e up again, dear!' I shall only look up and say,
'Who am I, then? Tell me that first, and then, if I like being that
person, I'll come up; if not, I'll stay down here till I'm 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 alone here!"

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, as nearly as she could
guess, 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 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 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,
"and things are worse than ever," thought the poor child, "for I
never was so small as this before--never! And I declare it's too
bad, that it is!"

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, "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 conclusion
that wherever you go to on the English coast you find a number of
bathing-machines in the sea, some children digging in the sand with
wooden spades, then a row of lodging-houses, and behind them a
railway station.) However, she soon made out that she was in the
pool of tears which she had wept when she was nine feet high.

"I wish I hadn't cried so much!" said Alice, as she swam about,
trying to find her way out. "I shall be punished for it now, I
suppose, by being drowned in my own tears! That _will_ be a queer
thing, to be sure! However, everything is queer to-day."