Chapter 8: The Queen’s Croquet-Ground
Alice comes upon a rose-tree with white roses. Three gardeners are painting them red. Alice asks them why and they explain that they planted the white roses by mistake and the Queen will cut off their heads for that. So they try to hide the mistake by painting them.
At that moment the procession of the Queen arrives, which is made up almost entirely of playing cards. The Queen severely asks Alice who she is, but she is not afraid and makes the Queen angry by making a rude remark. The Queen shouts ‘Off with her head!’ but Alice replies that this is nonsense and the Queen is silent. She notices what the gardeners have been doing and orders their beheading. They are saved by Alice who hides them in a flowerpot.
The Queen invites Alice to play croquet with them and she joins the procession. She notices that the White Rabbit is in the procession too and he tells her that the Duchess is under sentence of execution. The game begins and Alice is surprised by the croquet-ground; the balls are live hedgehogs, the mallets live flamingos, and the soldiers make the arches. Alice tries to manage her hedgehog and flamingo, while the arches are constantly wandering away and everyone is playing without waiting for their turns, quarrelling, and fighting for the hedgehogs. All this makes the Queen furious and she constantly orders the beheading of people.
The Cheshire Cat appears and Alice starts complaining. The King notices the Cat, follows the advice of the Queen to behead it and walks off to get the executioner. Alice attempts to continue with the game, but eventually returns to the Cheshire Cat.
There’s a large crowd around it now, and the executioner, the King, and the Queen are having a dispute whether the Cat can be beheaded as they can only see it’s head but no body. Alice tells them that they should ask the Duchess about it, so the Queen orders the executioner to get her out of prison. The Cheshire Cat starts fading and when the Duchess arrives he has disappeared.