"So let all be good and beware
Of saying sha'n't and won't and don't care;
For doing wrong is easier far
Than any of the right things I know about are.
And I couldn't make it king of beasts because of it not rhyming with east, so I put the s off beasts on to king. It comes even in the end."
We all said it was a very nice piece of poetry. Noël gets really ill if you don't like what he writes, and then he said, "If it's trying that's wanted, I don't care how hard we try to be good, but we may as well do it some nice way. Let's be Pilgrim's Progress, like I wanted to at first."
And we were all beginning to say we didn't want to, when suddenly Dora said, "Oh, look here! I know. We'll be the Canterbury Pilgrims. People used to go pilgrimages to make themselves good."
"With pease in their shoes," the Dentist said. "It's in a piece of poetry—only the man boiled his pease—which is quite unfair."
"Oh yes," said H. O., "and cocked hats."
"Not cocked—cockled"—it was Alice who said this. "And they had staffs and scrips, and they told each other tales. We might as well."
Oswald and Dora had been reading about the Canterbury Pilgrims in a book called A Short History of the English People. It is not at all short really—three fat volumes—but it has jolly good pictures. It was written by a gentleman named Green. So Oswald said:
"All right. I'll be the Knight."
"I'll be the wife of Bath," Dora said. "What will you be, Dicky?"