This offended Alice a little, so there was no more conversation for a minute or two, while the boat glided gently on, sometimes among beds of weeds (which made the oars stick fast in the water, worse then ever), and sometimes under trees, but always with the same tall riverbanks frowning over their heads.

`Oh, please! There are some scented rushes!' Alice cried in a sudden transport of delight. `There really are -- and such beauties!'

`You needn't say "please" to me about 'em,' the Sheep said, without looking up from her knitting: `I didn't put 'em there, and I'm not going to take 'em away.'

`No, but I meant -- please, may we wait and pick some?' Alice pleaded. `If you don't mind stopping the boat for a minute.'

`How am I to stop it?' said the Sheep. `If you leave off rowing, it'll stop of itself.'

So the boat was left to drift down the stream as it would, till it glided gently in among the waving rushes. And then the little sleeves were carefully rolled up, and the little arms were plunged in elbow-deep, to get hold of the rushes a good long way down before breaking them off -- and for a while Alice forgot all about the Sheep and the knitting, as she bent over the side of the boat, with just the ends of her tangled hair dipping into the water -- while with bright eager eyes she caught at one bunch after another of the darling scented rushes.

`I only hope the boat wo'n't tipple over!' she said to herself. `Oh, what a lovely one! Only I couldn't quite reach it.' And it certainly did seem a little provoking (`almost as if it happened on purpose,' she thought) that, though she managed to pick plenty of beautiful rushes as the boat glided by, there was always a more lovely one that she couldn't reach.

`The prettiest are always further!' she said at last with a sigh at the obstinacy of the rushes in growing so far off, as, with flushed cheeks and dripping hair and hands, she scrambled back into her place, and began to arrange her new-found treasures.

What mattered it to her just then that the rushes had begun to fade, and to lose all their scent and beauty, from the very moment that she picked them? Even real scented rushes, you know, last only a very little while -- and these, being dream-rushes, melted away almost like snow, as they lay in heaps at her feet -- but Alice hardly noticed this, there were so many other curious things to think about.

They hadn't gone much farther before the blade of one of the oars got fast in the water and wouldn't come out again (so Alice explained it afterwards), and the consequence was that the handle of it caught her under the chin, and, in spite of a series of little shrieks of `Oh, oh, oh!' from poor Alice, it swept her straight off the seat, and down among the heap of rushes.

However, she wasn't a bit hurt, and was soon up again: the Sheep went on with her knitting all the while, just as if nothing had happened. `That was a nice crab you caught!' she remarked, as Alice got back into her place, very much relieved to find herself still in the boat.

`Was it? I didn't see it,' said Alice, peeping cautiously over the side of the boat into the dark water. `I wish it hadn't let go -- I should so like a little crab to take home with me!' But the Sheep only laughed scornfully, and went on with her knitting.

`Are there many crabs here?' said Alice.

`Crabs, and all sorts of things,' said the Sheep: `plenty of choice, only make up your mind. Now, what do you want to buy?'

`To buy!' Alice echoed in a tone that was half astonished and half frightened -- for the oars, and the boat, and the river, had vanished all in a moment, and she was back again in the little dark shop.