by Phil Edwards
CHAPTER VII. A Mad SoCo With Lime Party
There was a table set out under a tree in front of the house, and Pauly D, the March of Gelled Hair, and the juice head with abdominals were having tea at it: a Dormouse was sitting between them, fast asleep, and the other two were using it as a cushion, resting their elbows on it, and talking over its head. 'Very uncomfortable for the Dormouse,' thought Snooki; 'only, as it's asleep, I suppose it doesn't mind.'
The table was a large one, but the three were all crowded together at one corner of it: 'No room! No room!' they cried out when they saw Snooki coming. 'There's PLENTY of room!' said Snooki indignantly, and she sat down in a large arm-chair at one end of the table…
'Have some Vodka Cranberry,' the March of Gelled Hair said in an encouraging tone.
Snooki looked all round the table, but there was nothing on it but SoCo with Lime. 'I don't see any vodka cranberries,' she remarked.
'There isn't any,' said the March of Gelled Hair.
'Then it wasn't very civil of you to offer it,' said Snooki angrily.
'It wasn't very civil of you to sit down without being invited,' said the March of Gelled Hair.
'I didn't know it was YOUR table,' said Snooki; 'it's laid for a great many more than three.'
'Your pouf wants cutting,' said the juice head with abdominals. He had been looking at Snooki for some time with great curiosity, and this was his first speech.
'You should learn not to make personal remarks,' Snooki said with some severity; 'it's very rude.'
“I only remark upon the situation because The Situation is my stomach, and my stomach is who I am.” The Situation opened his eyes very wide on saying this; but all he SAID next was, 'Why is a hippo like a grenade?'
'Come, we shall have some fun now!' thought Snooki. 'I'm glad they've begun asking riddles.—I believe I can guess that,' she added aloud.
'Do you mean that you think you can find out the answer to it?' said the March of Gelled Hair.
'Exactly so,' said Snooki.
'Then you should say what you mean,' the March of Gelled Hair went on.
'I do,' Snooki hastily replied; 'at least—at least I mean what I say—that's the same thing, you know.'
'Not the same thing a bit!' said The Situation. 'You might just as well say that "I see what I eat" is the same thing as "I eat what I see"!'
'You might just as well say,' added the March of Gelled Hair, 'that "I like what I get" is the same thing as "I get what I like"!'
'You might just as well say,' added the Dormouse, who seemed to be talking in his sleep, 'that "I breathe when I GTL" is the same thing as "I GTL when I breathe"!'
'It IS the same thing with you,' said The Situation, and here the conversation dropped, and the party sat silent for a minute, while Snooki thought over all she could remember about hippos and grenades, which wasn't much.
The Situation was the first to break the silence. 'What day of the month is it?' he said, turning to Snooki: he had taken his watch out of his pocket, and was looking at it uneasily, shaking it every now and then, and holding it to his ear.
Snooki considered a little, and then said 'The fourth.'
'Two days wrong!' sighed The Situation. 'I told you Axe Body Spray wouldn't suit the works!' he added looking angrily at the March of Gelled Hair.
'It was the BEST body spray,' the March of Gelled Hair meekly replied.
'Yes, but some cologne must have got in as well,' The Situation grumbled: 'you shouldn't have put it in with the gold chain.'
The March of Gelled Hair took the watch and looked at it gloomily: then he dipped it into his cup of SoCo with Lime and looked at it again: but he could think of nothing better to say than his first remark, 'It was the BEST body spray, you know.'
Snooki had been looking over his shoulder with some curiosity. 'What a funny watch!' she remarked. 'It tells the day of the month, and doesn't tell what o'clock it is!'
'Why should it?' muttered The Situation. 'Does YOUR watch tell you what year it is?'
'Of course not,' Snooki replied very readily: 'but that's because it stays the same year for such a long time together.'
'Which is just the case with MINE,' said The Situation.
Snooki felt dreadfully puzzled. The Situation's remark seemed to have no sort of meaning in it, and yet it was certainly English. 'I don't quite understand you,' she said, as politely as she could.
