herself by it, and found that, as nearly as she could guess, she was now about

two feet high, and was going on shrinking rapidly: she soon found out that the

cause of this was the fan she was holding, and she dropped it hastily, just in

time to avoid shrinking away altogether.


“That was a narrow escape!” said Alice, a good deal

frightened at the sudden change, but very glad to find herself still in

existence; “and now for the garden!” and she ran with all speed

back to the little door: but, alas! the little door was shut again, 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.