6. " Pig and Pepper " - Chapter VI - Alice's Adventures in Wonderland

From the wood, Alice sees a fish in footman’s livery approach the house and knock on the door. A similarly dressed frog answers the door and receives a letter inviting the Duchess to play croquet with the Queen. After the Fish Footman leaves, Alice approaches the Frog Footman, who sits on the ground staring stupidly up at the sky. Alice knocks at the door, but the Frog Footman explains that now that she is outside, no one will answer her knock since the people inside are making too much noise to hear her. He tells her he plans to sit there for days and seems unsurprised when the door opens a crack and a plate flies out and grazes his nose. Annoyed with his idiotic manner, Alice opens the door and finds herself in a kitchen. A Duchess nurses a baby, a grinning cat sits on the hearth, and a Cook stands at the stove, dumping pepper into a cauldron of soup. The pepper causes the Duchess and the baby to sneeze incessantly.

Alice inquires why the cat grins and learns from the Duchess that it is a Cheshire Cat. Wondering aloud why a cat would grin at all, the Duchess insults Alice, telling her that she must not know very much. Meanwhile, the Cook hurls objects randomly at the Duchess and the baby, including fire-irons, saucepans, and plates. Alice tells the Cook to mind herself, and attempts to change the subject of conversation by bringing up the earth’s axis. The Duchess mishears Alice, and thinking she is talking about axes, spontaneously shouts, “Chop off her head!” The Duchess starts to sing a nasty lullaby to the baby, roughly tussling it as she sings. Upon finishing, she flings the baby at Alice and hurries out of the room to prepare for croquet with the Queen.

Alice takes the baby outside, only to discover that it is a pig. After she lets the pig toddle off, she encounters the Cheshire Cat again, grinning broadly as it rests on the bough of a tree. After inquiring of the Cheshire Cat where she might go next, he tells her that no matter where she goes she will end up somewhere. The Cheshire Cat arbitrarily suggests she visit the Mad Hatter and the March Hare, but warns her that they are both mad. When Alice responds that she does not want to be among mad people, he tells her that all people are mad, and if she is in Wonderland, she must be mad too. Alice attempts to press the point, but the Cheshire Cat changes the subject, telling Alice that it will see her at the Queen’s croquet match later. The Cheshire Cat vanishes and reappears before fading to nothing but a disembodied grin, leaving Alice to travel onward to the March Hare’s house. Upon discovering that the house is larger than she is, Alice consumes a portion of the Caterpillar’s mushroom and grows to two feet tall.