'The Dormouse is asleep again,' said The Situation, and he poured a little SoCo upon its nose.
The Dormouse shook its head impatiently, and said, without opening its eyes, 'Of course, of course; just what I was going to remark myself.'
'Have you guessed the riddle yet?' The Situation said, turning to Snooki again.
'No, I give it up,' Snooki replied: 'what's the answer?'
'I haven't the slightest idea,' said The Situation.
'Nor I,' said the March of Gelled Hair.
Snooki sighed wearily. 'I think you might do something better with the time,' she said, 'than waste it in asking riddles that have no answers.'
'If you knew T-Shirt Time as well as I do,' said The Situation, 'you wouldn't talk about wasting IT. It's HIM.'
'I don't know what you mean,' said Snooki.
'Of course you don't!' The Situation said, tossing his head contemptuously. 'I dare say you never even spoke to T-Shirt Time!'
'Perhaps not,' Snooki cautiously replied: 'but I know I have to beat time when I’m in the club.'
'Ah! that accounts for it,' said The Situation. 'He won't stand beating. Now, if you only kept on good terms with him, he'd do almost anything you liked with the clock. For instance, suppose it were nine o'clock in the morning, just time to begin lessons: you'd only have to whisper a hint to T-Shirt Time, and round goes the clock in a twinkling! Half-past one, time for dinner!'
('I only wish it was,' the March of Gelled Hair said to itself in a whisper.)
'That would be grand, certainly,' said Snooki thoughtfully: 'but then—I shouldn't be hungry for it, you know.'
'Not at first, perhaps,' said The Situation: 'but you could keep it to half-past one as long as you liked.'
'Is that the way YOU manage?' Snooki asked.
The Situation shook his head mournfully. 'Not I!' he replied. 'We quarrelled last March—just before HE went mad, you know—' (pointing with his tea spoon at the March of Gelled Hair,) '—it was at the great concert given by the Queen of Hearts, and I had to sing.
"Twinkle, twinkle, dear grenade!
How you sip that haterade!"
You know the song, perhaps?'
'I've heard something like it,' said Snooki.
'It goes on, you know,' The Situation continued, 'in this way:—
"Up in the club you blow,
Like a played to death hippo.
Twinkle, twinkle—"'
Here the Dormouse shook itself, and began singing in its sleep 'Twinkle, twinkle, twinkle, twinkle—' and went on so long that they had to pinch it to make it stop...
'Well, I'd hardly finished the first verse,' said The Situation, 'when the Queen jumped up and bawled out, "He's murdering the time! Off with his head!"'
'How dreadfully savage!' exclaimed Snooki.
'And ever since that,' The Situation went on in a mournful tone, 'he won't do a thing I ask! It's always six o'clock now.'
A bright idea came into Snooki's head. 'Is that the reason so many tea-things are put out here?' she asked.
'Yes, that's it,' said The Situation with a sigh: 'it's always tea-time, and we've no time to wash the things between whiles.'
'Then you keep moving round, I suppose?' said Snooki.
'Exactly so,' said The Situation: 'as the things get used up.'
'But what happens when you come to the beginning again?' Snooki ventured to ask.
'Suppose we change the subject,' the March of Gelled Hair interrupted, yawning. 'I'm getting tired of this. I vote the young lady tells us a story.'
'I'm afraid I don't know one,'
said Snooki, rather alarmed at the proposal.
'Then the Dormouse shall!' they both cried. 'Wake up, Dormouse!' And they pinched it on both sides at once.
The Dormouse slowly opened his eyes. 'I wasn't asleep,' he said in a hoarse, feeble voice: 'I heard every word you fellows were saying.'
'Tell us a story!' said the March of Gelled Hair.
'Yes, please do!' pleaded Snooki.
'And be quick about it,' added The Situation, 'or you'll be asleep again before it's done.'
'Once upon a time there were three little sisters,' the Dormouse began in a great hurry; 'and their names were Elsie, Lacie, and Tillie; and they lived at the bottom of a well—'
'What did they live on?' said Snooki, who always took a great interest in questions of eating and drinking.
