Wandering through the wood, Alice discovered a door in a tree leading back to the long hall. She took the golden key from the glass table and unlocked the door to the garden. Using a piece of mushroom she kept in her pocket, she nibbled until she shrank to about a foot high. Finally the right size, she walked down the passage and stepped into the beautiful garden, surrounded by bright flower-beds and cool fountains.
Alice entered the garden and discovered three gardeners frantically painting white roses red, arguing anxiously as they worked to hide their mistake from the Queen. They feared losing their heads if the mistake was discovered, but a grand procession soon interrupted them. Soldiers shaped like playing cards marched in, followed by ornamented courtiers and royal children, culminating in the arrival of the King and Queen of Hearts. The Queen stopped and demanded to know who Alice was, but Alice stood her ground, realizing they were only a pack of cards. When the Queen noticed the gardeners and ordered their execution, Alice bravely hid them in a large flower-pot, tricking the soldiers into reporting the deed done.
Invited to play croquet, Alice joined the Queen while the White Rabbit whispered that the Duchess was under sentence of execution for boxing the Queen’s ears. The game proved to be a chaotic impossibility. The mallets were live flamingoes that continually twisted their necks to look at Alice with puzzled expressions, the balls were uncooperative hedgehogs that crawled away or unrolled, and the arches were soldiers who wandered off. There were no rules; everyone played at once, quarreling violently while the Queen stampeded about shouting “Off with his head!” or “Off with her head!” at anyone who displeased her.
Desperate for a distraction from the dangerous game, Alice welcomed the appearance of the Cheshire Cat. She complained to the Cat about the unfairness of the match and the living equipment, carefully avoiding insulting the Queen when the monarch wandered near. The King approached, objecting to the Cat’s presence and demanding it be removed. The Cat refused to kiss the King’s hand, leading the Queen to sentence it to death once again.
A dispute arose as the executioner argued he could not behead a creature without a body, while the King insisted anything with a head could be executed. Alice suggested asking the Duchess, as the Cat belonged to her. The executioner ran off like an arrow to fetch the prisoner, but by the time he returned, the Cheshire Cat had faded away completely, leaving the King and executioner running wildly in search of a vanished victim while the rest of the party returned to the tumultuous game.
Alice was relieved to find the Duchess in a pleasant temper, linking arms affectionately, though her sharp chin dug uncomfortably into Alice’s shoulder. The Duchess aggressively forced a moral onto every topic of conversation, from the effects of pepper on temper to the nature of mustard, which she confused for a bird, a mineral, and a vegetable. When Alice attempted to correct her, the Duchess offered a convoluted moral about appearance and being what one seems. Their philosophical stroll was abruptly cut short when the Queen appeared, furiously demanding the Duchess’s execution. The Duchess vanished instantly, leaving Alice to tremble and follow the Queen back to the croquet ground.
The game had resumed in chaos. The Queen, absent for only a moment, returned to find the guests resting in the shade and immediately ordered them back to play under threat of death. She continued her rampage rampage, sentencing players to execution so frequently that the soldiers, acting as both arches and jailers, eventually arrested everyone except Alice, the King, and herself. As the Queen dragged Alice away to meet the Mock Turtle, Alice overheard the King quietly pardoning all the prisoners, much to her relief.
They soon encountered a sleeping Gryphon, whom the Queen woke and ordered to escort Alice. Once the Queen left to supervise more executions, the Gryphon revealed that her threats were hollow; nobody was ever actually beheaded. They found the Mock Turtle sitting on a rock, sighing deeply, though the Gryphon insisted this sorrow was merely fancy. The Turtle began his history, explaining that he was once a real Turtle who attended school in the sea. He described a ridiculous curriculum taught by a Tortoise, punning on the word “taught.” The subjects included Reeling, Writhing, and branches of Arithmetic like Ambition, Distraction, Uglification, and Derision. He further listed Mystery, ancient and modern, with Seaography, followed by Drawling, Stretching, and Fainting in Coils taught by an old conger-eel. The Gryphon added that he studied under a Classics master, an old crab who taught Laughing and Grief. Alice struggled to understand the puns, particularly when the Turtle mentioned lessons that “lessen” in duration each day. Just as she asked about the twelfth day, the Gryphon interrupted to demand they hear about the games instead.
The Mock Turtle recovered from his sobs to describe the Lobster Quadrille, a complex dance performed on the sea-shore involving lobsters, turtles, and seals. He and the Gryphon interrupted each other to explain the figures: forming two lines, clearing away jellyfish, advancing with partners, throwing lobsters out to sea, and somersaulting in the water. Alice agreed to watch a demonstration, and the two creatures solemnly danced around her, often treading on her toes, while the Mock Turtle sang a slow ballad about a whiting inviting a snail to join the dance. The snail refused because the distance to France was too great, a geographical concept that puzzled Alice.
After the dance, the Gryphon explained that whitings hold their tails in their mouths because they were thrown out to sea during the dance and fell a long way. He further confused Alice with wordplay, claiming that whitings are used to blacken boots under the sea and that shoes are made of soles and eels. When Alice mentioned a porpoise, the Mock Turtle insisted that no wise fish would travel without a “porpoise,” punning on the word “purpose,” and grew offended when Alice attempted to correct him.
The creatures then demanded to hear Alice’s adventures, but they were less interested in her narrative than in her ability to recite lessons. Ordered to stand and repeat “’Tis the Voice of the Sluggard,” Alice found her head so full of the Lobster Quadrille that she mangled the verses, substituting lines about a lobster baking his hair and trimming his belt. The Mock Turtle was baffled by the nonsense and demanded an explanation, but the Gryphon forced her to continue. She recited a garbled poem about an Owl and a Panther sharing a pie before the Gryphon finally stopped her.
Alice asked the Mock Turtle to sing instead, and he began a melodramatic song praising the beauty and richness of turtle soup. Just as the Gryphon called for a chorus, a distant cry announced that the trial was beginning. The Gryphon seized Alice’s hand and rushed her away, leaving the Mock Turtle’s voice fading in the distance as he sang the final words of the soup song.
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