n the water, worse then ever),
and sometimes under trees, but always with the same tall river-banks
frowning over their heads.

'Oh, please! There are some scented rushes!' Alice cried in a sudden
transport of delight. 'There really are--and SUCH beauties!'

'You needn't say "please" to ME about 'em,' the Sheep said, without
looking up from her knitting: 'I didn't put 'em there, and I'm not going
to take 'em away.'

'No, but I meant--please, may we wait and pick some?' Alice pleaded. 'If
you don't mind stopping the boat for a minute.'

'How am _I_ to stop it?' said the Sheep. 'If you leave off rowing, it'll
stop of itself.'

So the boat was left to drift down the stream as it would, till it
glided gently in among the waving rushes. And then the little sleeves
were carefully rolled up, and the little arms were plunged in elbow-deep
to get the rushes a good long way down before breaking them off--and for
a while Alice forgot all about the Sheep and the knitting, as she
bent over the side of the boat, with just the ends of her tangled hair
dipping into the water--while with bright eager eyes she caught at one
bunch after another of the darling scented rushes.

'I only hope the boat won't tipple over!' she said to herself. 'Oh, WHAT
a lovely one! Only I couldn't quite reach it.' 'And it certainly DID
seem a little provoking ('almost as if it happened on purpose,' she
thought) that, though she managed to pick plenty of beautiful rushes as
the boat glided by, there was always a more lovely one that she couldn't
reach.

'The prettiest are always further!' she said at last, with a sigh at the
obstinacy of the rushes in growing so far off, as, with flushed cheeks
and dripping hair and hands, she scrambled back into her place, and
began to arrange her new-found treasures.

What mattered it to her just then that the rushes had begun to fade, and
to lose all their scent and beauty, from the very moment that she
picked them? Even real scented rushes, you know, last only a very little
while--and these, being dream-rushes, melted away almost like snow, as
they lay in heaps at her feet--but Alice hardly noticed this, there were
so many other curious things to think about.

They hadn't gone much farther before the blade of one of the oars got
fast in the water and WOULDN'T come out again (so Alice explained it
afterwards), and the consequence was that the handle of it caught her
under the chin, and, in spite of a series of li