Involved in this affair,

He trusts to you to set them free,

    Exactly as we were.


My notion was that you had been

    (Before she had this fit)

An obstacle that came between

    Him, and ourselves, and it.


Don’t let him know she liked them best,

    For this must ever be

A secret, kept from all the rest,

    Between yourself and me.”


“That’s the most important piece of evidence we’ve heard

yet,” said the King, rubbing his hands; “so now let the

jury—”


“If any one of them can explain it,” said Alice, (she had grown so

large in the last few minutes that she wasn’t a bit afraid of

interrupting him,) “I’ll give him sixpence. I don’t

believe there’s an atom of meaning in it.”


The jury all wrote down on their slates, “She doesn’t

believe there’s an atom of meaning in it,” but none of them

attempted to explain the paper.


“If there’s no meaning in it,” said the King, “that

saves a world of trouble, you know, as we needn’t try to find any. And

yet I don’t know,” he went on, spreading out the verses on his

knee, and looking at them with one eye; “I seem to see some meaning in

them, after all. “—said I could not swim—” you

can’t swim, can you?” he added, turning to the Knave.


The Knave shook his head sadly. “Do I look like it?” he said.

(Which he certainly did not, being made entirely of cardboard.)


“All right, so far,” said the King, and he went on muttering over

the verses to himself: “‘We know it to be true—’

that’s the jury, of course—‘I gave her one, they gave him

two—’ why, that must be what he did with the tarts, you

know—”


“But, it goes on ‘they all returned from him to

you,’” said Alice.


“Why, there they are!” said the King triumphantly, pointing to the

tarts on the table. “Nothing can be clearer than that. Then

again—‘before she had this fit—’ you never had

fits, my dear, I think?” he said to the Queen.


“Never!” said the Queen furiously, throwing an inkstand at the