Lewis Carroll: Through the Looking Glass

CHAPTER 2: The Garden of Live Flowers (continued)

`A slow sort of country!' said the Queen. `Now, HERE, you see, it takes all the running YOU can do, to keep in the same place. If you want to get somewhere else, you must run at least twice as fast as that!'

`I'd rather not try, please!' said Alice. `I'm quite content to stay here--only I AM so hot and thirsty!'

`I know what YOU'D like!' the Queen said good-naturedly, taking a little box out of her pocket. `Have a biscuit?'

Alice thought it would not be civil to say `No,' though it wasn't at all what she wanted. So she took it, and ate it as well as she could: and it was VERY dry; and she thought she had never been so nearly choked in all her life.

`While you're refreshing yourself,' said the Queen, `I'll just take the measurements.' And she took a ribbon out of her pocket, marked in inches, and began measuring the ground, and sticking little pegs in here and there.

`At the end of two yards,' she said, putting in a peg to mark the distance, `I shall give you your directions--have another biscuit?'

`No, thank you,' said Alice,: `one's QUITE enough!'

`Thirst quenched, I hope?' said the Queen.

Alice did not know what to say to this, but luckily the Queen did not wait for an answer, but went on. `At the end of THREE yards I shall repeat them--for fear of your forgetting them. At then end of FOUR, I shall say good-bye. And at then end of FIVE, I shall go!'

She had got all the pegs put in by this time, and Alice looked on with great interest as she returned to the tree, and then began slowly walking down the row.