Chapter 6: A Mad Tea Party🫖☕️🎩

There was a table set out under a tree in front of the house, and the March letter, O and the Hatter, L, were having tea at it: a letter planet, Z, was sitting between them, fast asleep, and the other letters were using him as a cushion, resting their elbows on it, and talking over his head. "Very uncomfortable for Z," thought F; "only, as he's asleep, I suppose he doesn't mind."

The table was a large one, but the 20 letters were all crowded together at one corner of it: "No room! No room!" they cried out when they saw F coming. "There's plenty of room!" said F indignantly, and he sat down in a large arm-chair at one end of the table.

"Have some wine," O said in an encouraging tone.

F looked all round the table, but there was nothing on it but tea. "I don't see any wine," he remarked.

"There isn't any," said O.

"Then it wasn't very civil of you to offer it," said F angrily.

"It wasn't very civil of you to sit down without being invited," said P, putting on her makeup.

"I didn't know it was your table," said F; "it's laid for a great many more than three."

"Your hair wants cutting," said L. He had been looking at F for some time with great curiosity, and this was his first speech.

"You should learn not to make personal remarks," F said with some severity; "it's very rude."

L opened his eyes very wide on hearing this; but all he said was, "Why is a raven like a writing-desk?"

"Come, we shall have some fun now!" thought F. "I'm glad they've begun asking riddles.-I believe I can guess that," he added aloud.

"Do you mean that you think you can find out the answer to it?" said left W.

"Exactly so," said F.

"Then you should say what you mean," right W said.

"I do," F hastily replied; "at least-at least I mean what I say-that's the same thing, you know."

"Not the same thing a bit!" said the L. "You might just as well say that 'I see what I eat' is the same thing as 'I eat what I see'!"

"You might just as well say," added A, "that 'I like what I get' is the same thing as 'I get what I like'!"

"You might just as well say," added Z, who seemed to be talking in his sleep, "that 'I breathe when I sleep' is the same thing as 'I sleep when I breathe'!"

"It is the same thing with you," said B, and here the conversation dropped, and the party sat silent for a minute, while F thought over all he could remember about ravens and writing-desks, which wasn't much.

L was the first to break the silence. "What day of the month is it?" he said, turning to F: he had taken his watch out of his pocket, and was looking at it uneasily, shaking it every now and then, and holding it to his ear.

F considered a little, and then said "The fourth."

"Two days wrong!" sighed L. "I told you butter wouldn't suit the works!" he added looking angrily at O.

"It was the best butter," O meekly replied.

"Yes, but some crumbs must have got in as well," L grumbled: "you shouldn't have put it in with the bread-knife."

O took the watch and looked at it gloomily: then he dipped it into his cup of tea, and looked at it again: but he could think of nothing better to say than his first remark, "It was the best butter, you know."

F had been looking over his shoulder with some curiosity. "What a funny watch!" he remarked. "It tells the day of the month, and doesn't tell what o'clock it is!"

"Why should it?" muttered C. "Does your watch tell you what year it is?"

"Of course not," F replied very readily: "but that's because it stays the same year for such a long time together."

"Which is just the case with mine," said L.

F felt dreadfully puzzled. L's remark seemed to have no sort of meaning in it, and yet it was certainly English. "I don't quite understand you," he said, as politely as he could.

"Z is asleep again," said L, and he poured a little hot tea upon his nose.

Z shook his head impatiently, and said, without opening its eyes, "Of course, of course; just what I was going to remark myself."

"Have you guessed the riddle yet?" L said, turning to F again.

"No, I give it up," F replied: "what's the answer?"

"I haven't the slightest idea," said L.

"Nor I," said O.

F sighed wearily. "I think you might do something better with the time," he said, "than waste it in asking riddles that have no answers."

"If you knew Time as well as I do," said L, "you wouldn't talk about wasting it. It's him."

"I don't know what you mean," said F.

"Of course you don't!" L said, tossing his head contemptuously. "I dare say you never even spoke to Time!"

"Perhaps not," F cautiously replied: "but I know I have to beat time when I learn music."

"Ah! that accounts for it," said L. "He won't stand beating. Now, if you only kept on good terms with him, he'd do almost anything you liked with the clock. For instance, suppose it were nine o'clock in the morning, just time to begin lessons: you'd only have to whisper a hint to Time, and round goes the clock in a twinkling! Half-past one, time for dinner!"

"I only wish it was," O said to itself in a whisper.)

"That would be grand, certainly," said F thoughtfully: "but then-I shouldn't be hungry for it, you know."

"Not at first, perhaps," said L: "but you could keep it to half-past one as long as you liked."

"Is that the way you manage?" F asked.

L shook his head mournfully. "Not I!" he replied. "We quarrelled last March-just before he went mad, you know-" (pointing with his tea spoon at O,) "-it was at the great concert given by Y, the Queen of Hearts, and I had to sing

'Twinkle, twinkle, little bat!How I wonder what you're at!'

You know the song, perhaps?"

"I've heard something like it," said F.

