Lewis Carroll: Through the Looking Glass

CHAPTER 4: TWEEDLEDUM AND TWEEDLEDEE (continued)

`You won't make yourself a bit realler by crying,' Tweedledee remarked: `there's nothing to cry about.'

`If I wasn't real,' Alice said--half-laughing though her tears, it all seemed so ridiculous--`I shouldn't be able to cry.'

`I hope you don't suppose those are real tears?' Tweedledum interrupted in a tone of great contempt.

`I know they're talking nonsense,' Alice thought to herself: `and it's foolish to cry about it.' So she brushed away her tears, and went on as cheerfully as she could. `At any rate I'd better be getting out of the wood, for really it's coming on very dark. Do you think it's going to rain?'

Tweedledum spread a large umbrella over himself and his brother, and looked up into it. `No, I don't think it is,' he said: `at least--not under HERE. Nohow.'

`But it may rain OUTSIDE?'

`It may--if it chooses,' said Tweedledee: `we've no objection. Contrariwise.'

`Selfish things!' thought Alice, and she was just going to say `Good-night' and leave them, when Tweedledum sprang out from under the umbrella and seized her by the wrist.

`Do you see THAT?' he said, in a voice choking with passion, and his eyes grew large and yellow all in a moment, as he pointed with a trembling finger at a small white thing lying under the tree.

`It's only a rattle,' Alice said, after a careful examination of the little white thing. `Not a rattleSNAKE, you know,' she added hastily, thinking that he was frightened: only an old rattle--quite old and broken.'

`I knew it was!' cried Tweedledum, beginning to stamp about wildly and tear his hair. `It's spoilt, of course!' Here he looked at Tweedledee, who immediately sat down on the ground, and tried to hide himself under the umbrella.