‘Don’t you think you’d be safer down on the ground?’ Alice went on, not with any idea of making another riddle, but simply in her good-natured anxiety for the queer creature. ‘That wall is so very narrow!’

‘What tremendously easy riddles you ask!’ Humpty Dumpty growled out. ‘Of course I don’t think so! Why, if ever I did fall off — which there’s no chance of — but if I did — ’ Here he pursed his lips and looked so solemn and grand that Alice could hardly help laughing. ‘If I did fall,’ he went on, ‘The King has promised me — with his very own mouth — to — to — ’

‘To send all his horses and all his men,’ Alice interrupted, rather unwisely.