Lewis Carroll: Through the Looking Glass

CHAPTER 8: `It's my own Invention' (continued)

The Knight shook his head. `It was all kinds of fastness with me, I can assure you!' he said. He raised his hands in some excitement as he said this, and instantly rolled out of the saddle, and fell headlong into a deep ditch.

Alice ran to the side of the ditch to look for him. She was rather startled by the fall, as for some time he had kept on very well, and she was afraid that he really WAS hurt this time. However, though she could see nothing but the soles of his feet, she was much relieved to hear that he was talking on in his usual tone. `All kinds of fastness,' he repeated: `but it was careless of him to put another man's helmet on--with the man in it, too.'

`How CAN you go on talking so quietly, head downwards?' Alice asked, as she dragged him out by the feet, and laid him in a heap on the bank.

The Knight looked surprised at the question. `What does it matter where my body happens to be?' he said. `My mind goes on working all the same. In fact, the more head downwards I am, the more I keep inventing new things.'

`Now the cleverest thing of the sort that I ever did,' he went on after a pause, `was inventing a new pudding during the meat-course.'

`In time to have it cooked for the next course?' said Alice. `Well, not the NEXT course,' the Knight said in a slow thoughtful tone: `no, certainly not the next COURSE.'

`Then it would have to be the next day. I suppose you wouldn't have two pudding-courses in one dinner?'

`Well, not the NEXT day,' the Knight repeated as before: `not the next DAY. In fact,' he went on, holding his head down, and his voice getting lower and lower, `I don't believe that pudding ever WAS cooked! In fact, I don't believe that pudding ever WILL be cooked! And yet it was a very clever pudding to invent.'