"Yes," said the Duchess. "You see, I've just been appointed Commissioner of Maternity. I'm what you might call the official mother of the town. Since that great Statesman, the Hatter"--here the Duchess winked graciously at the March Hare--"devised his crowning achievement in the Municipal Control of the Children and appointed me to be the Head of the Department, I have been stationed here." "And a mighty good old mother she is!" ejaculated the Hatter with fervour. "Palaverer!" said the Duchess coyly. "Not at all," said the Hatter. "I speak not as a man, but as a Mayor, and what I say is to be construed as an official tribute to a faithful and deserving public servant." "Servant, sir?" repeated the Duchess haughtily. "In the American sense," said the Hatter with a low bow. "In the sense that the servant is as good as, if not better than the employer, Madam." "That man's a perfect Dipsomaniac," said the March Hare. "Diplomat, man--diplomat," corrected the White Knight. "A dipsomaniac is a very different thing from a Diplomat. Consuls may be dipsomaniacs, but a Diplomat is a man worthy of Ambassadorial honours. "Oh--I see," said the March Hare. "Well--he's a Diplomat all right, all right." "How are things going to-day, Duchess?" asked the Hatter. "Children happy?" "They will be in time," said the Duchess. "So many of them have been brought up so far on the _Ladies' Home Journal_ system that it is hard to introduce the new Blunderland method without friction." "I was afraid of that," said the Hatter. "How does the compulsory soda-water regulation work?" "Splendidly," said the Duchess. "Since I started in in January to make the children drink five glasses of Vanilla Cream soda every day as a matter of routine and duty, sixty per cent. of them have come to hate it. I think that by the end of the year we shall have stamped out the love of soda almost entirely. The same way with caramels and other candies in place of beef. We have caramels for breakfast, gum-drops for dinner and marshmallows for tea, regularly, and last night seventeen of the children presented a petition asking for beefsteak, mutton chops and boiled rice. I have a firm conviction that when the new law, requiring beef to be sold at candy stores, and compelling those in charge of the young to teach them that boiled rice and hominy are bad for the teeth, goes into effect, we shall find the children clamouring for wholesome food as eagerly as they do now for things that ruin their little tummies." "It's a splendid system--and how are you meeting the matinee problem?" asked the March Hare. [Illustration: "WHEN THEY THINK NOBODY'S LOOKING"]