away carefully; and then she would spend afternoons trying to put together the words and all the things she had learned in a sort of pattern. If one learned enough about them she thought one might really begin to be a good mother.
She learned after a while that every child's mind is a wild, trackless place, with little trails wandering about it, down which thoughts can walk. But as thoughts make different kinds of tracks in different children's minds, learning to find your way about one will help you hardly at all with another. The only thing to do is to sit quiet and watch, as one would for shy wild things in the forest. Then, if you make no grown-up noise at all perhaps some day you will see a thought from The Other Side come out. You may even have the good fortune to see them come out singing and dancing like motes in the sun. Some un-grown-up mothers have even got to know by sight the mysterious playmates that come to children from The Other Side. For want of a better name this was what Alice called the place where children live their real lives.
Alice had a theory that each of the children had another personality. When she tucked them in at night she made shy little approaches toward The Other One. At night, indeed, when she sat close to the bed with her face in her hands and the light making a golden ring around her hair, any one who didn't know her well wouldn't have guessed her for a grown-up. She had the same calm, serious look in her eyes that children as young as Jamie have, and there is no look more disarming to the Other Ones than that; and nothing that sends them away quicker than a grown-up smile lurking in grown-up eyes.
