a joke. I wish you had made it.’

‘Why do you wish I had made it?’ Alice asked. ‘It’s a very bad one.’

But the Gnat only sighed deeply, while two large tears came rolling down its cheeks.

‘You shouldn’t make jokes,’ Alice said, ‘if it makes you so unhappy.’

Then came another of those melancholy little sighs, and this time the poor Gnat really seemed to have sighed itself away, for, when Alice looked up, there was nothing whatever to be seen on the twig, and, as she was getting quite chilly with sitting still so long, she got up and walked on.

She very soon came to an open field, with a wood on the other side of it: it