ueen. "Can you play croquet?"

The soldiers were silent, and looked at Alice, as the question was
evidently meant for her.

"Yes!" shouted Alice.

"Come on, then!" roared the Queen, and Alice joined the procession,
wondering very much what would happen next.

"It's--it's a very fine day!" said a timid voice at her side. She was
walking by the White Rabbit, who was peeping anxiously into her face.

"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
all 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 upon their hands and feet, to make the
arches.

[Illustration]

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 a 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 soon came
to the conclusion that it was a very