Chapter VIII. The Queen’s Croquet-Ground · page 21 2101She had already heard her sentence three of the players to be executed for having missed their turns, and she did not like the look of things at all, as the game was in such confusion that she never knew whether it was her turn or not.102So she went in search of her hedgehog.103The hedgehog was engaged in a fight with another hedgehog, which seemed to Alice an excellent opportunity for croqueting one of them with the other: the only difficulty was, that her flamingo was gone across to the other side of the garden, where Alice could see it trying in a helpless sort of way to fly up into a tree.104By the time she had caught the flamingo and brought it back, the fight was over, and both the hedgehogs were out of sight: “but it doesn’t matter much,” thought Alice, “as all the arches are gone from this side of the ground.”105So she tucked it away under her arm, that it might not escape again, and went back for a little more conversation with her friend.106When she got back to the Cheshire Cat, she was surprised to find quite a large crowd collected round it: there was a dispute going on between the executioner, the King, and the Queen, who were all talking at once, while all the rest were quite silent, and looked very uncomfortable.107The moment Alice appeared, she was appealed to by all three to settle the question, and they repeated their arguments to her, though, as they all spoke at once, she found it very hard indeed to make out exactly what they said.108The executioner’s argument was, that you couldn’t cut off a head unless there was a body to cut it off from: that he had never had to do such a thing before, and he wasn’t going to begin at _his_ time of life.109The King’s argument was, that anything that had a head could be beheaded, and that you weren’t to talk nonsense.110The Queen’s argument was, that if something wasn’t done about it in less than no time she’d have everybody executed, all round.111(It was this last remark that had made the whole party look so grave and anxious.)112Alice could think of nothing else to say but “It belongs to the Duchess: you’d better ask _her_ about it.”113“She’s in prison,” the Queen said to the executioner: “fetch her here.”114And the executioner went off like an arrow.115The Cat’s head began fading away the moment he was gone, and, by the time he had come back with the Duchess, it had entirely disappeared; so the King and the executioner ran wildly up and down looking for it, while the rest of the party went back to the game.1 2← previousChapter VII. A Mad Tea-Partynext →Chapter IX. The Mock Turtle’s Story↑ back to Alice's Adventures in WonderlandThis page in Markdown → https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg11/9/page/2/