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30

CHAPTER V. ADVICE FROM A CATERPILLAR

'Serpent, I say again!' repeated the Pigeon, but in a more subdued tone, and 
added with a kind of sob, 'I've tried every way, and nothing seems to suit them!' 

'I haven't the least idea what you're talking about,' said Alice. 

'I've tried the roots of trees, and I've tried banks, and I've tried hedges,' the 
Pigeon went on, without attending to her, 'but those serpents! There's no pleasing 
them!' 

Alice was more and more puzzled, but she thought there was no use in saying 
anything more till the Pigeon had finished. 

As if it wasn't trouble enough hatching the eggs,' said the Pigeon, 'but I must 
be on the look-out for serpents night and day! Why, I haven't had a wink of sleep 
these three weeks!' 

'I'm very sorry you've been annoyed,' said Alice, who was beginning to see 
its meaning. 

And just as I'd taken the highest tree in the wood,' continued the Pigeon, 
raising its voice to a shriek, 'and just as I was thinking I should be free of them at 
last, they must needs come wriggling down from the sky! Ugh, Serpent!' 

'But I'm not a serpent, I tell you!' said Alice, 'I'm a - I'm a - ' 

'Well! What are you?' said the Pigeon, 'I can see you're trying to invent 
something!' 

T - I'm a little girl,' said Alice, rather doubtfully, as she remembered the 
number of changes she had gone through that day. 

A likely story indeed!' said the Pigeon in a tone of the deepest contempt, 
'I've seen a good many little girls in my time, but never one with such a neck as 
that! No, no! You're a serpent; and there's no use denying it. I suppose you'll be 
telling me next that you never tasted an egg!' 

T have tasted eggs, certainly,' said Alice, who was a very truthful child, 'but 
little girls eat eggs quite as much as serpents do, you know.' 

T don't believe it,' said the Pigeon, 'but if they do, why then they're a kind of 
serpent, that's all I can say.' 

This was such a new idea to Alice, that she was quite silent for a minute or 
two, which gave the Pigeon the opportunity of adding, 'You're looking for eggs, 
I know that well enough; and what does it matter to me whether you're a little girl 
or a serpent?' 

'It matters a good deal to me,' said Alice hastily, 'but I'm not looking for eggs, 
as it happens; and if I was, I shouldn't want yours: I don't like them raw.' 

'Well, be off, then!' said the Pigeon in a sulky tone, as it settled down again 
into its nest. Alice crouched down among the trees as well as she could, for her 
neck kept getting entangled among the branches, and every now and then she had 
to stop and untwist it. After a while she remembered that she still held the pieces 
of mushroom in her hands and she set to work very carefully, nibbling first at one