Aldate’s Street, Gilda glanced up and found herself in front of a little store called Alice’s Shop. She remembered reading about this shop in an Oxford guidebook, and was eager to explore it after discovering the copy of Alice in Wonderland in her room. Inside the tiny, dim shop, a clerk with dyed fuchsia hair sat at a cash register eating a sandwich. Gilda browsed through editions of Alice in Wonderland and an assortment of refrigerator magnets, tea cozies, tea towels, thimbles, postcards, lollipops, and Christmas ornaments shaped like Cheshire cats and white rabbits. Remembering that she needed to find some souvenirs for her mother and Stephen, she selected a grumpy-looking Queen of Hearts refrigerator magnet for her mother and a Tweedledum paperweight for her brother. “I like your hat.” Gilda glanced up and realized the pink-haired clerk was watching her. “Oh, thanks.” She had forgotten that she was still dressed in her “tainted royalty” outfit. “You’re an Alice fan?”
