The Complete Alice in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll Page A

are, nobody attends to them—and you’ve no idea how confusing it is all the things being alive; for instance, there’s the arch I’ve got to go through next walking about at the other end of the ground—and I should have croqueted the Queen’s hedgehog just now, only it ran away when it saw mine 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, coming 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 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 to 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, 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 the 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 indeed 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.”