The Most Beloved Children's Books - Lewis Carroll Edition. Льюис Кэрролл

He said “I go my ways,

       And when I find a mountain-rill,

       I set it in a blaze;

       And thence they make a stuff they call

       Rolands’ Macassar Oil—

       Yet twopence-halfpenny is all

       They give me for my toil.”

      But I was thinking of a way

       To feed oneself on batter,

       And so go on from day to day

       Getting a little fatter.

       I shook him well from side to side,

       Until his face was blue:

       “Come, tell me how you live,” I cried,

       “And what it is you do!”

      He said “I hunt for haddocks’ eyes

       Among the heather bright,

       And work them into waistcoat-buttons

       In the silent night.

       And these I do not sell for gold

       Or coin of silvery shine

       But for a copper halfpenny,

       And that will purchase nine.

      “I sometimes dig for buttered rolls,

       Or set limed twigs for crabs;

       I sometimes search the grassy knolls

       For wheels of Hansom-cabs.

       And that’s the way” (he gave a wink)

       “By which I get my wealth—

       And very gladly will I drink

       Your Honour’s noble health.”

      I heard him then, for I had just

       Completed my design

       To keep the Menai bridge from rust

       By boiling it in wine.

       I thanked him much for telling me

       The way he got his wealth,

       But chiefly for his wish that he

       Might drink my noble health.

      And now, if e’er by chance I put

       My fingers into glue

       Or madly squeeze a right-hand foot

       Into a left-hand shoe,

       Or if I drop upon my toe

       A very heavy weight,

       I weep, for it reminds me so,

       Of that old man I used to know—

       Whose look was mild, whose speech was slow,

       Whose hair was whiter than the snow,

       Whose face was very like a crow,

       With eyes, like cinders, all aglow,

       Who seemed distracted with his woe,

       Who rocked his body to and fro,

       And muttered mumblingly and low,

       As if his mouth were full of dough,

       Who snorted like a buffalo—

       That summer evening, long ago,

       A-sitting on a gate.’

       As the Knight sang the last words of the ballad, he gathered up the reins, and turned his horse’s head along the road by which they had come. ‘You’ve only a few yards to go,’ he said, ‘down the hill and over that little brook, and then you’ll be a Queen—But you’ll stay and see me off first?’ he added as Alice turned with an eager look in the direction to which he pointed. ‘I sha’n’t be long. You’ll wait and wave your handkerchief when I get to that turn in the road? I think it’ll encourage me, you see.’

      ‘Of course I’ll wait,’ said Alice: ‘and thank you very much for coming so far—and for the song—I liked it very much.’

      ‘I hope so,’ the Knight said doubtfully: ‘but you didn’t cry so much as I thought you would.’

[•] So they shook hands, and then the Knight rode slowly away into the forest. ‘It wo’n’t take long to see him off, I expect,’ Alice said to herself, as she stood watching him. ‘There he goes! Right on his head as usual! However, he gets on again pretty easily—that comes of having so many things hung round the horse—’ So she went on talking to herself, as she watched the horse walking leisurely along the road, and the Knight tumbling off, first on one side and then on the other. After the fourth or fifth tumble he reached the turn, and then she waved her handkerchief to him, and waited till he was out of sight.

[•] ‘I hope it encouraged him,’ she said, as she turned to run down the hill: ‘and now for the last brook, and to be a Queen! How grand it sounds!’ A very few steps brought her to the edge of the brook. ‘The Eighth Square at last!’ she cried as she bounded across, *

      and threw herself down to rest on a lawn as soft as moss, with little flower-beds dotted about it here and there. ‘Oh, how glad I am to get here! And what is this on my head?’ she exclaimed in a tone of dismay, as she put her hands up to something very heavy, and fitted tight all round her head.

      ‘But how can it have got there without my knowing it?’ she said to herself, as she lifted it off, and set it on her lap to make out what it could possibly be.

      It was a golden crown.