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Page:Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There.djvu/215

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QUEEN ALICE.
195

"But they should be five times as cold, by the same rule——"

"Just so!" cried the Red Queen. "Five times as warm, and five times as cold——just as I'm five times as rich as you are, and five times as clever!"

Alice sighed and gave it up. "It's exactly like a riddle with no answer!" she thought.

"Humpty Dumpty saw it too," the White Queen went on in a low voice, more as if she were talking to herself. "He came to the door with a corkscrew in his hand——"

"What did he want?" said the Red Queen.

"He said he would come in," the White Queen went on, "because he was looking for a hippopotamus. Now, as it happened, there wasn't such a thing in the house, that morning."

"Is there generally?" Alice asked in an astonished tone.

"Well, only on Thursdays," said the Queen.

"I know what he came for," said Alice: "he wanted to punish the fish, because——"