]

Alice took up the fan and gloves and she kept fanning herself all the
time she went on talking. "Dear, dear! How queer everything is to-day!
And yesterday things went on just as usual. _Was_ I the same when I got
up this morning? But if I'm not the same, the next question is, 'Who in
the world am I?' Ah, _that's_ the great puzzle!"

As she said this, she looked down at her hands and was surprised to see
that she had put on one of the Rabbit's little white kid-gloves while
she was talking. "How _can_ I have done that?" she thought. "I must be
growing small again." She got up and went to the table to measure
herself by it and found that 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
save herself from 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. "Things are worse than ever,"
thought the poor child, "for I never was so small as this before,
never!"

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. However, she soon made out that she
was in the pool of tears which she had wept when she was nine feet high.

[Illustration]

Just then she heard something splashing about in the pool a little way
off, and she swam nearer to see what it was: she soon made out that it
was only a mouse that had slipped in like herself.

"Would it be of any use, now," thought Alice, "to speak to this mouse?
Everything is so out-of-the-way down here that I should think very
likely it can talk; at any rate, there's no harm in trying." So she
began, "O Mouse, do you know the way out of this pool? I am very tired
of swimming about here, O Mouse!" The Mouse looked at her rather
inquisitively and seemed to her to wink with one of its little eyes, but
it said nothing.

"Perhaps it doesn't understand English," thought Alice. "I dare say it's
a French mouse, come over with William the Conqueror." So she began
again: "Ou est ma chatte?" which was the first sentence in her French
lesson-book. T