Lewis Carroll: Through the Looking Glass

CHAPTER 4: TWEEDLEDUM AND TWEEDLEDEE (continued)

Alice laid her hand upon his arm, and said in a soothing tone, `You needn't be so angry about an old rattle.'

`But it isn't old!' Tweedledum cried, in a greater fury than ever. `It's new, I tell you--I bought it yesterday--my nice New RATTLE!' and his voice rose to a perfect scream.

All this time Tweedledee was trying his best to fold up the umbrella, with himself in it: which was such an extraordinary thing to do, that it quite took off Alice's attention from the angry brother. But he couldn't quite succeed, and it ended in his rolling over, bundled up in the umbrella, with only his head out: and there he lay, opening and shutting his mouth and his large eyes--'looking more like a fish than anything else,' Alice thought.

`Of course you agree to have a battle?' Tweedledum said in a calmer tone.

`I suppose so,' the other sulkily replied, as he crawled out of the umbrella: `only SHE must help us to dress up, you know.'

So the two brothers went off hand-in-hand into the wood, and returned in a minute with their arms full of things--such as bolsters, blankets, hearth-rugs, table-cloths, dish-covers and coal-scuttles. `I hope you're a good hand at pinning and tying strings?' Tweedledum remarked. `Every one of these things has got to go on, somehow or other.'

Alice said afterwards she had never seen such a fuss made about anything in all her life--the way those two bustled about-- and the quantity of things they put on--and the trouble they gave her in tying strings and fastening buttons--`Really they'll be more like bundles of old clothes that anything else, by the time they're ready!' she said to herself, as she arranged a bolster round the neck of Tweedledee, `to keep his head from being cut off,' as he said.

`You know,' he added very gravely, `it's one of the most serious things that can possibly happen to one in a battle--to get one's head cut off.'