‘You might make a joke on that,’ said the little voice close to her ear: ‘something about “you would if you could,” you know.’
‘Don’t tease so,’ said Alice, looking about in vain to see where the voice came from; ‘if you’re so anxious to have a joke made, why don’t you make one yourself?’
The little voice sighed deeply: it was very unhappy, evidently, and Alice would have said something pitying to comfort it, ‘If it would only sigh like other people!’ she thought. But this was such a wonderfully small sigh, that she wouldn’t have heard it at all, if it hadn’t come quite close to her ear. The consequence of this was that it tickled her ear very much, and quite took off her thoughts from the unhappiness of the poor little creature.
‘I know you are a friend,’ the little voice went on; ‘a dear friend, and an old friend. And you wo’n’t hurt me, though I am an insect.’
‘What kind of insect?’ Alice inquired a little anxiously. What she really wanted to know was, whether it could sting or not, but she thought this wouldn’t be quite a civil question to ask.
‘What, then you don’t—’ the little voice began, when it was drowned by a shrill scream from the engine, and everybody jumped up in alarm, Alice among the rest.
[•] The Horse, who had put his head out of the window, quietly drew it in and said, ‘It’s only a brook we have to jump over.’ Everybody seemed satisfied with this, though Alice felt a little nervous at the idea of trains jumping at all. ‘However, it’ll take us into the Fourth Square, that’s some comfort!’ she said to herself. In another moment she felt the carriage rise straight up into the air, and in her fright she caught at the thing nearest to her hand, which happened to be the Goat’s beard.
*
But the beard seemed to melt away as she touched it, and she found herself sitting quietly under a tree—while the Gnat (for that was the insect she had been talking to) was balancing itself on a twig just over her head, and fanning her with its wings.
It certainly was a very large Gnat: ‘about the size of a chicken,’ Alice thought. Still, she couldn’t feel nervous with it, after they had been talking together so long. ‘—then you don’t like all insects?’ the Gnat went on, as quietly as if nothing had happened.
‘I like them when they can talk,’ Alice said. ‘None of them ever talk, where I come from.’
‘What sort of insects do you rejoice in, where you come from?’ the Gnat inquired.
‘I don’t rejoice in insects at all,’ Alice explained, ‘because I’m rather afraid of them—at least the large kinds. But I can tell you the names of some of them.’
‘Of course they answer to their names?’ the Gnat remarked carelessly.
‘I never knew them do it.’
‘What’s the use of their having names,’ the Gnat said, ‘if they wo’n’t answer to them?’
‘No use to them,’ said Alice; ‘but it’s useful to the people who name them, I suppose. If not, why do things have names at all?’
‘I ca’n’t say,’ the Gnat replied. ‘Further on, in the wood down there, they’ve got no names—however, go on with your list of insects: you’re wasting time.’
‘Well, there’s the Horse-fly,’ Alice began, counting off the names on her fingers.
‘All right,’ said the Gnat: ‘half way up that bush, you’ll see a Rocking-horse-fly, if you look. It’s made entirely of wood, and gets about by swinging itself from branch to branch.’
‘What does it live on?’ Alice asked, with great curiosity.
‘Sap and sawdust,’ said the Gnat. ‘Go on with the list.’
Alice looked up at the Rocking-horse-fly with great interest, and made up her mind that it must have been just repainted, it looked so bright and sticky; and then she went on.
‘And there’s the Dragon-fly.’
‘Look on the branch above your head,’ said the Gnat, ‘and there you’ll find a Snap-dragon-fly. Its body is made of plum-pudding, its wings of holly-leaves, and its head is a raisin burning in brandy.’
‘And what does it live on?’
‘Frumenty and mince pie,’ the Gnat replied; ‘and it makes its nest in a Christmas box.’
‘And then there’s the Butterfly,’ Alice went on, after she had taken a good look at the insect with its head on fire, and had thought to herself, ‘I wonder if that’s the reason insects are so fond of flying into candles—because they want to turn into Snap-dragon-flies!’
‘Crawling at your feet,’ said the Gnat (Alice drew her feet back in some alarm), ‘you may observe a Bread-and-butter-fly. Its wings are thin slices of bread-and-butter, its body is a crust, and its head is a lump of sugar.’
‘And what does it live on?’
‘Weak tea with cream in it.’
A new difficulty came into Alice’s head. ‘Supposing it couldn’t find any?’ she suggested.
‘Then it would die, of course.’
‘But that must happen very often,’ Alice remarked thoughtfully.
‘It always happens,’ said the Gnat.
After this, Alice was silent for a minute or two, pondering. The Gnat amused itself meanwhile by humming round and round her head: at last it settled again and remarked, ‘I suppose you don’t want to lose your name?’
‘No, indeed,’ Alice said, a little anxiously.
‘And yet I don’t know,’ the Gnat went on in a careless tone: ‘only think how convenient it would be if you could manage to go home without it! For instance, if the governess wanted to call you to your lessons, she would call out “come here—,” and there she would have to leave off, because there wouldn’t be any name for her to call, and of course you wouldn’t have to go, you know.’
‘That would never do, I’m sure,’ said Alice: ‘the governess would never think of excusing me lessons for that. If she couldn’t remember my name, she’d call me “Miss!” as the servants do.’
‘Well, if she said “Miss,” and didn’t say anything more,’ the Gnat remarked, ‘of course you’d miss your lessons. That’s a joke. I wish you had made it.’
‘Why do you wish I had made it?’ Alice asked. ‘It’s a very bad one.’
But the Gnat only sighed deeply, while two large tears came rolling down its cheeks.
‘You shouldn’t make jokes,’ Alice said, ‘if it makes you so unhappy.’
Then came another of those melancholy little sighs, and this time the poor Gnat really seemed to have sighed itself away, for, when Alice looked up, there was nothing whatever to be seen on the twig, and, as she was getting quite chilly with sitting still so long, she got up and walked on.
She very soon came to an open field, with a wood on the other side of it: it looked much darker than the last wood, and Alice felt a little timid