'They lived on treacle,' said the Dormouse, after thinking a minute or two.
'They couldn't have done that, you know,' Snooki gently remarked; 'they'd have been ill.'
'So they were,' said the Dormouse; 'VERY ill.'
Snooki tried to fancy to herself what such an extraordinary ways of living would be like, but it puzzled her too much, so she went on: 'But why did they live at the bottom of a well?'
'Take some more SoCo with Lime,' the March of Gelled Hair said to Snooki, very earnestly.
'I've had nothing yet,' Snooki replied in an offended tone, 'so I can't take more.'
'You mean you can't take LESS,' said The Situation: 'it's very easy to take MORE than nothing.'
'Nobody asked YOUR opinion,' said Snooki.
'Who's making personal remarks now?' The Situation asked triumphantly.
Snooki did not quite know what to say to this: so she helped herself to some SoCo With Lime and calamari, and then turned to the Dormouse, and repeated her question. 'Why did they live at the bottom of a well?'
The Dormouse again took a minute or two to think about it, and then said, 'It was a treacle-well.'
'There's no such thing!' Snooki was beginning very angrily, but The Situation and the March of Gelled Hair went 'Sh! sh!' and the Dormouse sulkily remarked, 'If you can't be civil, you'd better finish the story for yourself.'
'No, please go on!' Snooki said very humbly; 'I won't interrupt again. I dare say there may be ONE.'
'One, indeed!' said the Dormouse indignantly. However, he consented to go on. 'And so these three little sisters—they were learning to draw, you know—'
'What did they draw?' said Snooki, quite forgetting her promise.
'Treacle,' said the Dormouse, without considering at all this time.
'I want a clean cup,' interrupted The Situation: 'let's all move one place on.'
He moved on as he spoke, and the Dormouse followed him: the March of Gelled Hair moved into the Dormouse's place, and Snooki rather unwillingly took the place of the March of Gelled Hair. The Situation was the only one who got any advantage from the change: and Snooki was a good deal worse off than before, as the March of Gelled Hair had just upset the SoCo bottle into his plate.
Snooki did not wish to offend the Dormouse again, so she began very cautiously: 'But I don't understand. Where did they draw the treacle from?'
'You can draw water out of a water-well,' said The Situation; 'so I should think you could draw treacle out of a treacle-well—eh, stupid?'
'But they were IN the well,' Snooki said to the Dormouse, not choosing to notice this last remark.
'Of course they were', said the Dormouse; '—well in.'
This answer so confused poor Snooki, that she let the Dormouse go on for some time without interrupting it.
'They were learning to draw,' the Dormouse went on, yawning and rubbing its eyes, for it was getting very sleepy; 'and they drew all manner of things—everything that begins with an M—'
'Why with an M?' said Snooki.
'Why not?' said the March of Gelled Hair.
Snooki was silent.
The Dormouse had closed its eyes by this time, and was going off into a doze; but, on being pinched by The Situation, it woke up again with a little shriek, and went on: '—that begins with an M, such as mouse-traps, and the moon, and memory, and muchness—you know you say things are "much of a muchness"—did you ever see such a thing as a drawing of a muchness?'
'Really, now you ask me,' said Snooki, very much confused, 'I don't think—'
'Then you shouldn't talk,' said The Situation.
This piece of rudeness was more than Snooki could bear: she got up in great disgust, and walked off; the Dormouse fell asleep instantly, and neither of the others took the least notice of her going, though she looked back once or twice, half hoping that they would call after her: the last time she saw them, they were trying to put the Dormouse into the teapot.
'At any rate I'll never go THERE again!' said Snooki as she picked her way through the wood. 'It's the stupidest tea-party I ever was at in all my life!'
Just as she said this, she noticed that one of the trees had a door leading right into it. 'That's very curious!' she thought. 'But everything's curious today. I think I may as well go in at once.' And in she went.
Once more she found herself in the long hall, and close to the little glass table. 'Now, I'll manage better this time,' she said to herself, and began by taking the little golden key, and unlocking the door that led into the garden. Then she went to work nibbling at the mushroom (she had kept a piece of it in her pocket) till she was about a foot high: then she walked down the little passage: and THEN—she found herself at last in the beautiful garden, among the bright flower-beds and the cool fountains. Now she might finally have a chance to tan.
