Complete Works of Lewis Carroll (85 page)

The Other Professor came in reading a large book, which he held close to his eyes.
One result of his not looking where he was going was that he tripped up, as he crossed the Saloon, flew up into the air, and fell heavily on his face in the middle of the table.

‘What a pity!’
cried the kind-hearted Professor, as he helped him up.

‘It wouldn’t be me, if I didn’t trip,’ said the Other Professor.

The Professor looked much shocked.
‘Almost anything would be better than that!’
he exclaimed.
‘It never does,’ he added, aside to Bruno, ‘to be anybody else, does it?’

To which Bruno gravely replied ‘I’s got nuffin on my plate.’

The Professor hastily put on his spectacles, to make sure that the facts were all right, to begin with: then he turned his jolly round face upon the unfortunate owner of the empty plate.
‘And what would you like next, my little man?’

‘Well,’ Bruno said, a little doubtfully, ‘I think I’ll take some plum-pudding, please—while I think of it.’

‘Oh, Bruno!’
(This was a whisper from Sylvie.) ‘It isn’t good manners to ask for a dish before it comes!’

And Bruno whispered back ‘But I might forget to ask for some, when it comes, oo know—I do forget things, sometimes,’ he added, seeing Sylvie about to whisper more.

And this assertion Sylvie did not venture to contradict.

Meanwhile a chair had been placed for the Other Professor, between the Empress and Sylvie.
Sylvie found him a rather uninteresting neighbour: in fact, she couldn’t afterwards remember that he had made more than one remark to her during the whole banquet, and that was ‘What a comfort a Dictionary is!’
(She told Bruno, afterwards, that she had been too much afraid of him to say more than ‘Yes, Sir’ in reply: and that had been the end of their conversation.
On which Bruno expressed a very decided opinion that that wasn’t worth calling a ‘conversation’ at all.
‘Oo should have asked him a riddle!’
he added triumphantly.
‘Why, I asked the Professor three riddles!
One was that one you asked me in the morning, "How many pennies is there in two shillings?"
And another was—’ ‘Oh, Bruno!’
Sylvie interrupted.
‘That wasn’t a riddle!’
‘It were!’
Bruno fiercely replied.)

By this time a waiter had supplied Bruno with a plateful of something, which drove the plum-pudding out of his head.

‘Another advantage of dinner-parties,’ the Professor cheerfully explained, for the benefit of anyone that would listen, ‘is that it helps you to see your friends.
If you want to see a man, offer him something to eat.
It’s the same rule with a mouse.’

‘This Cat’s very kind to the Mouses,’ Bruno said, stooping to stroke a remarkably fat specimen of the race, that had just waddled into the room, and was rubbing itself affectionately against the leg of his chair.
‘Please, Sylvie, pour some milk in your saucer.
Pussie’s ever so thirsty!’

‘Why do you want my saucer?’
said Sylvie.
‘You’ve got one yourself!’

‘Yes, I know,’ said Bruno: ‘but I wanted mine for to give it some more milk in.’

Sylvie looked unconvinced: however it seemed quite impossible for her ever to refuse what her brother asked: so she quietly filled her saucer with milk, and handed it to Bruno, who got down off his chair to administer it to the cat.

‘The room’s very hot, with all this crowd,’ the Professor said to Sylvie.
‘I wonder why they don’t put some lumps of ice in the grate?
You fill it with lumps of coal in the winter, you know, and you sit around it and enjoy the warmth.
How jolly it would be to fill it now with lumps of ice, and sit round it and enjoy the coolth!’

Hot as it was, Sylvie shivered a little at the idea.
‘It’s very cold outside,’ she said.
‘My feet got almost frozen to-day.’

‘That’s the shoemaker’s fault!’
the Professor cheerfully replied.
‘How often I’ve explained to him that he ought to make boots with little iron frames under the soles, to hold lamps!
But he never thinks.
No one would suffer from cold, if only they would think of those little things.
I always use hot ink, myself, in the winter.
Very few people ever think of that!
Yet how simple it is!’

‘Yes, it’s very simple,’ Sylvie said politely.
‘Has the cat had enough?’
This was to Bruno, who had brought back the saucer only half-emptied.

But Bruno did not hear the question.
‘There’s somebody scratching at the door and wanting to come in,’ he said.
And he scrambled down off his chair, and went and cautiously peeped out through the door-way.

‘Who was it wanted to come in?’
Sylvie asked, as he returned to his place.

‘It were a Mouse,’ said Bruno.
‘And it peepted in.
And it saw the Cat.
And it said "I’ll come in another day."
And I said "Oo needn’t be flightened.
The Cat’s welly kind to Mouses."
And it said "But I’s got some important business, what I must attend to."
And it said "I’ll call again to-morrow."
And it said "Give my love to the Cat."‘

‘What a fat cat it is!’
said the Lord Chancellor, leaning across the Professor to address his small neighbour.
‘It’s quite a wonder!’

‘It was awfully fat when it camed in,’ said Bruno: ‘so it would be more wonderfuller if it got thin all in a minute.’

‘And that was the reason, I suppose,’ the Lord Chancellor suggested, ‘why you didn’t give it the rest of the milk?’

‘No,’ said Bruno.
‘It was a betterer reason.
I tooked the saucer up ‘cause it were so discontented!’

