“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!” “I—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!” “I _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.” “I 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 and then at the other, and growing sometimes taller and sometimes shorter, until she had succeeded in bringing herself down to her usual height.