Page:Alice's adventures in Wonderland - (IA alicesadventures00carr 21).djvu/73

Rh "Hush! Hush!" said the Rab-bit, in a low tone. He looked back as he spoke, then raised up on tip-toe, put his mouth close to her ear and whis-pered, "She's to have her head cut off."

"What for?" asked Al-ice.

"Did you say, 'What a pit-y!'?" the Rab-bit asked.

"No, I didn't," said Al-ice: "I don't think it's at all a pit-y. I said 'What for?'"

"She boxed the Queen's ears—" the Rab-bit be-gan. Al-ice gave a lit-tle scream of joy.

"Oh, hush!" the Rab-bit whis-pered in a great fright. "The Queen will hear you! You see she came late, and the Queen said"

"Each one to his place!" shout-ed the Queen in a loud voice, and peo-ple ran this way and that in great haste and soon each one had found his place, and the game be-gan.

Al-ice thought she had nev-er seen such a strange cro-quet ground in all her life: it was all ridges; the balls were live hedge-hogs; the mal-lets were live birds, and the sol-diers bent down and stood on their hands and feet to make the arch-es.

At first Al-ice found it hard to use a live bird for a mal-let. It was a large bird with a long neck and long