but the tops
of the trees under which she had been wandering, when a sharp hiss made
her draw back in a hurry: a large pigeon had flown into her face, and
was beating her violently with its wings.

"Serpent!" screamed the Pigeon.

"I'm _not_ a serpent!" said Alice indignantly. "Let me alone!"

"Serpent, I say again!" repeated the Pigeon, but in a more subdued tone,
and added with a kind of a sob, "I've tried every way, and nothing seems
to suit them!"

"I haven't the least idea what you're talking about," said Alice.

"I've tried the roots of trees, and I've tried banks, and I've tried
hedges," the Pigeon went on, without attending to her; "but those
serpents! There's no pleasing them!"

Alice was more and more puzzled, but she thought there was no use in
saying anything more till the Pigeon had finished.

"As if it wasn't trouble enough hatching the eggs," said the Pigeon;
"but I must be on the look-out for serpents night and day! Why, I
haven't had a wink of sleep these three weeks!"

"I'm very sorry you've been annoyed," said Alice, who was beginning to
see its meaning.

[Illustration]

"And just as I'd taken the highest tree in the wood," continued the
Pigeon, raising its voice to a shriek, "and just as I was thinking I
should be free of them at last, they must needs come wriggling down from
the sky! Ugh, Serpent!"

"But I'm _not_ a serpent, I tell you!" said Alice. "I'm a---- I'm a
----"

"Well! _What_ are you?" said the Pigeon. "I can see you're trying to
invent something!"

"I--I'm a little girl," said Alice, rather doubtfully, as she remembered
the number of changes she had gone through that day.

"A likely story indeed!" said the Pigeon in a tone of the deepest
contempt. "I've seen a good many little girls in my time, but never
_one_ with such a neck as that! No, no! You're a serpent; and there's no
use denying it. I suppose you'll be telling me next that you never
tasted an egg!"

"I _have_ tasted eggs, certainly," said Alice, who was a very truthful
child; "but little girls eat eggs quite as much as serpents do, you
know."

"I don't believe it," said the Pigeon; "but if they do, why then
they're a kind of serpent, that's all I can say."

This was such a new idea to Alice, that she was quite silent for a
minute or two, which gave the Pigeon the opportunity of adding, "You're
looking for eggs, I know _that_ well enough; and what does it matter to
me whether you're a little girl or a ser