a man, but as a Mayor, and what I say is to be construed as an official tribute to a faithful and deserving public servant.”

“Servant, sir?” repeated the Duchess haughtily.

“In the American sense,” said the Hatter with a low bow. “In the sense that the servant is as good as, if not better than the employer, Madam.”

“That man’s a perfect Dipsomaniac,” said the March Hare.

“Diplomat, man–diplomat,” corrected the White Knight. “A dipsomaniac is a very different thing from a Diplomat. Consuls may be dipsomaniacs, but a Diplomat is a man worthy of Ambassadorial honours.

“Oh–I see,” said the March Hare. “Well–he’s a Diplomat all right, all right.”

“How are things going to-day, Duchess?” asked the Hatter. “Children happy?”

“They will be in time,” said the Duchess. “So many of them have been brought up so far on the Ladies’ Home Journal system that it is hard to introduce the new Blunderland method without friction.”

“I was afraid of that,” said the Hatter. “How does the compulsory soda-water regulation work?”

“Splendidly,” said the Duchess. “Since I started in in January to make the children drink five glasses of Vanilla Cream soda every day as a matter of routine and duty, sixty per cent. of them have come to hate it. I think that by the end of the year we shall have stamped out the love of soda almost entirely. The same way with caramels and other candies in place of beef. We have caramels for breakfast, gum-drops for dinner and marshmallows for tea, regularly, and last night seventeen of the children presented a petition asking for beefsteak, mutton chops and boiled rice. I have a firm conviction that when the new law, requiring beef to be sold at candy stores, and compelling those in charge of the young to teach them that boiled rice and hominy are bad for the teeth, goes into effect, we shall find the children clamouring for wholesome food as eagerly as they do now for things that ruin their little tummies.”