Alice I Have Been: A Novel Read Online Free PDF Page B

would he be addressing the sun, the clouds, the air itself? Just what did a day look like? Did it have a very deep voice? Or a merry voice, like the laughing tinkle of the little clock on Mamma’s desk, the one with the ballerinas that spun around in a circle?
    “Days are very mysterious things, of course. Sometimes they fly by, and other times they seem to last forever, yet they are all exactly twenty-four hours. There’s quite a lot we don’t know about them.”
    I did so want to know how a day spent itself, but I decided to leave it for another—day. Then I laughed, thinking I had made a pun, although I wasn’t exactly sure; when Mr. Dodgson inquired as to why I was laughing, I shook my head, not wanting to explain.
    He didn’t appear to mind; he smiled and stood up straight, still holding my hand, as we waited for Pricks and Ina to retrieve Edith.
    “Oh, did she get anything on her dress?” I studied her anxiously; with Mamma’s request weighing upon my conscience, I felt somehow responsible for the spotlessness of the entire party.
    “Not a thing, thank heavens!” Pricks studied the bottom of her own skirt, which was now damp and muddy. “Oh, these streets! Mud and water and horses and fish and who knows what else!”
    “Then let us hasten to the Meadow, where the fresh air will dry your skirt, Edith can chase butterflies and not fish, Alice can look at the hill but not roll down it, and Ina can sit prettily under a tree and look thoughtful.”
    Edith clapped her hands; Ina blushed and smiled; Pricks pulled her glove up high over her wrist and touched the false knot of hair sticking out from her bonnet.
    I tugged on Mr. Dodgson’s jacket. “What will you do?”
    “I’ll tell stories, I suppose. Don’t I always?”
    I nodded, happy. Yes, he did tell stories; intricate stories about us, about Oxford, about the people we knew, the places we saw every day, but somehow he managed to arrange them all into faraway places, lands we’d never seen before yet recognized all the same.
    “Isn’t that a sweet family?” I heard a lady say as we crossed St. Aldate’s—Pricks raising her skirts with much exaggeration as she stepped over piles of fresh horse manure, as the dairy wagon had just passed—to get to the wide, tree-lined Broad Walk, which bordered the Meadow.
    The lady was obviously not from Oxford; everyone here knew that we were the three Liddell girls. I laughed, even as Pricks gave a sudden start. She raised her chin, surprising me by looking very soft and almost pretty, with glistening eyes, a smile not quite so sudden and terrible; not all her teeth were showing. I wondered why she didn’t correct the lady; I supposed it was one of those instinctive manners she was always going on about.
    Ina almost said something; I could see her struggle as her face reddened, her mouth opened, and she looked at Pricks and Mr. Dodgson, as if seeking their permission. However, Pricks chose that moment to stumble and lean more heavily upon Mr. Dodgson’s arm. I held my breath; she certainly was bigger than he, even without her swaying skirt, and I feared he might topple over. By some miracle he didn’t; he grimaced a bit, but held on bravely.
    Ina’s eyes narrowed. I could see her storing this picture away, as she sometimes did; I knew my sister hoarded information the way squirrels hoarded nuts. Not useful information, either, such as why Phoebe always dipped her food into tea before she ate it (she said she had soft teeth and didn’t want to lose them before she got too old to catch a husband).
    No, Ina was more interested in quiet things, looks and sighs and passing touches. The way a man sat on a sofa next to a lady; the distance between them; the silence. She could find meaning in such things, and she sometimes talked about them with me, but mainly—as I never could understand what they meant, and didn’t feel like trying very hard to learn—she stored them away. For some future use that I could not