the executioner ran wildly up and down looking for it, while the rest of the

party went back to the game.


CHAPTER IX.

The Mock Turtle’s Story


“You can’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 won’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 can’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 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.