Through the Looking Glass

”

Chapter X

SHAKING

She took her off the table as she spoke, and shook her backwards and forwards with all her might.

The Red Queen made no resistance whatever; only her face grew very small, and her eyes got large and green: and still, as Alice went on shaking her, she kept on growing shorter—and fatter—and softer—and rounder—and—

Chapter XI

WAKING

—and it really WAS a kitten, after all.

Chapter XII

WHICH DREAMED IT?

“Your majesty shouldn't purr so loud,” Alice said, rubbing her eyes, and addressing the kitten, respectfully, yet with some severity. “You woke me out of oh! such a nice dream! And you've been along with me, Kitty—all through the Looking-Glass world. Did you know it, dear?”

It is a very inconvenient habit of kittens (Alice had once made the remark) that, whatever you say to them, they ALWAYS purr. “If them would only purr for “yes” and mew for “no,” or any rule of that sort,” she had said, “so that one could keep up a conversation! But how CAN you talk with a person if they always say the same thing?”

On this occasion the kitten only purred: and it was impossible to guess whether it meant “yes” or “no.”

So Alice hunted among the chessmen on the table till she had found the Red Queen: then she went down on her knees on the hearth-rug, and put the kitten and the Queen to look at each other. “Now, Kitty!” she cried, clapping her hands triumphantly. “Confess that was what you turned into!”

(`But it wouldn't look at it,” she said, when she was explaining the thing afterwards to her sister: “it turned away its head, and pretended not to see it: but it looked a LITTLE ashamed of itself, so I think it MUST have been the Red Queen.')

“Sit up a little more stiffly, dear!” Alice cried with a merry laugh. “And curtsey while you're thinking what to—what to purr. It saves time, remember!” And she caught it up and gave it one little kiss, “just in honour of having been a Red Queen.”

“Snowdrop, my pet!” she went on, looking over her shoulder at the White Kitten, which was still patiently undergoing its toilet, “when WILL Dinah have finished with your White Majesty, I wonder?