O Tiger-lily,' said Alice, addressing herself to one that was waving gracefully about in the wind, 'I wish you could talk!'
'We can talk,' said the Tiger-lily: 'when
there's anybody worth talking to."
Alice was
so astonished that she could not speak for a minute: it quite seemed to take
her breath away. At length, as the Tiger-lily only went on waving about, she
spoke again, in a timid voice — almost in a whisper. 'And can all the flowers talk?'
'As well
as you can,' said the
Tiger-lily. 'And a great deal louder.'
'It isn't
manners for us to begin, you know,' said the Rose, 'and I really was wondering
when you'd speak! Said I to myself, "Her face has got some sense in it, though it's not a clever one!"
Still,
you're the right colour, and that goes a long way.'
'I don't
care about the colour,' the Tiger-lily remarked. 'If only her petals curled up
a little more, she'd be all right.'
Alice
didn't like being criticised, so she began asking questions.
'Aren't
you sometimes frightened at being planted out here, with nobody to take care of
you?'
 |
| Bough-Wough ! |
'There's
the tree in the middle,' said the Rose: 'what else is it good for?'
'But what
could it do, if any danger came?' Alice asked.
'It says
"Bough-wough!" cried a Daisy: 'that's why its branches are called
boughs!'
'Didn't
you know that?' cried another
Daisy, and here they all began shouting together, till the air seemed quite
full of little shrill voices.
'Silence,
every one of you!' cried the Tiger-lily, waving itself passionately from side
to side, and trembling with excitement. 'They know I can't get at them!' it
panted, bending its quivering head towards Alice, 'or they wouldn't dare to do
it!'
'Never
mind!' Alice said in a soothing tone, and stooping down to the daisies, who
were just beginning again, she whispered, 'If you don't hold your tongues, I'll
pick you!'
