Alice considered. “I should think——”
“Of course you’d think,” said the White Queen, “ever so much. You’d go on thinking off and on for years. I can’t tell you how much I’ve thought about it myself; I still think about it a little, just for practice—principally on Tuesdays.”
“I should think,” continued Alice, without noticing the interruption, “that the first thing would be to find the money.”
“Dear, no,” said the Red Queen pityingly, “that wouldn’t be Political Economy. The first thing would be to find an excuse for dropping the question.”
(With apologies to Sir John Tenniel.)
“What a dreadful lot of unnecessary business we’re talking!” said the White Queen fretfully. “It makes me quite miserable—carries me back to the days when I was in Opposition. Can’t she sing us something?”
“What shall I sing you?” asked Alice.
“Oh, anything soothing; the ‘Intercessional,’ if you like.”
Alice began, but the words didn’t come a bit right, and she wasn’t at all sure how the Queens would take it: