The Modern Library Children's Classics

by Kenneth Grahame

  The twelve jurors were all writing very busily on slates. “What are they all doing?” Alice whispered to the Gryphon. “They ca’n’t have anything to put down yet, before the trial’s begun.”

  “They’re putting down their names,” the Gryphon whispered in reply, “for fear they should forget them before the end of the trial.”

  “Stupid things!” Alice began in a loud, indignant voice, but she stopped hastily, for the White Rabbit cried out “Silence in the court!” and the King put on his spectacles and looked anxiously round, to see who was talking.

  Alice could see, as well as if she were looking over their shoulders, that all the jurors were writing down “stupid things!” on their slates, and she could even make out that one of them didn’t know how to spell “stupid,” and that he had to ask his neighbour to tell him.

  “A nice muddle their slates will be in before the trial’s over!” thought Alice.

  One of the jurors had a pencil that squeaked. This, of course, Alice could not stand, and she went round the court and got behind him, and very soon found an opportunity of taking it away. She did it so quickly that the poor little juror (it was Bill, the Lizard) could not make out at all what had become of it; so, after hunting all about for it, he was obliged to write with one finger for the rest of the day; and this was of very little use, as it left no mark on the slate.

  “Herald, read the accusation!” said the King.

  On this the White Rabbit blew three blasts on the trumpet, and then unrolled the parchment scroll, and read as follows:—

  “The Queen of Hearts, she made some tarts,1

  All on a summer day:

  The Knave of Hearts, he stole those tarts,

  And took them quite away!”

  “Consider your verdict,” the King said to the jury.

  “Not yet, not yet!” the Rabbit hastily interrupted. “There’s a great deal to come before that!”

  “Call the first witness,” said the King; and the White Rabbit blew three blasts on the trumpet, and called out “First witness!”

  The first witness was the Hatter. He came in with a teacup in one hand and a piece of bread-and-butter in the other. “I beg your pardon, your Majesty,” he began, “for bringing these in: but I hadn’t quite finished my tea when I was sent for.”

  “You ought to have finished,” said the King. “When did you begin?”

  The Hatter looked at the March Hare, who had followed him into the court, arm-in-arm with the Dormouse. “Fourteenth of March, I think it was,” he said.

  “Fourteenth,” said the March Hare.

  “Sixteenth,” said the Dormouse.

  “Write that down,” the King said to the jury, and the jury eagerly wrote down all three dates on their slates, and then added them up, and reduced the answer to shillings and pence.2

  “Take off your hat,” the King said to the Hatter.

  “It isn’t mine,” said the Hatter.

  “Stolen!” the King exclaimed, turning to the jury, who instantly made a memorandum of the fact.

  “I keep them to sell,” the Hatter added as an explanation: “I’ve none of my own. I’m a hatter.”

  Here the Queen put on her spectacles, and began staring hard at the Hatter, who turned pale and fidgeted.

  “Give your evidence,” said the King; “and don’t be nervous, or I’ll have you executed on the spot.”

  This did not seem to encourage the witness at all: he kept shifting from one foot to the other, looking uneasily at the Queen, and in his confusion he bit a large piece out of his teacup instead of the bread-and-butter.

  Just at this moment Alice felt a very curious sensation, which puzzled her a good deal until she made out what it was: she was beginning to grow larger again, and she thought at first she would get up and leave the court; but on second thoughts she decided to remain where she was as long as there was room for her.

  “I wish you wouldn’t squeeze so,” said the Dormouse, who was sitting next to her. “I can hardly breathe.”

  “I can’t help it,” said Alice very meekly: “I’m growing.”

  “You’ve no right to grow here,” said the Dormouse.

  “Don’t talk nonsense,” said Alice more boldly: “you know you’re growing too.”

  “Yes, but I grow at a reasonable pace,” said the Dormouse; “not in that ridiculous fashion.” And he got up very sulkily and crossed over to the other side of the court.

  All this time the Queen had never left off staring at the Hatter, and just as the Dormouse crossed the court, she said to one of the officers of the court, “Bring me the list of the singers in the last concert!” on which the wretched Hatter trembled so, that he shook off both his shoes.

  “Give your evidence,” the King repeated angrily, “or I’ll have you executed, whether you’re nervous or not.”

  “I’m a poor man, your Majesty,” the Hatter began, in a trembling voice,—“and I hadn’t begun my tea—not above a week or so—and what with the bread-and-butter getting so thin—and the twinkling of the tea——”

  “The twinkling of what?” said the King.

  “It began with the tea,” the Hatter replied.

  “Of course twinkling begins with a T!” said the King sharply. “Do you take me for a dunce? Go on!”

  “I’m a poor man,” the Hatter went on, “and most things twinkled after that—only the March Hare said——”

  “I didn’t!” the March Hare interrupted in a great hurry.

  “You did!” said the Hatter.

  “I deny it!” said the March Hare.

  “He denies it,” said the King: “leave out that part.”

  “Well, at any rate, the Dormouse said——” the Hatter went on, looking anxiously round to see if he would deny it too: but the Dormouse denied nothing, being fast asleep.

