In Wonderland, in a garden Alice had wandered into without quite meaning to, there was a long table set out under a tree. The table was set for a great many people, with cups and saucers and small plates and a teapot in the middle.

But there were only three at the table. A March Hare. A Mad Hatter. And a Dormouse who was fast asleep between them, with his head on the table, snoring gently into a saucer.

Alice was tired. She had been wandering for a long time. She sat down at the empty end of the table, because that seemed the sensible thing to do when you were lost in a garden and someone had put out chairs.

"There is no room!" shouted the March Hare.

"There is plenty of room," said Alice, because there clearly was, with a great many empty chairs all the way down the table.

The Mad Hatter looked at her. He looked at her for a long while. Then he said, "You look as if you could do with a cup of tea. Although, I must warn you, we have been waiting for it to be the right time for quite a while now."

"What time is it?" asked Alice.

"Six o'clock," said the Hatter.

"And what time will it be in an hour?"

"Six o'clock," said the Hatter.

Alice did not understand. The Hatter saw her not understanding. He poured her a cup of tea anyway, which was very warm and smelled of bergamot and something Alice could not name.

He pushed it carefully across the table to her.

"Drink," he said. "It is always six o'clock here. We have been at this tea party for a very long time."

Alice drank her tea. The Hatter watched her drink it. The March Hare buttered a piece of bread with the butter knife and then with a teaspoon and then, just to be thorough, with the spout of the teapot. The Dormouse went on snoring.

"Why is it always six o'clock?" Alice asked.

The Hatter set down his cup. He looked at his hands for a moment. The March Hare paused with the teaspoon halfway to a piece of bread.

"I had a quarrel," said the Hatter quietly. "With Time. A long time ago. We were at a concert. I was singing. Time said I was being too slow. I said I was finding the right note. We argued. And in the end, Time stopped speaking to me. Six o'clock was where we left off."

He turned his enormous hat in his hands. Alice could see, inside the brim, a small card that said In this style, 10/6.

"And so," said the Hatter, "here we sit. The tea is still warm. The cake is always there. We never get to seven. We never get to tomorrow. We just keep moving down the table, when one cup gets empty, to a clean one."

Alice looked at the long table. She saw, now, that many of the cups had been used. Some still had cold tea in them. Some had crumbs. The party had been going on for a very long time.

"Do you mind it?" Alice asked.

The Hatter and the March Hare both went still. The Dormouse stopped snoring for a second.

It was a small, simple, ordinary question. But nobody, in all the years they had been sitting at the table, had ever asked it.

The Hatter sat very still. Alice waited.

"People come and go," said the Hatter at last, in a voice that was not at all his usual voice. "They sit down for a bit. They have some tea. They get up and say it is all very strange and walk away. Some of them laugh at us. Some of them complain about the riddles. The Queen herself once came through and was very displeased, although that is not unusual for her."

He looked at Alice.

"Nobody asks if I mind it. They say it is curious. They say it is mad. They say I should not be stuck here. But nobody asks if I mind it."

"Well," said Alice, "do you?"

The Hatter thought for a long while. The March Hare got out a fresh piece of bread, very slowly, as if he did not want to make any noise.

"I do mind it," said the Hatter. "Very much. I miss the song I was singing. I miss tomorrow. I miss the chance to be late for something, because being late means there is somewhere you are going. But mostly, I think, I mind that nobody stays long enough to find out if I mind it. They sit down and they get up and they leave again, and the seat goes empty, and we move down the table to a fresh one. And the day, for me, never quite ends."

Alice did not have anything to say to this. So she did not say anything, which was exactly the right thing. She sat with the Hatter at his unending tea party, and she drank her tea slowly, and the afternoon went on. And though six o'clock did not change, something else did. The Hatter sat up a little straighter. The March Hare put down the teaspoon. The Dormouse, in his sleep, gave a small contented sigh.

After a long while, Alice stood up. She had to go. She had to find the way back, because even in Wonderland there is an eventually, and eventually was beginning to feel close.

"Thank you for the tea," she said.

The Hatter did not answer. He stood up too. He did the thing he always did at the end of a guest, which was move down the table by one place, the way they always moved when one cup was empty.

But this time he stopped. He looked at the place Alice had been sitting. He looked at her cup, which was empty now.

He took a clean cup from the cupboard. He set it down, very carefully, in the place where Alice had been. He set the saucer beneath it, just so. He put a small plate beside it. He left the seat empty.

"What is that for?" asked Alice.

"In case you come back," said the Hatter. "Or in case somebody else comes who looks as if they need to sit down for five minutes. Either way, there ought to be a cup ready."

Alice walked away through the garden.

When she looked back, once, the Hatter was sitting again at the table. The March Hare was buttering bread. The Dormouse was snoring. Everything was exactly as it had been before she had arrived.

But the empty seat was still there. The cup was still ready. The Hatter, the next time someone wandered into the garden, would not need to be asked.