"Only when I have a cold," answered Uncle Wiggily. "Why do you ask?" and he began to think he was having a very funny adventure indeed. "Why should I be fond of sneezing?"
"Because you'll have to whether you like it or not," answered Alice. "The Duchess is going to talcum powder the baby now—it's just had a bath."
With that the duchess, who is the wife of a duke, you know, called:
"Here, cook! Never mind the soup. Give me the pepper!"
"Goodness me sakes alive and some horseradish lollypops!" cried Uncle Wiggily. "She isn't going to talcum powder the baby with pepper, is she?"
"Of course," answered Alice. "It's that way in the book from which I came to have an adventure with you, so, of course, pepper it has to be. Look out—here come the sneezes!" and Alice got out her handkerchief.
Uncle Wiggily saw the duchess, with a funny smile on her big face, take the pepper-box the cook gave her and start to sprinkle the black stuff over the baby in her lap. The baby was cooing and gurgling—as all babies do after their bath—and didn't seem at all to mind her being peppered.
"They season chickens and turkeys with salt and pepper, so why not babies?" asked Alice of Uncle Wiggily. The bunny gentleman was just going to say he did not know the answer to that riddle, when the door suddenly opened again and in came a great big dodo bird, which is something like a skillery-scalery alligator, only worse, with a beak like that of a mosquito.