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 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 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.
55