"Get up!" said the Queen in a shrill loud voice, and the three men jumped up, at once, and bowed to the King, and Queen and to the whole crowd. "Leave off that!" screamed the Queen; "you make me gid-dy." Then she turned to the rose tree and asked, "What have you been do-ing here?" "May it please your ma-jes-ty," said Two, and went down on one knee as he spoke, "we were try-ing--" "I see!" said the Queen, who in the mean time had seen that some of the ros-es were paint-ed red and some were still white. "Off with their heads!" and the crowd moved on, while three of the sol-diers stayed to cut off the heads of the poor men, who ran to Al-ice for help. "They shan't hurt you," she said, as she hid them in a large flow-er pot that stood near. The three sol-diers walked round and looked for them a short while, then marched off. "Are their heads off?" shout-ed the Queen. "Their heads are gone, if it please your ma-jes-ty," the sol-diers shouted back. "That's right!" shouted the Queen. "Can you play cro-quet?" she asked Al-ice. "Yes," shouted Al-ice. "Come on then!" roared the Queen, and Al-ice went on with them. "It's--it's a fine day!" said a weak voice at her side. It was the White Rab-bit who peeped up in-to her face. "Yes," said Al-ice: "where's the Duch-ess?" "Hush! Hush!" said the Rab-bit, in a low tone. He looked back as he spoke, then raised up on tip-toe, put his mouth close to her ear and whis-pered, "She's to have her head cut off." "What for?" asked Al-ice. "Did you say, 'What a pit-y!'?" the Rab-bit asked. "No, I didn't," said Al-ice: "I don't think it's at all a pit-y. I said 'What for?'" [Illustration] "She boxed the Queen's ears--" the Rab-bit be-gan. Al-ice gave a lit-tle scream of joy. "Oh, hush!" the Rab-bit whis-pered in a great fright. "The Queen will hear you! You see she came late, and the Queen said--" "Each one to his place!" shout-ed the Queen in a loud voice, and peo-ple ran this way and that in great haste and soon each one had found his place, and the game be-gan. Al-ice thought she had nev-er seen such a strange cro-quet ground in all her life: it was all ridges; the balls were live hedge-hogs; the mal-lets were live birds, and the sol-diers bent down and stood on their hands and feet to make the arch-es.