However, there was the hill full in sight, so there was nothing to be done but start again. This time she came upon a large flower-bed, with a border of daisies, and a willow-tree growing in the middle.
`O Tiger-lily,' said Alice, addressing herself to one that was waving gracefully about in the wind, `I wish you could talk!'
`We can talk,' said the Tiger-lily: `when there's anybody worth talking to."
Alice was so astonished that she could not speak for a minute: it quite seemed to take her breath away. At length, as the Tiger-lily only went on waving about, she spoke again, in a timid voice -- almost in a whisper. `And can all the flowers talk?'
`As well as all can,' said the Tiger-lily. `And a great deal louder.'
`It isn't manners for us to begin, you know,' said the Rose, `and I really was wondering when you'd speak! Said I to myself, "Her face has got some sense in it, thought it's not a clever one!" Still, you're the right colour, and that goes a long way.'
`I don't care about the colour,' the Tiger-lily remarked. `If only her petals curled up a little more, she'd be all right.'
Alice didn't like being criticised, so she began asking questions. `Aren't you sometimes frightened at being planted out here, with nobody to take care of you?'
`There's the tree in the middle,' said the Rose: `what else is it good for?'
`But what could it do, if any danger came?' Alice asked.
`It says "Bough-wough!" cried a Daisy: `that's why its branches are called boughs!'