‘It doesn’t look so to me,’ said the Lord Chancellor.
‘What made you think it was discontented?’

‘‘Cause it grumbled in its throat.’

‘Oh, Bruno!’
cried Sylvie.
‘Why, that’s the way cats show they’re pleased!’

Bruno looked doubtful.
‘It’s not a good way,’ he objected.
‘Oo wouldn’t say I were pleased, if I made that noise in my throat!’

‘What a singular boy!’
the Lord Chancellor whispered to himself: but Bruno had caught the words.

‘What do it mean to say "a singular boy"?’
he whispered to Sylvie.

‘It means one boy,’ Sylvie whispered in return.
‘And plural means two or three.’

‘Then I’s welly glad I is a singular boy!’
Bruno said with great emphasis.
‘It would be horrid to be two or three boys!
P’raps they wouldn’t play with me!’

‘Why should they?’
said the Other Professor, suddenly waking up out of a deep reverie.
‘They might be asleep, you know.’

‘Couldn’t, if I was awake,’ Bruno said cunningly.

‘Oh, but they might indeed!’
the Other Professor protested.
‘Boys don’t all go to sleep at once, you know.
So these boys—but who are you talking about?’

‘He never remembers to ask that first!’
the Professor whispered to the children.

‘Why, the rest of me, a-course!’
Bruno exclaimed triumphantly.
‘Supposing I was two or three boys!’

The Other Professor sighed, and seemed to be sinking back into his reverie; but suddenly brightened up again, and addressed the Professor.
‘There’s nothing more to be done now, is there?’

‘Well, there’s the dinner to finish,’ the Professor said with a bewildered smile: ‘and the heat to bear.
I hope you’ll enjoy the dinner—such as it is; and that you wo’n’t mind the heat—such as it isn’t.’

The sentence sounded well, but somehow I couldn’t quite understand it; and the Other Professor seemed to be no better off.

‘Such as it isn’t what?’
he peevishly enquired.

‘It isn’t as hot as it might be,’ the Professor replied, catching at the first idea that came to hand.

‘Ah, I see what you mean now!’
the Other Professor graciously remarked.
‘It’s very badly expressed, but I quite see it now!

Thirteen minutes and a half ago,’ he went on, looking first at Bruno and then at his watch as he spoke, ‘you said "this Cat’s very kind to the Mouses."
It must be a singular animal!’

‘So it are,’ said Bruno, after carefully examining the Cat, to make sure how many there were of it.

‘But how do you know it’s kind to the Mouses—or, more correctly speaking, the Mice?’

‘‘Cause it plays with the Mouses,’ said Bruno; ‘for to amuse them, oo know.’

‘But that is just what I don’t know,’ the Other Professor rejoined.
‘My belief is, it plays with them to kill them!’

‘Oh, that’s quite a accident!’
Bruno began, so eagerly, that it was evident he had already propounded this very difficulty to the Cat.
‘It ‘splained all that to me, while it were drinking the milk.
It said "I teaches the Mouses new games: the Mouses likes it ever so much."
It said "Sometimes little accidents happens: sometimes the Mouses kills theirselves."
It said "I’s always welly sorry, when the Mouses kills theirselves."
It said—’

‘If it was so very sorry,’ Sylvie said, rather disdainfully, ‘it wouldn’t eat the Mouses after they’d killed themselves!’

But this difficulty, also, had evidently not been lost sight of in the exhaustive ethical discussion just concluded.
‘It said—’ (the orator constantly omitted, as superfluous, his own share in the dialogue, and merely gave us the replies of the Cat) ‘It said "Dead Mouses never objecks to be eaten."
It said "There’s no use wasting good Mouses."
It said "Wifful—" sumfinoruvver.
It said "And oo may live to say ‘How much I wiss I had the Mouse that then I frew away!’"
It said—’

‘It hadn’t time to say such a lot of things!’
Sylvie interrupted indignantly.

‘Oo doesn’t know how Cats speaks!’
Bruno rejoined contemptuously.
‘Cats speaks welly quick!’

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

THE PIG-TALE

BY this time the appetites of the guests seemed to be nearly satisfied, and even Bruno had the resolution to say, when the Professor offered him a fourth slice of plum-pudding, ‘I thinks three helpings is enough!’

Suddenly the Professor started as if he had been electrified.
‘Why, I had nearly forgotten the most important part of the entertainment!
The Other Professor is to recite a Tale of a Pig—I mean a Pig-Tale,’ he corrected himself.
‘It has Introductory Verses at the beginning, and at the end.’

‘It ca’n’t have Introductory Verses at the end, can it?’
said Sylvie.

‘Wait till you hear it,’ said the Professor: ‘then you’ll see.
I’m not sure it hasn’t some in the middle, as well.’
Here he rose to his feet, and there was an instant silence through the Banqueting-Hall: they evidently expected a speech.

‘Ladies, and gentlemen,’ the Professor began, ‘the Other Professor is so kind as to recite a Poem.
The title of it is "The Pig-Tale".
He never recited it before!’
(General cheering among the guests.) ‘He will never recite it again!’
(Frantic excitement, and wild cheering all down the hall, the Professor himself mounting the table in hot haste, to lead the cheering, and waving his spectacles in one hand and a spoon in the other.)

Then the Other Professor got up, and began: