"So, your majesty."

"You have taken your own time to answer," said the Queen, laughing.

"And my own way too, eh! your majesty?" rejoined Toadstool, grinning.

"No doubt. Well, you may try."

And the goblin, making as much of a bow as he could with only half his
neck above ground, disappeared under it.

CHAPTER II.

No mortal, or fairy either, can tell where Fairyland begins and where
it ends. But somewhere on the borders of Fairyland there was a nice
country village, in which lived some nice country people.

Alice was the daughter of the squire, a pretty, good-natured girl, whom
her friends called fairy-like, and others called silly.

One rosy summer evening, when the wall opposite her window was flaked
all over with rosiness, she threw herself down on her bed, and lay
gazing at the wall. The rose-colour sank through her eyes and dyed her
brain, and she began to feel as if she were reading a story-book. She
thought she was looking at a western sea, with the waves all red with
sunset. But when the colour died out, Alice gave a sigh to see how
commonplace the wall grew. "I wish it was always sunset!" she said,
half aloud. "I don't like gray things."

"I will take you where the sun is always setting, if you like, Alice,"
said a sweet, tiny voice near her. She looked down on the coverlet of
the bed, and there, looking up at her, stood a lovely little creature.
It seemed quite natural that the little lady should be there; for many
things we never could believe, have only to happen, and then there is
nothing strange about them. She was dressed in white, with a cloak of
sunset-red--the colours of the sweetest of sweet-peas. On her head was
a crown of twisted tendrils, with a little gold beetle in front.

"Are you a fairy?" said Alice.

"Yes. Will you go with me to the sunset?"

"Yes, I will."

When Alice proceeded to rise, she found that she was no bigger than the
fairy; and when she stood up on the counterpane, the bed looked like a
great hall with a painted ceiling. As she walked towards Peaseblossom,
she stumbled several times over the tufts that made the pattern. But
the fairy took her by the hand and led her towards the foot of the bed.
Long before they reached it, however, Alice saw that the fairy was a
tall, slender lady, and that she herself was quite her own size. What
she had taken for tufts on the counterpane were really bushes of furze,
and broom, and heather, on the side of a slope.