“And it's a pity about me, isn't it, Marie-Celeste,” said Dorothy slyly, “for the author might feel that as I am your friend he ought to put mein somewhere, and that would make it a little more about girls, you see, and probably spoil the story.”
“Oh, Miss Dorothy, you know what I mean; it isn't that I don't like girls, it's only that a book like 'Alice' ought to have just as much interest for boys as girls;” for all Marie-Celeste had in mind was the defence of the imputation that Lewis Carroll's books were “just girls' books.”
“If all the remarkable things in those two stories,” she continued, “had happened to a 'Jack' instead of an 'Alice,' I should have loved it just as much, I am sure.”
“Oh, well, you needn't be quite so hard on me,” Harold replied, improving the first opportunity to put in a word, and very much amused at Marie-Celeste's little tirade. “I fancy, on the whole, you don't know much more about 'Alice's' adventures than I do.”
This last remark Marie-Celeste chose to regard as a challenge, and then followed such a rehearsal of Alice's varied experiences as would have done Lewis Carroll's heart good to hear. Both eager to show how much they remembered, the moment either paused for the fraction of a second, the other would take it up, and so the whole ground was pretty well gone over. Harold's principal achievement lay in “The Walrus and the Carpenter,” and Marie-Celeste's in the recitation of “Jabberwocky” from “Through the Looking-Glass;” for not only was she able to slip its almost unpronounceable words quite easily from her tongue, but she remembered the explanation of them given by Humpty Dumpty, when Alice appeals to him a little later on in the story, and he modestly informs her that he can explain all the poems that ever were invented, “and a good many beside that haven't been invented just yet.”
“It's getting near four o'clock,” said Dorothy, feeling at last that she must interrupt the flow of conversation, no matter how interesting; “let us write the note asking for the picture, and then see something of the rest of the college.”
So the note was written and left conspicuously upon the writing-table; and then with one long farewell glance about them, and a flower stolen from a vase by Marie-Celeste and laid between the leaves of her prayer-book, they turned their backs on all they would ever be permitted to know of Lewis Carroll, and the door with the spring lock swung to behind them.
It had been part of the plan to attend the five-o'clock service in Christ Church Cathedral; and after spending a half hour or so in wandering through the cloisters and gaining something of an idea of the college as a whole, they went early into the cathedral, that they might also stroll for a while through the beautiful old church whose history dates as far back as the middle of the eighth century. At five o'clock promptly the beautiful choral service began, and the sweet music and the earnest spirit of the service seemed to round out to a fitting close that always to be remembered Sunday afternoon in Oxford.