Chapter 2. The Garden of Live Flowers

‘I will see the garden better,’ said Alice to herself, ‘if I get to the top of that hill. And there is a path that leads straight to it. But… how it twists! Well, this turn goes to the hill, I think… no, it doesn’t! It goes straight back to the house! Well then, I’ll try it the other way.’

And so she did: she followed the path, but always came back to the house.

‘No!’ Alice said, looking up at the house. ‘I don’t want to go in yet. I will come back home through Looking-glass and it will be the end of my adventures!’

However, there was the hill full in sight, so she started again. This time she passed large flower-bed, with a border of daisies, and a willow-tree growing in the middle.

‘O Tiger-lily,’ said Alice to one flower that was waving in the wind, ‘I wish you could talk!’

‘We can talk,’ said the Tiger-lily: ‘when there is someone to talk to.’

Alice was so surprised that she could not speak for a minute. Then she asked, ‘And can all the flowers talk?’ ‘Yes, as well as you can,’ said the Tiger-lily.

‘We don’t think it’s polite to start first,’ said the Rose, ‘and I was wondering if you would speak! I said to myself, “Her face has got some sense in it, although it’s not very clever!” Still, your colour is good.’

‘I don’t care about the colour,’ the Tiger-lily said. ‘If only her petals curled up a little more!’

Alice didn’t like when someone criticized her, so she began asking questions. ‘Are you frightened that nobody takes care of you?’

‘There’s the tree in the middle,’ said the Rose: ‘what else is it good for?’

‘But what can it do, if any danger comes?’ Alice asked.

‘It can bark,’ said the Rose.

‘It says “Bough-wough!” cried a Daisy.

‘Didn’t you know that?’ cried another Daisy, and they all began shouting together.

‘Silence!’ cried the Tiger-lily, waving itself from side to side.

‘Never mind!’ Alice said and whispered to the daisies, ‘If you don’t hold your tongues, I’ll pick you!’

There was silence for a moment, and several of the pink daisies became white.

‘That’s right!’ said the Tiger-lily. ‘The daisies are worst of all. When one speaks, they all begin together!’

‘How can you talk so well?’ Alice asked. ‘I visited many gardens, but flowers couldn’t talk.’

‘Put your hand down, and feel the ground,’ said the Tiger-lily. ‘Then you’ll know why.’

Alice did so. ‘It’s very hard,’ she said.

‘In most gardens,’ the Tiger-lily said, ‘the flower-beds are too soft… so that the flowers are always asleep.’

This sounded a very good reason, and Alice was quite pleased to know it. ‘I never thought of that before!’ she said.

‘I think that you never think at all,’ the Rose said.

‘Hold your tongue!’ cried the Tiger-lily.

‘Are there any more people in the garden besides me?’ Alice asked, trying not to notice the Rose’s last remark.

‘There’s one other flower in the garden that can move like you,’ said the Rose. ‘I wonder how you do it…’

‘Is she like me?’ Alice asked. She thought: “There’s another little girl in the garden somewhere!”

‘Well, she has the same shape as you,’ the Rose said, ‘but she is red… and her petals are shorter.’

‘Does she ever come here?’

‘I think you will see her soon,’ said the Rose. ‘She has thorns.’

‘Where does she wear the thorns?’ Alice asked with some curiosity.

‘All round her head, of course,’ the Rose replied. ‘I wonder why you haven’t got them. Oh, she’s coming! I hear her footsteps!’

Alice looked round, and saw that it was the Red Queen. ‘She has grown up!’ was her first thought. She had indeed: when Alice first found her in the ashes, she had been only three inches high… and now she was taller than Alice!

‘I think I’ll go and meet her,’ said Alice, although the flowers were interesting too, she decided to have a talk with a real Queen.

‘You can’t do that,’ said the Rose: ‘You should walk the other way.’

“Nonsense”, Alice thought, so she said nothing, and went towards the Red Queen. To her surprise, she lost sight of her for a moment, and walked in at the front-door again.

Alice was surprised a lot and tried to walk the opposite direction.

In a minute she was at the hill with the Red Queen.

‘Where do you come from?’ asked the Red Queen. ‘And where are you going? Look up, speak nicely, and don’t twiddle your fingers!’

Alice explained that she had lost her way.

