again. "As for this--ahem!--this person!" and the mud turtle looked very
severely at Uncle Wiggily, very severely indeed, "as for this person, I
will soon show him! Oh, my, yes! and a tortoiseshell comb in addition," he
said; and then the turtle stuck out its long neck, straight at the old
rabbit, until Uncle Wiggily thought it was a snake.

"Fairy prince, we salute thee!" exclaimed Alice, making a low bow.

"Good, very good," remarked the mud turtle. "I believe I promised you I
would tell you why I did not change the boy, who caught me, into something
strange, say an elephant or a lion."

"Yes," replied Jimmie, "you did promise us. Go ahead, please."

"That's not the way to talk to a fairy prince," objected Alice. "You
should speak more politely."

"Never mind him, he doesn't know any better," went on the mud turtle. "I
will now give you my reasons. In the first place I did not want to scare
that boy after the way you frightened him. He had been punished enough, I
thought. Besides, if I had turned him into a lion or an elephant he would
have run through the woods, scaring every one he met, and that would not
have been right. And the reason I didn't change him into a bug or a
mosquito was because he might fly away, and then, when the magic spell
had passed off, and he was changed back into a boy again, the
transformation might have happened in the air, and he would fall right
down on somebody's head, and that would never do, never, never, not in a
year and a half. So I concluded not to do anything to him."

"I don't believe you could have changed him into anything at all," said