ble to talk again, she was getting so much out of breath: and
still the Queen cried 'Faster! Faster!' and dragged her along. 'Are we
nearly there?' Alice managed to pant out at last.

'Nearly there!' the Queen repeated. 'Why, we passed it ten minutes ago!
Faster!' And they ran on for a time in silence, with the wind whistling
in Alice's ears, and almost blowing her hair off her head, she fancied.

'Now! Now!' cried the Queen. 'Faster! Faster!' And they went so fast
that at last they seemed to skim through the air, hardly touching the
ground with their feet, till suddenly, just as Alice was getting quite
exhausted, they stopped, and she found herself sitting on the ground,
breathless and giddy.

The Queen propped her up against a tree, and said kindly, 'You may rest
a little now.'

Alice looked round her in great surprise. 'Why, I do believe we've been
under this tree the whole time! Everything's just as it was!'

'Of course it is,' said the Queen, 'what would you have it?'

'Well, in OUR country,' said Alice, still panting a little, 'you'd
generally get to somewhere else--if you ran very fast for a long time,
as we've been doing.'

'A slow sort of country!' said the Queen. 'Now, HERE, you see, it takes
all the running YOU can do, to keep in the same place. If you want to
get somewhere else, you must run at least twice as fast as that!'

'I'd rather not try, please!' said Alice. 'I'm quite content to stay
here--only I AM so hot and thirsty!'

'I know what YOU'D like!' the Queen said good-naturedly, taking a little
box out of her pocket. 'Have a biscuit?'

Alice thought it would not be civil to say 'No,' though it wasn't at all
what she wanted. So she took it, and ate it as well as she could: and it
was VERY dry; and she thought she had never been so nearly choked in all
her life.

'While you're refreshing yourself,' said the Queen, 'I'll just take
the measurements.' And she took a ribbon out of her pocket, marked in
inches, and began measuring the ground, and sticking little pegs in here
and there.

'At the end of two yards,' she said, putting in a peg to mark the
distance, 'I shall give you your directions--have another biscuit?'

'No, thank you,' said Alice: 'one's QUITE enough!'

'Thirst quenched, I hope?' said the Queen.

Alice did not know what to say to this, but luckily the Queen did not
wait for an answer, but went on. 'At the end of THREE yards I shall
repeat them--for fear of your forgetting t