ake 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