Did you ever play at Croquet? There are large wooden balls, painted with different colours, that you have to roll about; and arches of wire, that you have to send them through; and great wooden mallets, with long handles, to knock the balls about with.

Now look at the picture, and you’ll see that Alice has just been playing a Game of Croquet.

“But she couldn’t play, with that great red what’s-its-name in her arms! Why, how could she hold the mallet?”
Alice holding a flamingo and talking to the Duchess

Why, my dear Child, that great red what’s-its-name (its real name is “a Flamingo”) is the mallet! In this Croquet-Game, the balls were[46] live Hedge-hogs——you know a hedge-hog can roll itself up into a ball?——and the mallets were live Flamingos!

So Alice is just resting from the Game, for a minute, to have a chat with that dear old thing, the Duchess: and of course she keeps her mallet under her arm, so as not to lose it.

“But I don’t think she was a dear old thing, one bit! To call her Baby a Pig, and to want to chop off Alice’s head!”

Oh, that was only a joke, about ch............