Very, said Alice: where s the Duchess?
Hush! Hush! said the Rabbit in a low, hurried tone. He looked
anxiously over his shoulder as he spoke, and then raised himself upon
tiptoe, put his mouth close to her ear, and whispered She s under
sentence of execution.
What for? said Alice.
Did you say What a pity! ? the Rabbit asked.
No, I didn t, said Alice: I don t think it s at all a pity. I said
What for?
She boxed the Queen s ears the Rabbit began. Alice gave a little
scream of laughter. Oh, hush! the Rabbit whispered in a frightened
tone. The Queen will hear you! You see, she came rather late, and the
Queen said
Get to your places! shouted the Queen in a voice of thunder, and
people began running about in all directions, tumbling up against each
other; however, they got settled down in a minute or two, and the game
began. Alice thought she had never seen such a curious croquet-ground
in her life; it was all ridges and furrows; the balls were live
hedgehogs, the mallets live flamingoes, and the soldiers had to double
themselves up and to stand on their hands and feet, to make the arches.
The chief difficulty Alice found at first was in managing her flamingo:
she succeeded in getting its body tucked away, comfortably enough,
under her arm, with its legs hanging down, but generally, just as she
had got its neck nicely straightened out, and was going to give the
hedgehog a blow with its head, it _would_ twist itself round and look
up in her face, with such a puzzled expression that she could not help
bursting out laughing: and when she had got its head down, and was
going to begin again, it was very provoking to find that the hedgehog
had unrolled itself, and was in the act of crawling away: besides all
this, there was generally a ridge or furrow in the way wherever she
wanted to send the hedgehog to, and, as the doubled-up soldiers were
always getting up and walking off to other parts of the ground, Alice
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