Lewis Carroll: Through the Looking Glass

CHAPTER 1: Looking-Glass house (continued)

She said afterwards that she had never seen in all her life such a face as the King made, when he found himself held in the air by an invisible hand, and being dusted: he was far too much astonished to cry out, but his eyes and his mouth went on getting larger and larger, and rounder and rounder, till her hand shook so with laughing that she nearly let him drop upon the floor.

`Oh! PLEASE don't make such faces, my dear!' she cried out, quite forgetting that the King couldn't hear her. `You make me laugh so that I can hardly hold you! And don't keep your mouth so wide open! All the ashes will get into it--there, now I think you're tidy enough!' she added, as she smoothed his hair, and set him upon the table near the Queen.

The King immediately fell flat on his back, and lay perfectly still: and Alice was a little alarmed at what she had done, and went round the room to see if she could find any water to throw over him. However, she could find nothing but a bottle of ink, and when she got back with it she found he had recovered, and he and the Queen were talking together in a frightened whisper--so low, that Alice could hardly hear what they said.

The King was saying, `I assure, you my dear, I turned cold to the very ends of my whiskers!'

To which the Queen replied, `You haven't got any whiskers.'

`The horror of that moment,' the King went on, `I shall never, NEVER forget!'

`You will, though,' the Queen said, `if you don't make a memorandum of it.'

Alice looked on with great interest as the King took an enormous memorandum-book out of his pocket, and began writing. A sudden thought struck her, and she took hold of the end of the pencil, which came some way over his shoulder, and began writing for him.