Lewis Carroll: Through the Looking Glass

CHAPTER 2: The Garden of Live Flowers (continued)

`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!'