Glancing back to Emma to make sure she was still keeping it together, he noted that the somewhat familiar environment calmed her down. Thankfully. They weren't going to get far with her being a mess.
Using his finger to follow along the titles, he read them, thinking on Emma's question at the same time. "I thought your Mother gave the book to Henry." Jefferson would know this because Henry and Grace were in the same classes. Naturally, when Regina brought a child from the outside world into Storybrooke, he kept tabs on Henry too. "Buy it? No. I couldn't even afford shoes without holes. I was just in the Forrest looking for...mushrooms, and it just blew right into me. There was no wind, but there it was, flying into my hands. I didn't know pixie dust from dirt back then but I could tell it wasn't just some hat."
He glanced at the tattered thing in his hand almost fondly, remembering the experience. It wasn't as if he just was born the Hatter, traveling, and getting artifacts for money.
"Not to everyone. Storybrooke has a fairly large population but that's just anyone whose had the misfortune of coming into contact with Regina. This is an entire Forrest we're talking about here. Think of it like sports car, a Mercedes. Everyone knows it exists. Everyone wouldn't be too upset having it, but only few privileged folks do, more often than not those with all the power."
And then there were people like him who stumbled upon it, or just happened to get chosen. "And if you didn't have power before you had magic, you usually did after. You can live without magic and all of it's bothers. Or you can try, like I did."