The escape of Alice: A Christmas fantasy

								

She plucked the volume from its place, and advanced with it toward the
guardian of the bookshop.
“If it is not too high,” said Alice, “I think I shall take this.”
The old bookseller, whose wits had been woolgathering for many years,
would not have admitted for worlds that he had not heard her enter the
shop. He took the book from her hand.
“You choose wisely,” he said, and patted the red covers lovingly.
“Alice――the ageless child! It is one of the greatest compendiums of
wit and sense in literature. There are only two books to match it. You
shall have it for fifteen cents, for it is far from new, and I see what
I had not noticed before, that the frontispiece is missing.”
“And what are the other two?” asked Alice, eagerly.
“When you are older you will read them,” said the old bookman. “They
are called ‘Don Quixote’ and ‘The Pickwick Papers’.”
Then very suddenly Alice blushed, for she remembered that she could not
pay. Timidly, she handed back the red-covered volume.
“I am sorry,” she said, “but I have no money. I don’t know why I was so
stupid as to come away without any.”
“Money!” cried the antiquarian. “Did I ask you money for this book?
Forgive me! It is a habit I have fallen into for which I am very
sorry. Money is the least important thing in the world. Only the
worthless things are to be had for money. Those things which are beyond
price――thank God!――are to be had for the asking. Take it, child!
Tomorrow is Christmas day. I should be grieved indeed if there were no
Alice for you on Christmas day――as grieved as if there were no Santa
Claus.”
There was something so unearthly about this strange old man that Alice
wondered if she were not yet in Wonderland. With a sobriety quite out
of keeping with her usually merry disposition, she thanked him and went
forth into the snow-clad streets.



                   *       *       *       *       *
The plethora of Santa Clauses spending the holiday week-end in the city
bewildered Alice, and now, after a long afternoon in the hurly-burly
of metropolitan life, she was becoming tired. The number of Santa
Clauses resident upon earth appalled her, and the extravagance of their
promises, while pleasant enough, almost frightened her. Without any
questions asked――even her address, which, had it been requested, would
have taxed her wits rather severely――they accepted her commissions and
guaranteed immediate delivery. The final excursion through the great
department stores had been adventurous and diverting, but now――toward
nightfall――was becoming monotonous, what with its profusion of Kris
Kringles and street hawkers, and its babble of eleventh hour shoppers.
It was like witnessing a really thrilling movie drama for the second
time, thought Alice, who had initiated herself into the delights of
moving-picture entertainment for the first time that day, and wondered