‘I don’t know what you mean by your way,’ said the Queen: ‘all the ways belong to me… but why did you come here at all?’ she added. ‘Curtsey while you’re thinking what to say, it saves time.’

“I’ll try it when I go home,’ Alice thought to herself. ‘the next time I’m a little late for dinner.”

‘It’s time for you to answer now,’ the Queen said, looking at her watch: ‘open your mouth wider when you speak, and always say “your Majesty”.’

‘I only wanted to see the garden, your Majesty… ’

‘That’s right,’ said the Queen and patted her on the head. Alice didn’t like it at all. ‘Although I have seen gardens, compare with which this would be a wilderness.’

Alice didn’t want to argue and went on: ‘… and I thought I’d try and find my way to the top of that hill… ’

‘When you say “hill”,’ the Queen said, ‘I can show you hills, in comparison with which you will call that a valley.’

‘No, it will be nonsense… ’

The Red Queen shook her head, ‘You may call it “nonsense” if you like,’ she said, ‘ but I have heard nonsense, compared with which that would be as sensible as a dictionary!’

Alice curtseyed again, because she was afraid that the Queen could be offended. And they walked on in silence and reached the top of the little hill.

For some time Alice stood and said nothing, looking out in all directions over the country. There were tiny little brooks – they ran straight across the country from side to side, and the ground between was divided up into squares by a number of little green hedges.

‘It is just like a large chess-board!’ Alice said at last. ‘It’s a great huge game of chess. Oh, what fun it is! How I wish I were one of them! I would like even to be a Pawn, if only I can join… although, of course, I’d like to be a Queen!’

The Red Queen only smiled, and said, ‘That’s easy. You can be the White Queen’s Pawn, if you like, because Lily is too young to play; and you’re in the Second Square: when you get to the Eighth Square you’ll be a Queen… ’ Just at this moment they began to run.

They were running hand in hand, and the Queen went very fast and she cried to Alice ‘Faster! Faster!’. Alice felt that she could not go faster.

The most curious thing was, that the trees and the other things round them never changed their places at all!

The Queen kept crying ‘Faster! Faster!’.

‘Are we nearly there?’ Alice asked at last.

‘Nearly there!’ the Queen said. ‘Faster!’ And they ran in silence, the wind was whistling in Alice’s ears, and almost blowing her hair off her head.

‘Now! Now!’ cried the Queen. ‘Faster! Faster!’ And they went so fast that they hardly touched the ground with their feet! Suddenly they stopped – Alice was sitting on the ground.

The Queen said kindly, ‘You may rest a little now.’

Alice looked round her in great surprise. ‘We have been under this tree the whole time! Nothing changed!’

‘Of course,’ said the Queen.

‘Well, in our country,’ said Alice, ‘you would be somewhere else… if you ran very fast for a long time!’

‘What a slow country!’ said the Queen. ‘Here we have to run in order to stay in the same place. If you want to get somewhere else, you must run faster!’

‘I’m pleased to stay here… only I am so hot and thirsty!’ said Alice.

The Queen took a little box out of her pocket. ‘Have a biscuit?’

Alice thought it would not be polite to say ‘No,’ although it wasn’t at all what she wanted. She took and ate it, but it was very dry.

‘While you’re refreshing yourself,’ said the Queen, ‘I will measure the ground.’ And she took a ribbon out of her pocket, and began measuring the ground.

‘Now I will give you your directions… have another biscuit?’

‘No, thank you,’ said Alice, ‘one is enough!’

‘You are not thirsty any more, I hope?’ said the Queen.

Alice did not know what to say, but the Queen did not wait for an answer and went on. ‘You know that a pawn goes two squares in its first move. So you will go very quickly through the Third Square… by train, I think. Well, the Fourth Square belongs to Tweedledum and Tweedledee. The Fifth one is mostly watered. The Sixth Square belongs to Humpty Dumpty. The Seventh Square is a forest… however, one of the Knights will show you the way… and in the Eighth Square we will be Queens together, and have a lot of fun!’ Alice got up and curtseyed, and sat down again.

‘Speak French when you don’t know what to say, turn out your toes as you walk, and remember who you are!’ The Red Queen turned for a moment to say ‘good-bye,’ and then disappeared.

Maybe she vanished into the air, or maybe she ran quickly into the forest, Alice couldn’t understand, but she had gone. And Alice began to remember that she was a Pawn, and soon she would make a move.