"It's not an ant, Great Aunt," Alice tried to say, "it's a termite."
"I don't care if it's a prize peacock! I won't allow such vermin in my house!" And before Alice could do anything at all, her Great Aunt had cruelly squashed the creature under her fingers! "And where is the new doll that I bought you?" her Great Aunt then asked.
"She is lost, Great Aunt."
"You mean to say that you don't know where the doll is?"
"Oh, I know where she is, Great Aunt."
"May I suggest then, Alice, that you retrieve her?"
"Oh I will, Great Aunt," said Alice in a mutter, "one of these days..."
"Stop muttering, you naughty little girl!" screeched Ermintrude. "It's very rude! Now it's time for today's writing lesson. Pencils out! Books open! Today we shall learn all about the differences between the past and the present tenses."
"I know all about those differences!" Alice said (strictly to herself, of course!).
And thus began the next lesson, and the next one after that, and then the next one after that: all the lessons of life that Alice had to learn, both in Manchester and then in the south of England upon her return, and then throughout the rest of her long life. Alice came to realize that the whole of life could be one long continuous hard lesson. (If you weren't careful, that is!) But Alice had also come to realize that life could be a continuous dream, and as Alice got older and older and older, she never forgot to let a little soft dream into her hard lessons. During the more miserable of her moods, she would find herself revisiting the memories of her three journeys into dreamland: the wonder of life, the mirror of life, the future of life.
This story should rightfully end upon this very moment.
But I must add that (just occasionally) Alice would feel a terrible itching feeling inside her skull. Why, it was as though a thousand termites were running hither and thither with tickling messages! And sometimes (just sometimes) Alice would feel a certain stiffness in her limbs, as though her legs and arms were not quite fleshy enough. Often she would find her limbs doing things that she had not quite willed them to do! At those moments Alice really did think that her limbs had a life of their own, as though her limbs were automated appendages.
"Perhaps, in the turmoil of those last moments in the future," Alice would sometimes whisper to herself, "I was confused with Celia? Perhaps it was the Automated Alice that really came back to the past?"
And until the very end of her God-given days, my dear, sweet Alice was unable to decide for certain if she was really real, or else really imaginary...
Which do you think she was?
All along the stream of time and tears
Under skies where sunlight fades to breath,
Through hours and minutes, weeks and years,
Onwards gliding, we moor at last in death.
My name is like the sun in apogee,
Ascending only to wane and wax the moon.
To all who read this rhyme of apology;
Excuse this waning of Carroll by Noon.
Dodo Dodgson, long since died, transported
Alice to the realms of tale and feather.
Life is but a dream that time has courted;
In dreamings a girl could live forever.
Conclude this tale, my Alice in Auto;
Emerge to life an Alice immortal.