when the Rabbit came near her, she began, in a timid voice: "If you
please, sir----"

The Rabbit started violently, dropped the gloves and the fan, and
scurried away into the darkness as hard as he could go.

Alice took up the fan and gloves, and, as the hall was very hot, she
kept fanning herself all the time she went on talking.

"Dear, dear! How queer everything is to-day! How puzzling it all is!
I'll try if I know all the things I used to know. Let me see: four times
five is twelve, and four times six is thirteen, and four times seven
is--oh, dear, I shall never get to twenty at that rate!" But presently
on looking down at her hands, she 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 save herself from shrinking away altogether. Now she hastened to
the little door, but alas, it was shut again. "I declare it's too bad,
that it is!" she said aloud, and just as she spoke her foot slipped, and
in another moment, splash! she was up to her chin in salt water. It was
the pool of tears she had wept when she was nine feet high!

_II.--The Pool of Tears and the Animals' Party_

Just then she heard something splashing about in the pool a little way
off, and she swam nearer to make out what it was. At first she thought
it must be a walrus or hippopotamus, but then she remembered how small
she was now, and 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 daresay it's
a French mouse, come over with William the Conqueror." So she began
again, "_ou est ma chatte?_" which was the first s