What mattered it to her just then that the rushes had begun to fade, and to lose all their scent and beauty, from the very moment that she picked them? Even real scented rushes, you know, last only a very little while--and these, being dream-rushes, melted away almost like snow, as they lay in heaps at her feet-- but Alice hardly noticed this, there were so many other curious things to think about.
They hadn't gone much farther before the blade of one of the oars got fast in the water and WOULDN'T come out again (so Alice explained it afterwards), and the consequence was that the handle of it caught her under the chin, and, in spite of a series of little shrieks of 'Oh, oh, oh!' from poor Alice, it swept her straight off the seat, and down among the heap of rushes.
However, she wasn't hurt, and was soon up again: the Sheep went on with her knitting all the while, just as if nothing had happened. 'That was a nice crab you caught!' she remarked, as Alice got back into her place, very much relieved to find herself still in the boat.
'Was it? I didn't see it,' Said Alice, peeping cautiously over the side of the boat into the dark water. 'I wish it hadn't let go--I should so like to see a little crab to take home with me!' But the Sheep only laughed scornfully, and went on with her knitting.
'Are there many crabs here?' said Alice.
'Crabs, and all sorts of things,' said the Sheep: 'plenty of choice, only make up your mind. Now, what DO you want to buy?'
'To buy!' Alice echoed in a tone that was half astonished and half frightened--for the oars, and the boat, and the river, had vanished all in a moment, and she was back again in the little dark shop.
'I should like to buy an egg, please,' she said timidly. 'How do you sell them?'
'Fivepence farthing for one--Twopence for two,' the Sheep replied.
'Then two are cheaper than one?' Alice said in a surprised tone, taking out her purse.
'Only you MUST eat them both, if you buy two,' said the Sheep.
'Then I'll have ONE, please,' said Alice, as she put the money down on the counter. For she thought to herself, 'They mightn't be at all nice, you know.'
The Sheep took the money, and put it away in a box: then she said 'I never put things into people's hands--that would never do--you must get it for yourself.' And so saying, she went off to the other end of the shop, and set the egg upright on a shelf.
'I wonder WHY it wouldn't do?' thought Alice, as she groped her way among the tables and chairs, for the shop was very dark towards the end. 'The egg seems to get further away the more I walk towards it. Let me see, is this a chair? Why, it's got branches, I declare! How very odd to find trees growing here! And actually here's a little brook! Well, this is the very queerest shop I ever saw!'
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So she went on, wondering more and more at every step, as everything turned into a tree the moment she came up to it, and she quite expected the egg to do the same.
CHAPTER VI
Humpty Dumpty
However, the egg only got larger and larger, and more and more human: when she had come within a few yards of it, she saw that it had eyes and a nose and mouth; and when she had come close to it, she saw clearly that it was HUMPTY DUMPTY himself. 'It can't be anybody else!' she said to herself. 'I'm as certain of it, as if his name were written all over his face.'
It might have been written a hundred times, easily, on that enormous face. Humpty Dumpty was sitting with his legs crossed, like a Turk, on the top of a high wall--such a narrow one that Alice quite wondered how he could keep his balance--and, as his eyes were steadily fixed in the opposite direction, and he didn't take the least notice of her, she thought he must be a stuffed figure after all.