  “After that,” continued the Hatter, “I cut some more bread-and-butter——”

  “But what did the Dormouse say?” one of the jury asked.

  “That I ca’n’t remember,” said the Hatter.

  “You must remember,” remarked the King, “or I’ll have you executed.”

  The miserable Hatter dropped his teacup and bread-and-butter, and went down on one knee. “I’m a poor man, your Majesty,” he began.

  “You’re a very poor speaker,” said the King.

  Here one of the guinea-pigs cheered, and was immediately suppressed by the officers of the court. (As that is rather a hard word, I will just explain to you how it was done. They had a large canvas bag, which tied up at the mouth with strings: into this they slipped the guinea-pig, head first, and then sat upon it.)

  “I’m glad I’ve seen that done,” thought Alice. “I’ve so often read in the newspapers, at the end of trials, ‘There was some attempt at applause, which was immediately suppressed by the officers of the court,’ and I never understood what it meant till now.”

  “If that’s all you know about it, you may stand down,” continued the King.

  “I ca’n’t go no lower,” said the Hatter: “I’m on the floor as it is.”

  “Then you may sit down,” the King replied.

  Here the other guinea-pig cheered, and was suppressed.

  “Come, that finishes the guinea-pigs!” thought Alice. “Now we shall get on better.”

  “I’d rather finish my tea,” said the Hatter, with an anxious look at the Queen, who was reading the list of singers.

  “You may go,” said the King; and the Hatter hurriedly left the court, without even waiting to put his shoes on.

  “—and just take his head off outside,” the Queen added to one of the officers; but the Hatter was out of sight before the officer could get to the door.

  “Call the next witness!” said the King.

  The next witness was the Duchess’s cook. She carried the pepper-box in her hand, and Alice guessed who it was, even before she got into the court, by the way the people near the door began sneezing all at once.

  “Give your ev
idence,” said the King.

  “Sha’n’t,” said the cook.

  The King looked anxiously at the White Rabbit, who said in a low voice, “Your Majesty must cross-examine this witness.”

  “Well, if I must, I must,” the King said with a melancholy air, and, after folding his arms and frowning at the cook till his eyes were nearly out of sight, he said in a deep voice, “What are tarts made of?”

  “Pepper, mostly,” said the cook.

  “Treacle,” said a sleepy voice behind her.

  “Collar that Dormouse,” the Queen shrieked out. “Behead that Dormouse! Turn that Dormouse out of court! Suppress him! Pinch him! Off with his whiskers.”

  For some minutes the whole court was in confusion, getting the Dormouse turned out, and, by the time they had settled down again, the cook had disappeared.

  “Never mind!” said the King, with an air of great relief. “Call the next witness.” And he added in an undertone to the Queen, “Really, my dear, you must cross-examine the next witness. It quite makes my forehead ache!”

  Alice watched the White Rabbit as he fumbled over the list, feeling very curious to see what the next witness would be like, “—for they haven’t got much evidence yet,” she said to herself. Imagine her surprise, when the White Rabbit read out, at the top of his shrill little voice, the name “Alice!”

  CHAPTER XII

  ALICE’S EVIDENCE

  “Here!” cried Alice, quite forgetting in the flurry of the moment how large she had grown in the last few minutes, and she jumped up in such a hurry that she tipped over the jury-box with the edge of her skirt, upsetting all the jurymen on to the heads of the crowd below, and there they lay sprawling about, reminding her very much of a globe of gold-fish she had accidentally upset the week before.

  “Oh, I beg your pardon!” she exclaimed in a tone of great dismay, and began picking them up again as quickly as she could, for the accident of the gold-fish kept running in her head, and she had a vague sort of idea that they must be collected at once and put back into the jury-box or they would die.

  “The trial cannot proceed,” said the King in a very grave voice, “until all the jurymen are back in their proper places—all,” he repeated with great emphasis, looking hard at Alice as he said so.

  Alice looked at the jury-box, and saw that, in her haste, she had put the Lizard in head downwards, and the poor little thing was waving its tail about in a melancholy way, being quite unable to move.

  She soon got it out again, and put it right; “not that it signifies much,” she said to herself; “I should think it would be quite as much use in the trial one way up as the other.”

  As soon as the jury had a little recovered from the shock of being upset, and their slates and pencils had been found and handed back to them, they set to work very diligently to write out a history of the accident, all except the Lizard, who seemed too much overcome to do anything but sit with its mouth open gazing up into the roof of the court.

  “What do you know about this business?” the King said to Alice.

  “Nothing,” said Alice.

  “Nothing whatever?” persisted the King.

  “Nothing whatever,” said Alice.

  “That’s very important,” the King said, turning to the jury. They were just beginning to write this down on their slates, when the White Rabbit interrupted: “Unimportant, your Majesty means, of course,” he said in a very respectful tone, but frowning and making faces at him as he spoke.

  “Unimportant, of course, I meant,” the King hastily said, and went on to himself in an undertone, “important—unimportant—unimportant—important——” as if he were trying which word sounded best.

