Complete Alice in Wonderland - L. Carroll [88]
“Nine from eight I ca’n’t, you know,” Alice replied very readily: “but—”
“She ca’n’t do Subtraction,” said the White Queen. “Can you do Division? Divide a loaf by a knife—what’s the answer to that?”
“I suppose—” Alice was beginning, but the Red Queen answered for her. “Bread-and-butter, of course. Try another Subtraction sum. Take a bone from a dog: what remains?”
Alice considered. “The bone wouldn’t remain, of course, if I took it—and the dog wouldn’t remain: it would come to bite me—and I’m sure I shouldn’t remain!”
“Then you think nothing would remain?” said the Red Queen.
“I think that’s the answer.”
“Wrong, as usual,” said the Red Queen: “the dog’s temper would remain.”
“But I don’t see how—”
“Why, look here!” the Red Queen cried. “The dog would lose its temper, wouldn’t it?”
“Perhaps it would,” Alice replied cautiously.
“Then if the dog went away, its temper would remain!” the Queen exclaimed triumphantly.
Alice said, as gravely as she could, “They might go different ways.” But she couldn’t help thinking to herself “What dreadful nonsense we are talking!”
“She ca’n’t do sums a bit!” the Queens said together, with great emphasis.
“Can you do sums?” Alice said, turning suddenly on the White Queen, for she didn’t like being found fault with so much.
The Queen gasped and shut her eyes. “I can do Addition,” she said, “if you give me time—but I ca’n’t do Subtraction under any circumstances!”
“Of course you know your A B C?” said the Red Queen.
“To be sure I do,” said Alice.
“So do I,” the White Queen whispered: “we’ll often say it over together, dear. And I’ll tell you a secret—I can read words of one letter! Isn’t that grand? However, don’t be discouraged. You’ll come to it in time.”
Here the Red Queen began again. “Can you answer useful questions?” she said. “How is bread made?”
“I know that!” Alice cried eagerly. “You take some flour—”
“Where do you pick the flower?” the White Queen asked: “In a garden, or in the hedges?”
“Well, it isn’t picked at all,” Alice explained: “it’s ground—”
“How many acres of ground?” said the White Queen. “You mustn’t leave out so many things.”
“Fan her head!” the Red Queen anxiously interrupted. “She’ll be feverish after so much thinking.” So they set to work and fanned her with bunches of leaves, till she had to beg them to leave off, it blew her hair about so.
“She’s all right again now,” said the Red Queen. “Do you know Languages? What’s the French for fiddle-de-dee?”
“Fiddle-de-dee’s not English,” Alice replied gravely.
“Who ever said it was?” said the Red Queen.
Alice thought she saw a way out of the difficulty this time. “If you’ll tell me what language ‘fiddle-de-dee’ is, I’ll tell you the French for it!” she exclaimed triumphantly.
But the Red Queen drew herself up rather stiffly, and said, “Queens never make bargains.”
“I wish Queens never asked questions,” Alice thought to herself.
“Don’t let us quarrel,” the White Queen said in an anxious tone. “What is the cause of lightning?”
“The cause of lightning,” Alice said very decidedly, for she felt quite certain about this, “is the thunder—no, no!” she hastily corrected herself. “I meant the other way.”
“It’s too late to correct it,” said the Red Queen: “when you’ve once said a thing, that fixes it, and you must take the consequences.”
“Which reminds me—” the White Queen said, looking down and nervously clasping and unclasping her hands, “we had such a thunder-storm last Tuesday—I mean one of the last set of Tuesdays, you know.”
Alice was puzzled. “In our country,” she remarked, “there’s only one day at a time.”
The Red Queen said “That’s a poor thin way of doing things. Now here, we mostly have days and nights two or three at a time, and sometimes in the winter we take as many as five nights together—for warmth, you know.”
“Are five nights warmer than one night, then?” Alice ventured to ask.
“Five times as warm, of course.”
“But they should be five times as cold, by the same rule—”
“Just so!” cried the Red Queen. “Five times as warm, and five times as cold—just as I’m five