him—How was it, old fellow? What happened to you? Tell us all about

it!”


Last came a little feeble, squeaking voice, (“That’s Bill,”

thought Alice,) “Well, I hardly know—No more, thank ye; I’m

better now—but I’m a deal too flustered to tell you—all I

know is, something comes at me like a Jack-in-the-box, and up I goes like a

sky-rocket!”


“So you did, old fellow!” said the others.


“We must burn the house down!” said the Rabbit’s voice; and

Alice called out as loud as she could, “If you do, I’ll set Dinah

at you!”


There was a dead silence instantly, and Alice thought to herself, “I

wonder what they will do next! If they had any sense, they’d take

the roof off.” After a minute or two, they began moving about again, and

Alice heard the Rabbit say, “A barrowful will do, to begin with.”


“A barrowful of what?” thought Alice; but she had not long

to doubt, for the next moment a shower of little pebbles came rattling in at

the window, and some of them hit her in the face. “I’ll put a stop

to this,” she said to herself, and shouted out, “You’d better

not do that again!” which produced another dead silence.


Alice noticed with some surprise that the pebbles were all turning into little

cakes as they lay on the floor, and a bright idea came into her head. “If

I eat one of these cakes,” she thought, “it’s sure to make

some change in my size; and as it can’t possibly make me larger,

it must make me smaller, I suppose.”


So she swallowed one of the cakes, and was delighted to find that she began

shrinking directly. As soon as she was small enough to get through the door,

she ran out of the house, and found quite a crowd of little animals and birds

waiting outside. The poor little Lizard, Bill, was in the middle, being held up

by two guinea-pigs, who were giving it something out of a bottle. They all made

a rush at Alice the moment she appeared; but she ran off as hard as she could,