Through the Looking Glass
This time she came upon a large flower-bed, with a border of daisies, and a willow-tree growing in the middle.
“O Tiger-lily,” said Alice, addressing herself to one that was waving gracefully about in the wind, “I WISH you could talk!”
“We CAN talk,” said the Tiger-lily: “when there's anybody worth talking to.”
Alice was so astonished that she could not speak for a minute: it quite seemed to take her breath away. At length, as the Tiger-lily only went on waving about, she spoke again, in a timid voice—almost in a whisper. “And can ALL the flowers talk?”
“As well as YOU can,” said the Tiger-lily. “And a great deal louder.”
“It isn't manners for us to begin, you know,” said the Rose, “and I really was wondering when you'd speak! Said I to myself, “Her face has got SOME sense in it, thought it's not a clever one!” Still, you're the right colour, and that goes a long way.”
“I don't care about the colour,” the Tiger-lily remarked. “If only her petals curled up a little more, she'd be all right.”
Alice didn't like being criticised, so she began asking questions. “Aren't you sometimes frightened at being planted out here, with nobody to take care of you?”
“There's the tree in the middle,” said the Rose: “what else is it good for?”
“But what could it do, if any danger came?” Alice asked.
“It says “Bough-wough!” cried a Daisy: “that's why its branches are called boughs!”
“Didn't you know THAT?” cried another Daisy, and here they all began shouting together, till the air seemed quite full of little shrill voices. “Silence, every one of you!” cried the Tiger- lily, waving itself passionately from side to side, and trembling with excitement. “They know I can't get at them!” it panted, bending its quivering head towards Alice, “or they wouldn't dare to do it!”
“Never mind!” Alice said in a soothing tone, and stooping down to the daisies, who were just beginning again, she whispered, “If you don't hold your tongues, I'll pick you!”
There was silence in a moment, and several of the pink daisies turned white.
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There was once an honest journeyman tailor, by name Labakan, who learned his trade with an excellent master in Alexandria. It could not be said that Labakan was unhandy with the needle; on the contrary, he could make excellent work: moreover, one would have done him injustice to have called him lazy. Nevertheless, his companions knew not what to make of him, for he would often sew for hours together so rapidly that the needle would glow in his hand, and the thread smoke, and that none could equal him.
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