Baby Dear Listen Here Im Afraid to Come Home in the Dark

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CHAPTER II

The Pool of Tears

`Curiouser and curiouser!' cried Alice (she was so much surprised, that for the moment she quite forgot how to speak good English); `now I'thousand opening out similar the largest telescope that ever was! Skilful-good day, anxiety!' (for when she looked downwardly at her feet, they seemed to be nearly out of sight, they were getting so far off). `Oh, my poor little feet, I wonder who will put on your shoes and stockings for y'all now, dears? I'thou sure I shan't exist able! I shall be a great bargain too far off to trouble myself about you lot: yous must manage the best style you can; --simply I must exist kind to them,' thought Alice, `or perhaps they won't walk the style I want to get! Permit me come across: I'll give them a new pair of boots every Christmas.'

Alice stretched tall

And she went on planning to herself how she would manage it. `They must go past the carrier,' she thought; `and how funny it'll seem, sending presents to one's own feet! And how odd the directions will look!

        ALICE'Southward RIGHT FOOT, ESQ.                 HEARTHRUG,                     Well-nigh THE FENDER,                         (WITH ALICE'Due south LOVE).      

Oh beloved, what nonsense I'm talking!'

Merely then her head struck against the roof of the hall: in fact she was now more than nine feet high, and she at once took up the picayune golden key and hurried off to the garden door.

Poor Alice! It was as much equally she could do, lying downwards on one side, to look through into the garden with one eye; simply to become through was more hopeless than ever: she sat down and began to cry again.

`Yous ought to exist ashamed of yourself,' said Alice, `a great daughter like you,' (she might well say this), `to go on crying in this way! Terminate this moment, I tell you!' Only she went on nonetheless, shedding gallons of tears, until there was a large pool all round her, most four inches deep and reaching half downwardly the hall.

Later on a time she heard a piddling pattering of feet in the distance, and she hastily dried her optics to come across what was coming. It was the White Rabbit returning, splendidly dressed, with a pair of white child gloves in one hand and a large fan in the other: he came trotting along in a great hurry, muttering to himself as he came, `Oh! the Duchess, the Duchess! Oh! won't she be savage if I've kept her waiting!' Alice felt and so desperate that she was ready to inquire help of any i; so, when the Rabbit came near her, she began, in a depression, timid voice, `If you please, sir--' The Rabbit started violently, dropped the white kid gloves and the fan, and skurried abroad into the darkness equally hard every bit he could become.

Giant Alice watching Rabbit run abroad

Alice took up the fan and gloves, and, as the hall was very hot, she kept fanning herself all the fourth dimension she went on talking: `Dear, love! How queer everything is to-day! And yesterday things went on but as usual. I wonder if I've been changed in the night? Let me recall: was I the same when I got up this forenoon? I well-nigh think I can remember feeling a niggling dissimilar. Simply if I'k not the same, the next question is, Who in the world am I? Ah, that'due south the peachy puzzle!' And she began thinking over all the children she knew that were of the same historic period as herself, to see if she could have been changed for any of them.

`I'm sure I'm not Ada,' she said, `for her hair goes in such long ringlets, and mine doesn't go in ringlets at all; and I'chiliad sure I can't be Mabel, for I know all sorts of things, and she, oh! she knows such a very piffling! Besides, she's she, and I'g I, and--oh dear, how puzzling it all is! I'll attempt if I know all the things I used to know. Let me see: four times five is twelve, and iv times half-dozen is 13, and 4 times 7 is--oh dear! I shall never go to xx at that rate! Yet, the Multiplication Tabular array doesn't signify: let's endeavour Geography. London is the capital of Paris, and Paris is the capital of Rome, and Rome--no, that's all wrong, I'm certain! I must accept been changed for Mabel! I'll attempt and say "How doth the little--"' and she crossed her hands on her lap as if she were saying lessons, and began to repeat it, but her vocalisation sounded hoarse and foreign, and the words did not come the same every bit they used to do:--

        `How doth the lilliputian crocodile               Improve his shining tail,             And pour the waters of the Nile               On every golden scale!              `How cheerfully he seems to grin,               How neatly spread his claws,             And welcome little fishes in               With gently smiling jaws!'      

`I'm sure those are not the right words,' said poor Alice, and her eyes filled with tears again as she went on, `I must exist Mabel after all, and I shall take to get and live in that poky little house, and have next to no toys to play with, and oh! ever so many lessons to learn! No, I've fabricated up my mind well-nigh information technology; if I'm Mabel, I'll stay down here! Information technology'll be no use their putting their heads downwardly and maxim "Come upward again, dearest!" I shall just look upward and say "Who am I then? Tell me that commencement, and then, if I like being that person, I'll come up: if not, I'll stay down hither till I'yard somebody else"--but, oh dear!' cried Alice, with a sudden burst of tears, `I do wish they would put their heads down! I am so very tired of being all solitary here!'

