Through the Looking-Glass

EXCERPT: 

  'Kitty, can you play chess?  Now, don't smile, my dear, I'm
asking it seriously.  Because, when we were playing just now, you
watched just as if you understood it:  and when I said "Check!"
you purred!  Well, it WAS a nice check, Kitty, and really I might
have won, if it hadn't been for that nasty Knight, that came
wiggling down among my pieces.  Kitty, dear, let's pretend--'
And here I wish I could tell you half the things Alice used to
say, beginning with her favourite phrase 'Let's pretend.'  She
had had quite a long argument with her sister only the day before
--all because Alice had begun with 'Let's pretend we're kings
and queens;' and her sister, who liked being very exact, had
argued that they couldn't, because there were only two of them,
and Alice had been reduced at last to say, 'Well, YOU can be one
of them then, and I'LL be all the rest.'  And once she had really
frightened her old nurse by shouting suddenly in her ear, 'Nurse!
Do let's pretend that I'm a hungry hyaena, and you're a bone.'