with the White Knight
followed meekly in his train.

CHAPTER VII

OWNERSHIP OF CHILDREN

"What time is it?" asked the Hatter, suddenly turning to the White
Knight.

"Six o'clock," replied the White Knight, looking at his watch.

"Mercy!" cried Alice. "I had no idea it was so late! I shall have to run
along home--it's supper time."

The Hatter laughed.

"O, as for that," he said, "there's no hurry. Under our present system
of Municipal Ownership of Everything, I can issue, as Mayor, a general
order postponing the Municipal Supper Hour to seven or eight o clock.
Still--if you'd prefer to go home----"

"I don't want to," said Alice courteously, "but I think I'd better. My
mother would be worried not finding me in the nursery. You see, I left
home without telling anybody where I was going."

Again the Hatter laughed.

"What foolishness!" he ejaculated. "That's the great trouble with the
private ownership of children. It worries their poor mothers, keeps 'em
from their daily Bridge parties, interferes with that freedom of action
which is guaranteed to the individual by the contravention of the United
States----"

"Constitution, I guess you mean," suggested Alice.

"It used to be the Constitution," returned the Hatter, "but now it's the
Contravention. It has been contravened so often in the past few years
that our Reformed Language Commission at Washington has named it
accordingly."

"It simply bears out what you said in your message approving the Public
Ownership of Children Act passed by the Common Council last November,
which I wrote for you, and consequently consider a very able document,"
said the White Knight.

"The Public Ownership of Children?" cried Alice, with a look of alarm on
her face.

"Yes," said the Hatter. "Just as the Nation has gone in for paternalism,
we here in Blunderland have gone in for maternalism. The children here
belong to the city----"

"But--" Alice began.

"Now, don't bother," said the Hatter kindly. "It works very well. It has
reduced children to a state of scientific control which is as careful
and as effective as that of the street cleaning department or the public
parks, and it has emancipated the mothers as well as materially
decreased the financial obligations of the fathers."

Alice's lip quivered slightly, and she began to feel a little bit afraid
of the Hatter.

"I want to go home," she whimpered.

"Certainly--as you wish," said the Hatter. "We'll t