The Westminster Alice

								


“Have you ever seen an Ineptitude?” asked the Cheshire Cat suddenly; the
Cat was nothing if not abrupt.
“Not in real life,” said Alice. “Have you any about here?”
“A few,” answered the Cat comprehensively. “Over there, for instance,”
it added, contracting its pupils to the requisite focus, “is the most
perfect specimen we have.”
Alice followed the direction of its glance and noticed for the first
time a figure sitting in a very uncomfortable attitude on nothing in
particular. Alice had no time to wonder how it managed to do it, she was
busy taking in the appearance of the creature, which was something like
a badly-written note of interrogation and something like a guillemot,
and seemed to have been trying to preen its rather untidy plumage with
whitewash. “What a dreadful mess it’s in!” she remarked, after gazing at
it for a few moments in silence. “What is it, and why is it here?”
“It hasn’t any meaning,” said the Cat, “it simply is.”
“Can it talk?” asked Alice eagerly.
“It has never done anything else,” chuckled the Cat.
“Can you tell me what you are doing here?” Alice inquired politely. The
Ineptitude shook its head with a deprecatory motion and commenced to
drawl, “I haven’t an idea.”
“It never has, you know,” interrupted the Cheshire Cat rudely, “but in
its leisure moments” (Alice thought it must have a good many of them)
“when it isn’t playing with a gutta-percha ball it unravels the
groundwork of what people believe--or don’t believe, I forget which.”
“It really doesn’t matter which,” said the Ineptitude, with languid
interest.
“Of course it doesn’t,” the Cat went on cheerfully, “because the
unravelling got so tangled that no one could follow it. Its theory is,”
he continued, seeing that Alice was waiting for more, “that you mustn’t
interfere with the Inevitable. Slide and let slide, you know.”
“But what do you keep it here for?” asked Alice.
“Oh, somehow you can’t help it; it’s so perfectly harmless and amiable
and says the nastiest things in the nicest manner, and the King just
couldn’t do without it. The King is only made of pasteboard, you know,
with sharp edges; and the Queen”--here the Cat sank its voice to a
whisper--“the Queen comes from another pack, made of Brummagem ware,
without polish, but absolutely indestructible; always pushing, you know;
but you can’t push an Ineptitude. Might as well try to hustle a
glacier.”
“That’s why you keep so many of them about,” said Alice.
“Of course. But its temper is not what it used to be. Lots of things
have happened to worry it.”
“What sort of things?”
“Oh, people have been dying off in round numbers, in the most
ostentatious manner, and the Ineptitude dislikes fuss--but hush, here’s