Chapter 6: Pig and Pepper
As Alice stands in front of the house, a fish-like footman comes out of the forest, knocks on the door and a frog-like footman opens. The fish-footman delivers an invitation from the Queen for the Duchess to play croquet and leaves. The frog-footman sits on the ground outside the house.
Alice walks to the door and knocks, but the footman tells her that it is no use knocking as he is on the same side of the door and they’re making too much noise in the house to hear her anyway. Eventually Alice opens the door herself.
She finds herself in a large kitchen with the Duchess nursing a baby, a grinning Cat and a cook who is making soup. There is so much pepper in the air that everyone but the Cook and the Cat has to sneeze, and the baby howls continuously. The Duchess tells Alice that the Cat grins because it’s a Cheshire Cat.
At once the cook starts throwing everything within her reach at the Duchess and the baby. The Duchess doesn’t seem to mind and continues nursing the baby in a very cruel way. Because she has to get ready to play croquet she throws the baby to Alice who takes it outside to save it from being killed. The baby starts grunting, turns into a pig and runs into the woods.
Alice notices the Cheshire Cat sitting on a branch of a tree and asks it which way she should go. It tells her that the March Hare and the Mad Hatter live near and disappears suddenly. It reappears to ask a question and then disappears again. Alice decides to visit the March Hare. The Cat appears for the third time, but as Alice tells him to stop appearing and vanishing so suddenly he vanishes slowly this time, leaving only his grin behind. Alice reaches the house of the Hare, but because the house is rather big she first eats a little from the mushroom.