"It goes on, you know," L continued, "in this way:-

'Up above the world you fly,Like a tea-tray in the sky.Twinkle, twinkle-'"

Here Z shook himself, and began singing in his sleep "Twinkle, twinkle, twinkle, twinkle-" and went on so long that they had to pinch it to make it stop.

"Well, I'd hardly finished the first verse," said L, "when Y jumped up and bawled out, 'He's murdering the time! Off with his head!'"

"How dreadfully savage!" exclaimed F.

"And ever since that," L went on in a mournful tone, "he won't do a thing I ask! It's always six o'clock now."

A bright idea came into F's head. "Is that the reason so many tea-things are put out here?" he asked.

"Yes, that's it," said L with a sigh: "it's always tea-time, and we've no time to wash the things between whiles."

"Then you keep moving round, I suppose?" said F.

"Exactly so," said D: "as the things get used up."

"But what happens when you come to the beginning again?" F ventured to ask.

"Suppose we change the subject," E interrupted, yawning. "I'm getting tired of this. I vote the young lady tells us a story."

"I'm afraid I don't know one," said F, rather alarmed at the proposal.

"Then Z shall!" the other letters cried. "Wake up, Z!" And they pinched it on both sides at once.

Z slowly opened his eyes. "I wasn't asleep," he said in a hoarse, feeble voice: "I heard every word you fellows were saying."

"Tell us a story!" said J.

"Yes, please do!" pleaded F.

"And be quick about it," added L, "or you'll be asleep again before it's done."

"Once upon a time there were three little sisters," Z began in a great hurry; "and their names were Elsie, Lacie, and Tillie; and they lived at the bottom of a well-"

"What did they live on?" said F, who always took a great interest in questions of eating and drinking.

"They lived on treacle," said Z, after thinking a minute or two.

"They couldn't have done that, you know," F gently remarked; "they'd have been ill."

"So they were," said Z; "very ill."

F tried to fancy to himself what such an extraordinary ways of living would be like, but it puzzled him too much, so he went on: "But why did they live at the bottom of a well?"

"Take some more tea," O said to F, very earnestly.

"I've had nothing yet," F replied in an offended tone, "so I can't take more."

"You mean you can't take less," said L: "it's very easy to take more than nothing."

"Nobody asked your opinion," said F.

"Who's making personal remarks now?" L asked triumphantly.

F did not quite know what to say to this: so he helped himself to some tea and bread-and-butter, and then turned to Z, and repeated his question. "Why did they live at the bottom of a well?"

Z again took a minute or two to think about it, and then said, "It was a treacle-well."

"There's no such thing!" F was beginning very angrily, but L and O went "Sh! sh!" and Z sulkily remarked, "If you can't be civil, you'd better finish the story for yourself."

"No, please go on!" F said very humbly; "I won't interrupt again. I dare say there may be one."

"One, indeed!" said Z indignantly. However, he consented to go on. "And so these three little sisters-they were learning to draw, you know-"

"What did they draw?" said F, quite forgetting his promise.

"Treacle," said Z, without considering at all this time.

"I want a clean cup," interrupted L: "let's all move one place on."

He moved on as he spoke, and Z followed him: O moved into Z's place, and F rather unwillingly took the place of the March Hare. L was the only one who got any advantage from the change: and F was a good deal worse off than before, as O had just upset the milk-jug into his plate.

F did not wish to offend Z again, so he began very cautiously: "But I don't understand. Where did they draw the treacle from?"

"You can draw water out of a water-well," said L; "so I should think you could draw treacle out of a treacle-well-eh, weird?"

"But they were in the well," F said to Z, not choosing to notice this last remark.

"Of course they were," said Z; "-well in."

This answer so confused F, that he let Z go on for some time without interrupting it.

"They were learning to draw," Z went on, yawning and rubbing his eyes, for he was getting very sleepy; "and they drew all manner of things-everything that begins with an M-"

"Why with my name?" said M.

"Why not?" said O.

F was silent for a while.

Z had closed his eyes by this time, and was going off into a doze; but, on being pinched by L, he woke up again with a little shriek, and went on: "-that begins with an M, such as mouse-traps, and the moon, and memory, and muchness-you know you say things are "much of a muchness"-did you ever see such a thing as a drawing of a muchness?"

"Really, now you ask me," said F, very much confused, "I don't think-"

"Then you shouldn't talk," said L.

This piece of rudeness was more than F could bear: he got up in great disgust, and walked off; Z fell asleep instantly, and neither of the others took the least notice of him going, though he looked back once or twice, half hoping that they would call after him: the last time he saw them, they were trying to put Z into the teapot.

"At any rate I'll never go there again!" said F as he picked his way through the wood. "It's the stupidest tea-party I ever was at in all my life!"

Just as he said this, he noticed that one of the trees had a door leading right into it. "That's very curious!" he thought. "But everything's curious today. I think I may as well go in at once." And in he went.

I know that you have been waiting for this chapter since for weeks, and this chapter is sorta long lol

Stay tuned for Chapter 7............

°~Kholeen~°