...All this was lost on Alice, who was still looking intently along the road, shading her eyes with one hand. 'I see somebody now!' she exclaimed at last. 'But he's coming very slowly— and what curious attitudes he goes into!' (For the messenger kept skipping up and down, and wriggling like an eel, as he came along, with his great hands spread out like fans on each side.)
'Not at all,' said the King. 'He's an Anglo-Saxon Messenger-and those are Anglo-Saxon attitudes. He only does them when he's happy. His name is Haigha.' (He pronounced it so as to rhyme with 'mayor.')
'I love my love with an H,' Alice couldn't help beginning, 'because he is Happy. I hate him with an H, because he is Hideous. I fed him with— with— with Ham-sandwiches and Hay. His name is Haigha, and he lives—'
'He lives on the Hill,' the King remarked simply, without the least idea that he was joining in the game, while Alice was still hesitating for the name of a town beginning with H. 'The other Messenger's called Hatta. I must have two, you know— to come and go. Once to come, and one to go.'
'I beg your pardon?' said Alice.
'It isn't respectable to beg,' said the King.
'I only meant that I didn't understand,' said Alice. 'Why one to come and one to go?'
'Didn't I tell you?' the King repeated impatiently. 'I must have Two— to fetch and carry. One to fetch, and one to carry.'
At this moment the Messenger arrived: he was far too much out of breath to say a word, and could only wave his hands about, and make the most fearful faces at the poor King.
'This young lady loves you with an H,' the King said, introducing Alice in the hope of turning off the Messenger's attention from himself— but it was no use— the Anglo-Saxon attitudes only got more extraordinary every moment, while the great eyes rolled wildly from side to side.
'You alarm me!' said the King. 'I feel faint— Give me a ham sandwich!'
On which the Messenger, to Alice's great amusement, opened a bag that hung round his neck, and handed a sandwich to the King, who devoured it greedily.
'Another sandwich!' said the King.
'There's nothing but hay left now,' the Messenger said, peeping into the bag.
'Hay, then,' the King murmured in a faint whisper.
Alice was glad to see that it revived him a good deal. 'There's nothing like eating hay when you're faint,' he remarked to her, as he munched away.
I think Ms Greene's notions are as absurd as Lewis Carroll's tales, which were, after all, meant to be absurd.
= new reply since forum marked as read