  Some of the jury wrote it down “important,” and some “unimportant,” Alice could see this, as she was near enough to look over their slates; “but it doesn’t matter a bit,” she thought to herself.

  At this moment the King, who had been for some time busily writing in his notebook, called out “Silence!” and read out from his book, “Rule Forty-two. All persons more than a mile high to leave the court.”

  Everybody looked at Alice.

  “I’m not a mile high,” said Alice.

  “You are,” said the King.

  “Nearly two miles high,” added the Queen.

  “Well, I sha’n’t go, at any rate,” said Alice: “besides, that’s not a regular rule: you invented it just now.”

  “It’s the oldest rule in the book,” said the King.

  “Then it ought to be Number One,” said Alice.

  The King turned pale and shut his notebook hastily. “Consider your verdict,” he said to the jury, in a low trembling voice.

  “There’s more evidence to come yet, please your Majesty,” said the White Rabbit, jumping up in a great hurry: “This paper has just been picked up.”

  “What’s in it?” said the Queen.

  “I haven’t opened it yet,” said the White Rabbit, “but it seems to be a letter, written by the prisoner to—to somebody.”

  “It must have been that,” said the King, “unless it was written to nobody, which isn’t usual, you know.”

  “Who is it directed to?” said one of the jurymen.

  “It isn’t directed at all,” said the White Rabbit; “in fact, there’s nothing written on the outside.” He unfolded the paper as he spoke, and added “It isn’t a letter, after all: it’s a set of verses.”

  “Are they in the prisoner’s handwriting?” asked another of the jurymen.

  “No, they’re not,” said the White Rabbit, “and that’s the queerest thing about it.” (The jury all looked puzzled.)

  “He must have imitated somebody else’s hand,” said the King. (The jury all brightened up again.)

  “Please your Majesty,” said the Knave, “I didn’t write it, and they ca’n’t prove that I did: there’s no name signed at the end.”

  “If you didn’t sign it,” said the King, “that only makes the matter worse. You must have meant some mischief, or else you’d have signed your name like an honest man.”

  There was a general clapping of hands at this: it was the first really clever thing the King had said that day.

  “That proves his guilt, of course,” said the Queen: “so, off with——”

  “It doesn’t prove anything of the sort!” said Alice. “Why, you don’t even know what they’re about!”

  “Read them,” said the King.

  The White Rabbit put on his spectacles. “Where shall I begin, please your Majesty?” he asked.

  “Begin at the beginning,” the King said gravely, “and go on till you come to the end; then stop.”

  There was dead silence in the court, whilst the White Rabbit read out these verses:—

  “They told me you had been to her,1

  And mentioned me to him:

  She gave me a good character,

  But said I could not swim.

  He sent them word I had not gone,

  (We know it to be true):

  If she should push the matter on,

  What would become of you?

  I gave her one, they gave him two,

  You gave us three or more;

  They all returned from him to you,

  Though they were mine before.

  If I or she should chance to be

  Involved in this affair,

  He trusts to you to set them free,

  Exactly as we were.

  My notion was that you had been

  (Before she had this fit)

  An obstacle that came between

  Him, and ourselves, and it.

  Don’t let him know she liked them best,

  For this must ever be

  A secret kept from all the rest,

  Between yourself and me.”

  “That’s the most important piece of evidence we’ve heard yet,” said the King, rubbing his hands; “so now let the jury——”

  “If any one of them can explain it,” said Alice, (she h
ad grown so large in the last few minutes that she wasn’t a bit afraid of interrupting him,) “I’ll give him sixpence. I don’t believe there’s an atom of meaning in it.”

  The jury all wrote down on their slates, “She doesn’t believe there’s an atom of meaning in it,” but none of them attempted to explain the paper.

  “If there’s no meaning in it,” said the King, “that saves a world of trouble, you know, as we needn’t try to find any. And yet I don’t know,” he went on, spreading out the verses on his knee, and looking at them with one eye; “I seem to see some meaning in them, after all. ‘——said I could not swim—,’ you can’t swim, can you?” he added, turning to the Knave.

  The Knave shook his head sadly. “Do I look like it?” he said. (Which he certainly did not, being made entirely of cardboard.)

  “All right, so far,” said the King, and he went on muttering over the verses to himself: “ ‘We know it to be true—’ that’s the jury, of course—‘If she should push the matter on’—that must be the Queen—‘What would become of you?’ What, indeed!—‘I gave her one, they gave him two—’ why, that must be what he did with the tarts, you know——”

  “But it goes on ‘they all returned from him to you,’ ” said Alice.

  “Why, there they are!” said the King triumphantly, pointing to the tarts on the table. “Nothing can be clearer than that. Then again—‘before she had this fit—’ you never had fits, my dear, I think?” he said to the Queen.

  “Never!” said the Queen furiously, throwing an inkstand at the Lizard as she spoke. (The unfortunate little Bill had left off writing on his slate with one finger, as he found it made no mark; but he now hastily began again, using the ink, that was trickling down his face, as long as it lasted.)