Further nonsense verse and prose

I am writing this to wish you many and many a happy return of your birthday to-morrow. I will drink your health if only I can remember, and if you don’t mind—but perhaps you object?

You see, if I were to sit by you at breakfast, and to drink your tea, you wouldn’t like that, would you? You would say, “Boo! hoo! Here’s Mr. Dodgson’s drunk all my tea and I haven’t got any left!” So I am very much afraid, next time Sybil looks for you, she’ll find you sitting by the sad sea-wave, and crying, “Boo! hoo! Here’s Mr. Dodgson has drunk my health, and I haven’t got any left!”

And how it will puzzle Dr. Maund, when he is sent for to see you! “My dear Madam, I’m very sorry to say your little girl has got no health at all! I never saw such a thing in my life!”

“Oh, I can easily explain it!” your mother will say. “You see, she would go and make friends with a strange gentleman, and yesterday he drank her health!”

“Well, Mrs. Chataway,” he will say, “the only way to cure her is to wait till his next birthday, and then for her to drink his health.”

And then we shall have changed healths. I wonder how you’ll like mine! Oh, Gertrude, I wish you wouldn’t talk such nonsense!