`He's dreaming now,' said Tweedledee: `and what do you think he's dreaming about?'

Alice said `Nobody can guess that.'

`Why, about you!' Tweedledee exclaimed, clapping his hands triumphantly. `And if he left off dreaming about you, where do you suppose you'd be?'

`Where I am now, of course,' said Alice.

`Not you!' Tweedledee retorted contemptuously. `You'd be nowhere. Why, you're only a sort of thing in his dream!'

`If that there King was to wake,' added Tweedledum, `you'd go out-- bang!--just like a candle!'

`I shouldn't!' Alice exclaimed indignantly. `Besides, if I'm only a sort of thing in his dream, what are you, I should like to know?'

`Ditto,' said Tweedledum.

`Ditto, ditto!' cried Tweedledee.

He shouted this so loud that Alice couldn't help saying `Hush! You'll be waking him, I'm afraid, if you make so much noise.'

`Well, it's no use your talking about waking him,' said Tweedledum, `when you're only one of the things in his dream. You know very well you're not real.'

`I am real!' said Alice, and began to cry.

`You wo'n't make yourself a bit realer by crying,' Tweedledee remarked: `there's nothing to cry about.'

`If I wasn't real,' Alice said--half laughing through her tears, it all seemed so ridiculous--`I shouldn't be able to cry.'

`I hope you don't suppose those are real tears?' Tweedledum interrupted in a tone of great contempt.

`I know they're talking nonsense,' Alice thought to herself: `and it's foolish to cry about it.' So she brushed away her tears, and went on, as cheerfully as she could, `At any rate, I'd better be getting out of the wood, for really it's coming on very dark. Do you think it's going to rain?'

Tweedledum spread a large umbrella over himself and his brother, and looked up into it. `No, I don't think it is,' he said: `at least--not under here. Nohow.'

`But it may rain outside?'

`It may--if it chooses,' said Tweedledee: `we've no objection. Contrariwise.'

`Selfish things!' thought Alice, and she was just going to say `Good-night' and leave them, when Tweedledum sprang out from under the umbrella, and seized her by the wrist.

`Do you see that?' he said, in a voice choking with passion, and his eyes grew large and yellow all in a moment, as he pointed with a trembling finger at a small white thing lying under the tree.

`It's only a rattle,' Alice said, after a careful examination of the little white thing. `Not a rattle-snake, you know,' she added hastily, thinking that he was frightened: `only an old rattle--quite old and broken.'