Which Alice?

The Gryphon and the Mock Turtle
"I don't blame him!" remarked Alice.
"Anyway, the Hatter begrudgingly gave one of his tarts to the
March Hare. 'That's not enough!' cried the March Hare angrily.
'You still have twice as many as I do!' Now, the problem is, How
many more tarts must the Hatter give the March Hare so that they
each have the same amount?"
"How many tarts were there altogether?" asked Alice.
"I'm not telling you that!" cried the Gryphon. "That would make
it way too easy!"
Alice thought it strange that the puzzle could be solved without
knowing how many tarts there were, but she determined to try. She
thought for a while, and then shook her head.
"I'm afraid I can't do this one. I'm sure if my sister were here she
could—she's older than I, you know, and she has learned algebra.
I'm sure with algebra this could be done."
"You don't needs no algebra!" The Gryphon laughed. "It's only
your fancy you does!"
"Well, the only way I can think of doing it is by trial and error—
trying until I finally guess the right number of tarts."
"You don't needs no guessing!" said the Gryphon. "You don't
needs no guessing and you don't needs no algebra neither! Now, I
know that in the schools they teaches you to do this sort of thing
with algebra, but I haven't been much to no schools, so I figured out
my own method—and it's every bit as good as those they learn you!"
"Really?" said Alice. "I'd be very interested in seeing your method.
What is it?"
"Well," said the Gryphon, "your first question was the right one:
How many tarts were there altogether?"
"I can see now," replied Alice, "that if I knew that, the rest would
be easy."
"Right," said the Gryphon. "Now, to figure out how many tarts
there must be, here's how I sees it: To begin with, the Hatter had
three times as many as the March Hare, which means that he had
three parts of the tarts to the March Hare's one part—in other
words he had three out of four parts, so he started out with threequarters
of the tarts."
"That's right," said Alice, "he had three-quarters and the March
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