Alice watched the White Rabbit as he fumbled over the list, feeling very

curious to see what the next witness would be like, “—for they

haven’t got much evidence yet,” she said to herself. Imagine

her surprise, when the White Rabbit read out, at the top of his shrill little

voice, the name “Alice!”


CHAPTER XII.

Alice’s Evidence


“Here!” cried Alice, quite forgetting in the flurry of the moment

how large she had grown in the last few minutes, and she jumped up in such a

hurry that she tipped over the jury-box with the edge of her skirt, upsetting

all the jurymen on to the heads of the crowd below, and there they lay

sprawling about, reminding her very much of a globe of goldfish she had

accidentally upset the week before.


“Oh, I beg your pardon!” she exclaimed in a tone of great

dismay, and began picking them up again as quickly as she could, for the

accident of the goldfish kept running in her head, and she had a vague sort of

idea that they must be collected at once and put back into the jury-box, or

they would die.


“The trial cannot proceed,” said the King in a very grave voice,

“until all the jurymen are back in their proper

places—all,” he repeated with great emphasis, looking hard

at Alice as he said so.


Alice looked at the jury-box, and saw that, in her haste, she had put the

Lizard in head downwards, and the poor little thing was waving its tail about

in a melancholy way, being quite unable to move. She soon got it out again, and

put it right; “not that it signifies much,” she said to herself;

“I should think it would be quite as much use in the trial one way

up as the other.”


As soon as the jury had a little recovered from the shock of being upset, and

their slates and pencils had been found and handed back to them, they set to

work very diligently to write out a history of the accident, all except the

Lizard, who seemed too much overcome to do anything but sit with its mouth