coming!”
“How do you like the Queen?” said the Cat in a low voice.
“Not at all,” said Alice: “she’s so extremely—” Just then she
noticed that the Queen was close behind her, listening: so she went
on “—likely to win, that it’s hardly worth while finishing the
game.”
The Queen smiled and passed on.
“Who are you talking to?” said the King, going up to Alice, and
looking at the Cat’s head with great curiosity.
“It’s a friend of mine—a Cheshire-Cat,” said Alice: “allow me to
introduce it.”
“I don’t like the look of it at all,” said the King: “however,
it may kiss my hand, if it likes.”
“I’d rather not,” the Cat remarked.
“Don’t be impertinent,” said the King, “and don’t look at me
like that!” He got behind Alice as he spoke.
“A cat may look at a king,” said Alice. “I’ve read that in some
book, but I don’t remember where.”
“Well, it must be removed,” said the King very decidedly; and he
called the Queen, who was passing at the moment, “My dear! I wish
you would have this cat removed!”
The Queen had only one way of settling all difficulties, great
or small. “Off with his head!” she said without even looking
round.
“I’ll fetch the executioner myself,” said the King eagerly, and
he hurried off.
Alice thought she might as well go back and see how the game was
going on, as she heard the Queen’s voice in the distance, screaming
with passion. She had already heard her sentence three of the
players to be executed for having missed their turns, and she did
not like the look of things at all, as the game was in such
confusion that she never knew whether it was her turn or not. So
she went off in search of her hedgehog.
The hedgehog was engaged in a fight with another hedgehog, which
seemed to Alice an excellent opportunity for croqueting one of them
with the other: the only difficulty was that her flamingo was gone
across the other side of the garden, where Alice could see it
trying in a helpless sort of way to fly up into a tree.
By the time she had caught the flamingo and brought it back, theBy the time she had caught the flamingo and brought it back, the
fight was over, and both the hedgehogs were out of sight: “but it
doesn’t matter much,” thought Alice, “as all the arches are gone
from this side of the ground.” So she tucked it away under her arm,
that it might not escape again, and went back for a little more
conversation with her friend.
When she got back to the Cheshire-Cat, she was surprised to find
quite a large crowd collected round it: there was a dispute going
on between the executioner, the King, and the Queen, who were all
talking at once, while all the rest were quite silent, and looked
very uncomfortable.
The moment Alice appeared, she was appealed to by all three to
settle the question, and they repeated their arguments to her,
though, as they all spoke at once, she found it very hard to make
out exactly what they said.
The executioner’s argument was, that you couldn’t cut off a head
unless there was a body to cut it off from: that he had never had
to do such a thing before, and he wasn’t going to begin at his time
of life.
The King’s argument was that anything that had a head could be
beheaded, and that you weren’t to talk nonsense.
The Queen’s argument was that, if something wasn’t done about it
in less than no time, she’d have everybody executed, all round. (It
was this last remark that had made the whole party look so grave
and anxious.)
Alice could think of nothing else to say but “It belongs to the
Duchess: you’d better ask her about it.”
“She’s in prison,” the Queen said to the executioner: “fetch her
here.” And the executioner went off like an arrow.
The Cat’s head began fading away the moment he was gone, and, by
the time he had come back with the Duchess, it had entirely
disappeared: so the King and the executioner ran wildly up and
down, looking for it, while the rest of the party went back to the
game.“You ca’n’t think how glad I am to see you again, you dear old
thing!” said the Duchess, as she tucked her arm affectionately into
Alice’s, and they walked off together.
Alice was very glad to find her in such a pleasant temper, and
thought to herself that perhaps it was only the pepper that had
made her so savage when they met in the kitchen.
“When I’m a Duchess,” she said to herself (not in a very hopeful
tone, though), “I wo’n’t have any pepper in my kitchen at all. Soup
does very well without—Maybe it’s always pepper that makes people
hot-tempered,” she went on, very much pleased at having found out a
new kind of rule, “and vinegar that makes them sour—and camomile
that makes them bitter—and—and barley-sugar and such things that
make children sweet-tempered. I only wish people knew that: then
they wouldn’t be so stingy about it, you know——”
She had quite forgotten the Duchess by this time, and was a
little startled when she heard her voice close to her ear. “You’re
thinking about something, my dear, and that makes you forget to
talk. I ca’n’t tell you just now what the moral of that is, but I
shall remember it in a bit.”
“Perhaps it hasn’t one,” Alice ventured to remark.
“Tut, tut, child!” said the Duchess. “Everything’s got a moral,
if only you can find it.” And she squeezed herself up closer to
Alice’s side as she spoke.
Alice did not much like her keeping so close to her: first,
because the Duchess was very ugly; and secondly, because she was
exactly the right height to rest her chin upon Alice’s shoulder,
and it was an uncomfortably sharp chin. However, she did not like
to be rude: so she bore it as well as she could.
“The game’s going on rather better now,” she said, by way of
keeping up the conversation a little.
“’Tis so,” said the Duchess: “and the moral of that is—‘Oh, ’tis
love, ’tis love, that makes the world go round!’”
“Somebody said,” Alice whispered, “that it’s done by everybody
minding their own business!”
“Ah, well! It means much the same thing,” said the Duchess,