The Looking Glass House by Vanessa Tait Page B

The gift of tongues.’
    Mr Dodgson, who had been resting his hands on his knees, sat back. ‘You mean glossolalia?’
    ‘Yes! It is marvellous. Jesus and the apostles at Pentecost, of course .  .  .’ But something in Mr Dodgson’s face stopped her from explaining more. Her hand went to her lip and started worrying at it.
    ‘To have Jesus in one’s life is a blessed thing, Miss Prickett,’ he said, with his head on one side. His smile looked as if it had slid down correspondingly.
    ‘I am bored. Tell me a story. Please!’ said Alice.
    They looked up. Alice was standing at Mr Dodgson’s letter-writing table. ‘Who is Effie?’
    ‘One of my child friends. Why are you reading my letters? That is very interfering of you. You didn’t think you were my only friend, did you?’
    ‘No!’ said Alice. But she pouted.
    ‘Although Effie is not strictly a child any more, being eighteen. But we are still friends, I think.’
    ‘That’s what I told Mama!’
    ‘Told her what?’
    ‘I am sure Mr Dodgson does not want to be troubled telling you a story,’ Mary said quickly.
    ‘No, Alice. Maybe next time.’
    ‘But it is next time. Because you said that last time!’
    ‘When was last time?’
    ‘I don’t know! Last week. But do , please. Otherwise we shan’t come to your rooms again.’
    ‘Alice!’
    ‘And must I be susceptible to blackmail?’ Mr Dodgson sighed, though not crossly. ‘Very well. A short one. What shall it be about?’
    ‘Me,’ said Alice.
    ‘Sit down then, with your sisters.’
    ‘Where will you sit?’
    ‘I will sit here, next to Miss Prickett.’
    Mr Dodgson settled himself, crossed one thigh over the other. The space was not quite big enough for two: it was a love seat upholstered in pink velvet. Mary could feel the reverberations of his foot as it joggled; she could see his hipbone protruding beneath his twill trousers. He started on a story about an enor­mous puppy, the size of a house, which had appeared in Oxford.
    She looked over at the children. Alice and Ina had curled their legs under them and were leaning against each other on the sofa. Alice’s shoelace had come untied and hung down over the edge, her skirt ruffled up to her knees.
    ‘Did Mama and Papa not see anything?’ asked Alice.
    ‘They did not; they were so absorbed in their ham and eggs that they did not notice a thing.’
    Mr Dodgson talked on, about Alice escaping from a game with a stick, how she ran back indoors and into the nursery.
    As he told the story, Mary felt the quadrangle to be animated by the gigantic dog, its eyes level with hers as it peered into their room, its nose the size of a plate.
    ‘What happened to the puppy afterwards?’ asked Ina.
    ‘He blundered through the doors of Elliston and Cavell, where they did not know what to make of him at all, and all of the men gathered up brooms and pushed him out again.’
    Mary felt sure Alice would say that perhaps he would see Mr Wilton, and she started to speak just in case she did, to drown it out. She did not want to talk about Mr Wilton to Mr Dodgson; heat rose up her face at the thought of it, but Mr Dodgson spoke instead.
    ‘ That is the expression I want to capture in a photograph. I have my camera set up just downstairs; what do you say we run down there and make a photograph?’
    Mary looked in surprise, but he – of course – meant the children.
    Mr Dodgson hurried the three girls outside and sat them on a sofa with a backdrop rigged behind it. He heaped them up together, Ina in the middle, Alice and Edith leaning in on either side. It was easy to see that the children’s heads were still filled with giant gambolling puppies, and they all sat still.
    Mary thought fleetingly of Mrs Liddell. If the photograph came out well, the detail of the sofa would be magnificent: pale silk with brown tendrils curling all over the front and back.

Chapter 11
    Mr Dodgson had not made any attempt to show her a copy of The Train . The realization