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“Nettie and I,” said Alice, mournfully, “have been considering our position. The grown-up people are too strong for us. They make us ridiculous. Besides, they have changed the times. William Tinkling’s baby-brother was christened yesterday. What took place? Was any king present? Answer, William.”

I said No, unless disguised as great-uncle Chopper.

“Any queen?”

There had been no queen that I knew of at our house. There might have been one in the kitchen; but I didn’t think so, or the servants would have mentioned it.

“Any fairies?”

None that were visible.

“We had an idea among us, I think,” said Alice, with a melancholy smile, “we four, that Miss Grimmer would prove to be the wicked fairy, and would come in at the christening with her crutch-stick, and give the child a bad gift? Was there anything of that sort? Answer, William.”

I said that Ma had said afterwards (and so she had), that great-uncle Chopper’s gift was a shabby one; but she hadn’t said a bad one. She had called it shabby, electrotyped, second-hand, and below his income.

“It must be the grown-up people who have changed all this,” said Alice. “We couldn’t have changed it, if we had been so inclined, and we never should have been. Or perhaps Miss Grimmer is a wicked fairy, after all, and won’t act up to it, because the grown-up people have persuaded her not to. Either way, they would make us ridiculous if we told them what we expected.”

“Tyrants!” muttered the Pirate-Colonel.

“Nay, my Redforth,” said Alice, “say not so. Call not names, my Redforth, or they will apply to Pa.”

“Let ’em,” said the Colonel. “I don’t care. Who’s he?”

Tinkling here undertook the perilous task of remonstrating with his lawless friend, who consented to withdraw the moody expressions above quoted.

“What remains for us to do?” Alice went on in her mild wise way. “We must educate, we must pretend in a new manner, we must wait.”

The Colonel clenched his teeth–four out in front, and a piece off another, and he had been twice dragged to the door of a dentist-despot, but had escaped from his guards. “How educate? How pretend in a new manner? How wait?”

“Educate the grown-up people,” replied Alice. “We part to-night. Yes, Redforth,”–for the Colonel tucked up his cuffs,–“part to-night! Let us in these next Holidays, now going to begin, throw our thoughts into something educational for the grown-up people, hinting to them how things ought to be. Let us veil our meaning under a mask of romance;[A] you, I, and Nettie. William Tinkling being the plainest and quickest writer, shall copy out. Is it agreed?”

The Colonel answered, sulkily, “I don’t mind.” He then asked, “How about pretending?”

“We will pretend,” said Alice, “that we are children; not that we are those grown-up people who won’t help us out as they ought, and who understand us so badly.”

The Colonel, still much dissatisfied, growled, “How about waiting?”

“We will wait,” answered little Alice, taking Nettie’s hand in hers, and looking up to the sky, “we will wait–ever constant and true–till the times have got so changed as that everything helps us out, and nothing makes us ridiculous, and the fairies have come back. We will wait–ever constant and true–till we are eighty, ninety, or one hundred. And then the fairies will send us children, and we will help them out, poor pretty little creatures, if they pretend ever so much.”

“So we will, dear,” said Nettie Ashford, taking her round the waist with both arms and kissing her. “And now if my Husband will go and buy some cherries for us, I have got some money.”

In the friendliest manner I invited the Colonel to go with me; but he so far forgot himself as to acknowledge the invitation by kicking out behind, and then lying down on his stomach on the grass, pulling it up and chewing it. When I came back, however, Alice had nearly brought him out of his vexation, and was soothing him by telling him how soon we should all be ninety.