y came, I should have to go without
fifty dinners at once! Well, I shouldn't mind THAT much! I'd far rather
go without them than eat them!

'Do you hear the snow against the window-panes, Kitty? How nice and soft
it sounds! Just as if some one was kissing the window all over outside.
I wonder if the snow LOVES the trees and fields, that it kisses them so
gently? And then it covers them up snug, you know, with a white quilt;
and perhaps it says, "Go to sleep, darlings, till the summer comes
again." And when they wake up in the summer, Kitty, they dress
themselves all in green, and dance about--whenever the wind blows--oh,
that's very pretty!' cried Alice, dropping the ball of worsted to clap
her hands. 'And I do so WISH it was true! I'm sure the woods look sleepy
in the autumn, when the leaves are getting brown.

'Kitty, can you play chess? Now, don't smile, my dear, I'm asking it
seriously. Because, when we were playing just now, you watched just as
if you understood it: and when I said "Check!" you purred! Well, it WAS
a nice check, Kitty, and really I might have won, if it hadn't been for
that nasty Knight, that came wiggling down among my pieces. Kitty, dear,
let's pretend--' And here I wish I could tell you half the things Alice
used to say, beginning with her favourite phrase 'Let's pretend.' She
had had quite a long argument with her sister only the day before--all
because Alice had begun with 'Let's pretend we're kings and queens;' and
her sister, who liked being very exact, had argued that they couldn't,
because there were only two of them, and Alice had been reduced at last
to say, 'Well, YOU can be one of them then, and I'LL be all the rest.'
And once she had really frightened her old nurse by shouting suddenly in
her ear, 'Nurse! Do let's pretend that I'm a hungry hyaena, and you're a
bone.'

But this is taking us away from Alice's speech to the kitten. 'Let's
pretend that you're the Red Queen, Kitty! Do you know, I think if you
sat up and folded your arms, you'd look exactly like her. Now do try,
there's a dear!' And Alice got the Red Queen off the table, and set it
up before the kitten as a model for it to imitate: however, the thing
didn't succeed, principally, Alice said, because the kitten wouldn't
fold its arms properly. So, to punish it, she held it up to the
Looking-glass, that it might see how sulky it was--'and if you're not
good directly,' she added, 'I'll put you through into Looking-glass
Hous