“Dear me,” said Alice. “Do you suppose I might get a peep at the Queen, without being seen?”
“Easy enough,” said the wooden man, “for there she is—that long-haired doll with the purple robe. She likes to be looked at, and I need hardly remark that her hair is false. She’s awfully stuck up, though, and we won’t tarry long, for she’d only snub us.”
“What a funny crown she is wearing,” laughed Alice, turning her head to look back.
“You may well say so,” said the wooden man, ironically, “for it is made of kistletoe. She never takes it off!”
“Kistletoe!” said Alice, and then, forgetting her humiliating experience about the chimley, “Don’t you mean mistletoe?”
“No, I mean kistletoe,” replied the wooden man, rather impatiently. “Everybody knows what kistletoe is. But then, perhaps you are too young. When you are older you will know more.”
“I’m thirteen,” said Alice, with proper dignity.
“Thirteen!” shrieked the wooden man, so loudly that Alice felt sure she had offended again. “What a dreadfully unlucky number! I should be frightened to death to be thirteen. How long have you been thirteen?”
“Nearly two months now,” Alice confessed, miserably. Then she brightened. “But everybody has to be thirteen sometime. Weren’t you ever thirteen?”