Page:Carroll - Sylvie and Bruno Concluded.djvu/399

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XXII]
THE BANQUET.
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"But that is just what I don't know," the Other Professor rejoined. "My belief is, it plays with them to kill them!"

"Oh, that's quite a accident!" Bruno began, so eagerly, that it was evident he had already propounded this very difficulty to the Cat. "It 'splained all that to me, while it were drinking the milk. It said 'I teaches the Mouses new games: the Mouses likes it ever so much.' It said 'Sometimes little accidents happens: sometimes the Mouses kills theirselves.' It said 'I's always welly sorry, when the Mouses kills theirselves.' It said——"

"If it was so very sorry," Sylvie said, rather disdainfully, "it wouldn't eat the Mouses after they'd killed themselves!"

But this difficulty, also, had evidently not been lost sight of in the exhaustive ethical discussion just concluded. "It said——" (the orator constantly omitted, as superfluous, his own share in the dialogue, and merely gave us the replies of the Cat) "It said 'Dead Mouses never objecks to be eaten.' It said 'There's no use wasting good Mouses.' It said 'Wifful——sumfinoruvver. It said 'And oo may live to