As she said this she looked downward at her hands, and was surprised to encounter that she had put on one of the Rabbit'south little white child gloves while she was talking. `How tin can I have done that?' she idea. `I must be growing small again.' She got up and went to the tabular array to measure herself by it, and establish that, as nearly as she could guess, she was now nearly two feet high, and was going on shrinking quickly: she soon plant out that the cause of this was the fan she was holding, and she dropped it hastily, just in fourth dimension 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 withal in existence; `and now for the garden!' and she ran with all speed back to the little door: but, alas! the fiddling door was shut again, and the little aureate primal was lying on the glass table as before, `and things are worse than ever,' thought the poor child, `for I never was and then small as this before, never! And I declare it's besides bad, that information technology is!'

As she said these words her pes slipped, and in another moment, splash! she was upwards to her chin in salt water. Her first thought 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 decision, that wherever you become to on the English coast you lot find a number of bathing machines in the sea, some children digging in the sand with wooden spades, and then a row of lodging houses, and behind them a railway station.) All the same, she soon made out that she was in the puddle of tears which she had wept when she was 9 anxiety high.

Alice in pool of tears

`I wish I hadn't cried so much!' said Alice, as she swam about, trying to observe her way out. `I shall be punished for it at present, I suppose, by being drowned in my own tears! That volition be a queer thing, to be sure! Still, everything is queer to-twenty-four hour period.'

Just then she heard something splashing nigh in the pool a little way off, and she swam nearer to make out what it was: at offset she thought it must be a walrus or hippopotamus, simply then she remembered how small she was at present, and she soon made out that it was only a mouse that had slipped in like herself.

Alice with Mouse in pool of tears

`Would information technology be of any apply, at present,' thought Alice, `to speak to this mouse? Everything is and so out-of-the-way down here, that I should think very probable it can talk: at any charge per unit, there's no harm in trying.' And so she began: `O Mouse, do you lot know the style out of this pool? I am very tired of pond well-nigh here, O Mouse!' (Alice thought this must be the right way of speaking to a mouse: she had never washed such a thing earlier, just she remembered having seen in her brother's Latin Grammer, `A mouse--of a mouse--to a mouse--a mouse--O mouse!' The Mouse looked at her rather inquisitively, and seemed to her to wink with i of its piffling eyes, merely it said nothing.

`Perhaps it doesn't understand English,' thought Alice; `I daresay it's a French mouse, come up over with William the Conqueror.' (For, with all her knowledge of history, Alice had no very articulate notion how long ago anything had happened.) And so she began again: `Ou est ma chatte?' which was the start sentence in her French lesson-volume. The Mouse gave a sudden jump out of the h2o, and seemed to quiver all over with fright. `Oh, I beg your pardon!' cried Alice hastily, agape that she had injure the poor fauna's feelings. `I quite forgot you lot didn't like cats.'

`Not like cats!' cried the Mouse, in a shrill, passionate phonation. `Would you like cats if you were me?'

`Well, perhaps not,' said Alice in a soothing tone: `don't be angry most it. And still I wish I could show you our cat Dinah: I remember you'd take a fancy to cats if you could only see her. She is such a dear tranquillity thing,' Alice went on, half to herself, as she swam lazily most in the puddle, `and she sits purring so nicely by the burn down, licking her paws and washing her face up--and she is such a dainty soft matter to nurse--and she's such a uppercase 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 exist really offended. `We won't talk about her any more if you'd rather not.'

`We indeed!' cried the Mouse, who was trembling downwardly to the stop of his tail. `As if I would talk on such a subject field! Our family e'er hated cats: nasty, depression, vulgar things! Don't let me hear the name once more!'

`I won't indeed!' said Alice, in a great hurry to change the subject field of conversation. `Are you lot--are you lot fond--of--of dogs?' The Mouse did not answer, and then Alice went on eagerly: `There is such a nice little dog near our house I should like to show you! A picayune bright-eyed terrier, you know, with oh, such long curly brown pilus! And it'll fetch things when you throw them, and it'll sit upwards and beg for its dinner, and all sorts of things--I can't remember one-half of them--and information technology belongs to a farmer, you know, and he says it'due south and 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 every bit hard as it could go, and making quite a mayhem in the pool every bit it went.

So she called softly afterward it, `Mouse dear! Do come back once again, and nosotros won't talk nigh cats or dogs either, if you lot don't like them!' When the Mouse heard this, it turned circular and swam slowly back to her: its face was quite pale (with passion, Alice thought), and it said in a low trembling voice, `Permit us get to the shore, and then I'll tell you my history, and yous'll empathize why information technology is I detest cats and dogs.'

It was high time to become, for the pool was getting quite crowded with the birds and animals that had fallen into information technology: there were a Duck and a Dodo, a Lory and an Eaglet, and several other curious creatures. Alice led the manner, and the whole party swam to the shore.

Side by side chapter: A Caucus-Race and a Long Tale

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Source: https://www.cs.cmu.edu/~rgs/alice-II.html

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