Stranica 137 [137]
CROQUET- GROUND. 121
Alice thought she had never seen such a
curious croquet-ground in her life: it was all
ridges and furrows; the croquet-balls were live
hedgehogs, and the mallets live flamingoes, and
the soldiers had to
double themselves up
and stand on their
hands and feet, to
make the arches.
The chief diff¬
culty Alice found at
first was In managing
her flamingo: she
succeeded in getting
its body tucked away,
comfortably enough,
under her arm, with
its legs hanging down, but generally, just as she
had got its neck nicely straightened out, and
was going to give the hedgehog a blow with
its head, it would twist itself round and look
up in her face, with such a puzzled expres¬
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