'Now the cleverest thing of the sort that I ever did,' he went on after a pause, 'was inventing a new pudding during the meat-course.'
'In time to have it cooked for the next course?' said Alice.
'Well, not the NEXT course,' the Knight said in a slow thoughtful tone, 'no, certainly not the next COURSE.'
'Then it would have to be the next day. I suppose you wouldn't have two pudding-courses in one dinner?'
'Well, not the NEXT day,' the Knight repeated as before, 'not the next DAY. In fact,' he went on, holding his head down, and his voice getting lower and lower, 'I don't believe that pudding ever WAS cooked! In fact, I don't believe that pudding ever WILL be cooked! And yet it was a very clever pudding to invent.'
'What did you mean it to be made of?' Alice asked, hoping to cheer him up, for the poor Knight seemed quite low-spirited about it.
'It began with blotting paper,' the Knight answered with a groan.
'That wouldn't be very nice, I'm afraid — '
'Not very nice ALONE,' he interrupted, quite eagerly, 'but you've no idea what a difference it makes mixing it with other things — such as gunpowder and sealing-wax. And here I must leave you.' They had just come to the end of the wood.
Alice could only look puzzled: she was thinking of the pudding.
[see book for omitted portion]
http://www.gutenberg.org/files/12/12-h/12-h.htm#link2HCH0008
So they shook hands, and then the Knight rode slowly away into the forest.
'It won't take long to see him OFF, I expect,' Alice said to herself, as she stood watching him. 'There he goes! Right on his head as usual! However, he gets on again pretty easily — that comes of having so many things hung round the horse — '
So she went on talking to herself as she watched the horse walking leisurely along the road and the Knight tumbling off, first on one side and then on the other. After the fourth or fifth tumble, he reached the turn, and then she waved her handkerchief to him and waited till he was out of sight.
'I hope it encouraged him,' she said, as she turned to run down the hill,: 'and now for the last brook, and to be a Queen! How grand it sounds!' A very few steps brought her to the edge of the brook. 'The Eighth Square at last!' she cried as she bounded across,
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and threw herself down to rest on a lawn as soft as moss, with little flower-beds dotted about it here and there. 'Oh, how glad I am to get here! And what IS this on my head?' she exclaimed in a tone of dismay, as she put her hands up to something very heavy and fitted tight all round her head.
'But how CAN it have got there without my knowing it?' she said to herself as she lifted it off and set it on her lap to make out what it could possibly be.
It was a golden crown.
Next: Queen Alice
(600 words)
