and the White Rabbit was still in sight, hurrying down it. There was not a

moment to be lost: away went Alice like the wind, and was just in time to hear

it say, as it turned a corner, “Oh my ears and whiskers, how late

it’s getting!” She was close behind it when she turned the corner,

but the Rabbit was no longer to be seen: she found herself in a long, low hall,

which was lit up by a row of lamps hanging from the roof.


There were doors all round the hall, but they were all locked; and when Alice

had been all the way down one side and up the other, trying every door, she

walked sadly down the middle, wondering how she was ever to get out again.


Suddenly she came upon a little three-legged table, all made of solid glass;

there was nothing on it except a tiny golden key, and Alice’s first

thought was that it might belong to one of the doors of the hall; but, alas!

either the locks were too large, or the key was too small, but at any rate it

would not open any of them. However, on the second time round, she came upon a

low curtain she had not noticed before, and behind it was a little door about

fifteen inches high: she tried the little golden key in the lock, and to her

great delight it fitted!


Alice opened the door and found that it led into a small passage, not much

larger than a rat-hole: she knelt down and looked along the passage into the

loveliest garden you ever saw. How she longed to get out of that dark hall, and

wander about among those beds of bright flowers and those cool fountains, but

she could not even get her head through the doorway; “and even if my head

would go through,” thought poor Alice, “it would be of very little

use without my shoulders. Oh, how I wish I could shut up like a telescope! I

think I could, if I only knew how to begin.” For, you see, so many

out-of-the-way things had happened lately, that Alice had begun to think that

very few things indeed were really impossible.