and the little golden key was lying on the glass table as before,
“and things are worse than ever,” thought the poor child, “for I
never was so small as this before, never! And I declare it’s too
bad, that it is!”
As she said these words her foot slipped, and in another moment,
splash! she was up to her chin in salt-water. Her first idea was
that she had somehow fallen into the sea, “and in that case I can
go back by railway,” she said to herself. (Alice had been to the
seaside once in her life, and had come to the general conclusion
that, wherever you go to on the English coast, you find a number of
bathing-machines in the sea, some children digging in the sand with
wooden spades, then a row of lodging-houses, and behind them a
railway station.) However, she soon made out that she was in the
pool of tears which she had wept when she was nine feet high.
“I wish I hadn’t cried so much!” said Alice, as she swam about,
trying to find her way out. “I shall be punished for it now, I
suppose, by being drowned in my own tears! That will be a queer
thing, to be sure! However, everything is queer to-day.”
Just then she heard something splashing about in the pool a
little way off, and she swam nearer to make out what it was: at
first she thought it must be a walrus or hippopotamus, but then she
remembered how small she was now, and she soon made out that it was
only a mouse, that had slipped in like herself.
“Would it be of any use, now,” thought Alice, “to speak to this
mouse? Everything is so out-of-the-way down here, that I should
think very likely it can talk: at any rate, there’s no harm in
trying.” So she began: “O Mouse, do you know the way out of this
pool? I am very tired of swimming about here, O Mouse!” (Alice
thought this must be the right way of speaking to a mouse: she had
never done such a thing before, but she remembered having seen, in
her brother’s Latin Grammar, “A mouse—of a mouse—to a mouse—a
mouse—O mouse!” The Mouse looked at her rather inquisitively, andmouse—O mouse!” The Mouse looked at her rather inquisitively, and
seemed to her to wink with one of its little eyes, but it said
nothing.
“Perhaps it doesn’t understand English,” thought Alice. “I
daresay it’s a French mouse, come over with William the Conqueror.”
(For, with all her knowledge of history, Alice had no very clear
notion how long ago anything had happened.) So she began again: “Où
est ma chatte?”, which was the first sentence in her French
lesson-book. The Mouse gave a sudden leap out of the water, and
seemed to quiver all over with fright. “Oh, I beg your pardon!”
cried Alice hastily, afraid that she had hurt the poor animal’s
feelings. “I quite forgot you didn't like cats.”
“Not like cats!” cried the Mouse in a shrill, passionate voice.
“Would you like cats, if you were me?”
“Well, perhaps not,” said Alice in a soothing tone: “don’t be
angry about it. And yet I wish I could show you our cat Dinah. I
think you’d take a fancy to cats, if you could only see her. She is
such a dear quiet thing,” Alice went on, half to herself, as she
swam lazily about in the pool, “and she sits purring so nicely by
the fire, licking her paws and washing her face—and she is such a
nice soft thing to nurse—and she’s such a capital one for catching
mice——oh, I beg your pardon!” cried Alice again, for this time the
Mouse was bristling all over, and she felt certain it must be
really offended. “We wo’n’t talk about her any more if you’d rather
not.”
“We indeed!” cried the Mouse, who was trembling down to the end
of his tail. “As if I would talk on such a subject! Our family
always hated cats: nasty, low, vulgar things! Don’t let me hear the
name again!”
“I wo’n’t indeed!” said Alice, in a great hurry to change the
subject of conversation. “Are you—are you fond—of—of dogs?” The
Mouse did not answer, so Alice went on eagerly: “There is such a
nice little dog, near our house, I should like to show you! A
little bright-eyed terrier, you know, with oh, such long curlylittle bright-eyed terrier, you know, with oh, such long curly
brown hair! And it’ll fetch things when you throw them, and it’ll
sit up and beg for its dinner, and all sorts of things—I ca’n’t
remember half of them—and it belongs to a farmer, you know, and he
says it's so useful, it’s worth a hundred pounds! He says it kills
all the rats and—oh dear!” cried Alice in a sorrowful tone. “I’m
afraid I’ve offended it again!” For the Mouse was swimming away
from her as hard as it could go, and making quite a commotion in
the pool as it went.
So she called softly after it, “Mouse dear! Do come back again,
and we wo’n’t talk about cats, or dogs either, if you don’t like
them!” When the Mouse heard this, it turned round and swam slowly
back to her: its face was quite pale (with passion, Alice thought),
and it said, in a low trembling voice, “Let us get to the shore,
and then I’ll tell you my history, and you’ll understand why it is
I hate cats and dogs.”
It was high time to go, for the pool was getting quite crowded
with the birds and animals that had fallen into it: there were a
Duck and a Dodo, a Lory and an Eaglet, and several other curious
creatures. Alice led the way, and the whole party swam to the
shore.