‘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?’
‘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!’
There was silence in a moment, and several of the pink daisies turned
white.
‘That’s right!’ said the Tiger-lily. ‘The daisies are worst of all. When
one speaks, they all begin together, and it’s enough to make one wither
to hear the way they go on!’
‘How is it you can all talk so nicely?’ Alice said, hoping to get it
into a better temper by a compliment. ‘I’ve been in many gardens before,
but none of the flowers could 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, ‘but I don’t see what that has
to do with it.’
‘In most gardens,’ the Tiger-lily said, ‘they make the beds 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.
‘It’s MY opinion that you never think AT ALL,’ the Rose said in a rather
severe tone.
‘I never saw anybody that looked stupider,’ a Violet said, so suddenly,
that Alice quite jumped; for it hadn’t spoken before.
‘Hold YOUR tongue!’ cried the Tiger-lily. ‘As if YOU ever saw anybody!
You keep your head under the leaves, and snore away there, till you know
no more what’s going on in the world, than if you were a bud!’
