Alice's Adventures in Wonderland: The Queen's Croquet-Ground

Near the entrance to a garden, Alice saw three gardeners painting the white roses on a big rose-tree red.They were playing cards, and their names were Two, Five and Seven.They told Alice that they had planted the wrong tree, and that if the Queen found out, she would cut off their heads.

Suddenly the gardeners cried, “The Queen! The Queen!” and threw themselves flat on their faces.Soldiers, courtiers and royal children walked past, and last of all came the King and Queen of Hearts.Alice did not lie down, because she thought, “What is the use of a procession if everybody lies on their faces and cannot see it?”

The Queen stopped and asked Alice her name, and Alice answered politely, but she thought, “They are only a pack of cards, so I need not be afraid.”When the Queen shouted, “Off with her head!” Alice said, “Nonsense!” in a loud voice, and the Queen was silent.Then the Queen saw the painted roses and cried, “Off with their heads!” but Alice hid the poor gardeners in a flower-pot, and the soldiers could not find them.

The Queen asked Alice, “Can you play croquet?” and Alice shouted, “Yes!” and joined the procession.The White Rabbit whispered to her that the Duchess was in great trouble, and Alice laughed when she heard why: the Duchess had hit the Queen on the ear.The croquet-ground was full of hills and ditches, the balls were live hedgehogs, the mallets were living flamingoes, and the soldiers bent over to make the arches.

Alice found it very hard to play, because her flamingo kept twisting its neck to look at her, and her hedgehog kept unrolling and walking away.Nobody waited for a turn, everybody quarrelled, and the Queen walked about shouting “Off with his head!” almost every minute.Alice began to feel afraid, and she wondered how anyone was left alive in a place where people loved cutting off heads.

Then she saw a grin in the air, and it grew into the Cheshire Cat’s head, so she had someone to talk to at last.But when the King and the Queen wanted the Cat’s head cut off, the executioner said that you could not cut off a head without a body, and before anything was decided, the Cat’s head slowly faded away.