CHAPTER VIII. The Queen Sammi’s Croquet-Ground
A large rose-tree stood near the entrance of the garden: the roses growing on it were white, but there were three gardeners at it, busily painting them red. Snooki thought this a very curious thing, and she went nearer to watch them, and just as she came up to them she heard one of them say, 'Look out now, Five! Don't go splashing paint over me like that!'
'I couldn't help it,' said Five, in a sulky tone; 'Seven jogged my elbow.'
On which Seven looked up and said, 'That's right, Five! Always lay the blame on others!'
'YOU'D better not talk!' said Five. 'I heard the Queen say only yesterday you deserved to be beheaded!'
'What for?' said the one who had spoken first.
'That's none of YOUR business, Two!' said Seven.
'Yes, it IS his business!' said Five, 'and I'll tell him—it was for bringing the cook tulip-roots instead of onions.'
Seven flung down his brush, and had just begun 'Well, of all the unjust things—' when his eye chanced to fall upon Snooki, as she stood watching them, and he checked himself suddenly: the others looked round also, and all of them bowed low.
'Would you tell me,' said Snooki, a little timidly, 'why you are painting those roses?'
Five and Seven said nothing, but looked at Two. Two began in a low voice, 'Why the fact is, you see, Miss, this here ought to have been a RED rose-tree, and we put a white one in by mistake; and if the Queen was to find it out, we should all have our heads cut off, you know. So you see, Miss, we're doing our best, afore she comes, to—'
At this moment Five, who had been anxiously looking across the garden, called out 'The Queen! The Queen!' and the three gardeners instantly threw themselves flat upon their faces. There was a sound of many footsteps, and Snooki looked round, eager to see the Queen.
First came ten soldiers carrying clubs; these were all shaped like the three gardeners, oblong and flat, with their hands and feet at the corners: next the ten courtiers; these were ornamented all over with shiny foils and embroidered dragons, and walked two and two, as the soldiers did. After these came the royal children; there were ten of them, and the little dears came jumping merrily along hand in hand, in couples: they were all ornamented with hearts.
Next came the guests, mostly Kings and Queens, and among them Snooki recognised JWoww: she was talking in a hurried nervous manner,
smiling at everything that was said, and went by without noticing her. Then followed the Knave of Hearts, carrying the King's crown on a crimson velvet cushion; and, last of all this grand procession, came THE KING AND QUEEN OF HEARTS.
Snooki was rather doubtful whether she ought not to lie down on her face like the three gardeners, but she could not remember ever having heard of such a rule at processions; 'and besides, what would be the use of a procession,' thought she, 'if people had all to lie down upon their faces, so that they couldn't see it?' So she stood still where she was, and waited.
When the procession came opposite to Snooki, they all stopped and looked at her, and the Queen said severely 'Who is this?' She said it to the Knave of Hearts, who only bowed and smiled in reply.
'Idiot!' said the Queen Sammi, tossing her head impatiently; and, turning to Snooki, she went on, 'What's your name, child?'
'My name is Snooki, so please your Majesty,' said Snooki very politely; but she added, to herself, 'Why, they're only a pack of cards, after all. I needn't be afraid of them!'
'And who are THESE?' said the Queen Sammi, pointing to the three gardeners who were lying round the rosetree; for, you see, as they were lying on their faces, and the pattern on their backs was the same as the rest of the pack, she could not tell whether they were gardeners, or soldiers, or courtiers, or three of her own children.
'How should I know?' said Snooki, surprised at her own courage. 'It's no business of MINE.'
The Queen Sammi turned crimson with fury, and, after glaring at her for a moment like a wild beast, screamed 'Off with her pouf! Off—'…
'Nonsense!' said Snooki, very loudly and decidedly, and the Queen Sammi was silent.
The King Ronnie laid his hand upon her arm, and timidly said 'Consider, my dear: she is a very small guidette!'
