"My name's Lewis Carroll," I said, quite gently, for he was much too small to be angry with for answering so uncivilly.
"Duke of Anything?" he asked, just looking at me for a moment, and then going on with his work.
"Not Duke at all," I said, a little ashamed of having to confess it.
"You're big enough to be two Dukes," said the little creature. "I suppose you're Sir Something, then?"
"No," I said, feeling more and more ashamed. "I haven't got any title."
The fairy seemed to think that in that case I really wasn't worth the trouble of talking to, for he quietly went on digging, and tearing the flowers to pieces as fast as he got them out of the ground. After a few minutes I tried again:
"Please tell me what your name is."
"Bruno," the little fellow answered, very readily. "Why didn't you say 'please' before?"
"That's something like what we used to be taught in the nursery," I thought to myself, looking back through the long years (about a hundred and fifty of them) to the time when I used to be a little child myself. And here an idea came into my head, and I asked him, "Aren't you one of the fairies that teach children to be good?"
"Well, we have to do that sometimes," said Bruno, "and a dreadful bother it is."