"Because I haven't got wings, I suppose," the Queen said.
"You shouldn't suppose," the bat said sharply. "Half the evils in the world come from people supposing."
"What are the 'evils in the world'?" the Queen said.
And the bat answered, "What! don't you even know that, you ignorant little thing? The evils in the world are ever so many—strong winds so that one can't fly straight, and cold weather so that the flies die, and rheumatic pains in one's wing-joints, and cats and swallows."
"I like cats," the Queen said; "and swallows are very pretty."
"That's what you think," the bat said angrily. "But you're nobody. Now, I hate cats because they always want to eat me; and I hate swallows because they always eat what I want to eat—flies. They are the real evils of the world."
The Queen saw that he was angry, and she held her peace for a while.
"I'm not nobody, all the same," she thought to herself, "I'm the Queen of the 'most prosperous and contented nation in the world,' though I don't quite understand what it means. But it will never do to offend the bat, it is so dreadfully dull when he won't talk;" so she said, "Would it be possible for me to fly?" for a great longing had come into her heart to be able to fly away out of the garden with the roses and the marble bench.
"Well, it certainly won't be if you suppose you can't," the bat said. "Now, when I was a mouse, I used to suppose I couldn't fly, and so, of course, I couldn't. But, one day, I saved the life of a cockchafer that had got into a beetle-trap, and he told me how it was to be managed."
"How?" the Queen said eagerly.