Next came an angry voice—the Rabbit's—"Pat! Pat! Where are you?" And then a voice she had never heard before, "Sure then, I'm here! Digging for apples, yer honor!"

"Here! Come and help me out of this! Now tell me, Pat, what's that in the window?"

"Sure, it's an arm, yer honor!"

"Well, it's got no business there, at any rate; go and take it away!"

There was a long silence after this and Alice could only hear whispers now and then, and at last she spread out her hand again and made another snatch in the air. This time there were two little shrieks and more sounds of broken glass. "I wonder what they'll do next!" thought Alice. "As for pulling me out of the window, I only wish they could!"

She waited for some time without hearing anything more. At last came a rumbling of little cart-wheels and the sound of a good many voices all talking together. She made out the words: "Where's the other ladder? Bill's got the other—Bill! Here, Bill! Will the roof bear? —Who's to go down the chimney?—Nay, I sha'n't! You do it! Here, Bill! The master says you've got to go down the chimney!"

Alice drew her foot as far down the chimney as she could and waited till she heard a little animal scratching and scrambling about in the chimney close above her; then she gave one sharp kick and waited to see what would happen next.

The first thing she heard was a general chorus of "There goes Bill!" then the Rabbit's voice alone—"Catch him, you by the hedge!" Then silence and then another confusion of voices —"Hold up his head—Brandy now—Don't choke him—What happened to you?"

Last came a little feeble, squeaking voice, "Well, I hardly know—No more, thank ye. I'm better now—all I know is, something comes at me like a Jack-in-the-box and up I goes like a sky-rocket!"

After a minute or two of silence, they began moving about again, and Alice heard the Rabbit say, "A barrowful will do, to begin with."

"A barrowful of what?" thought Alice. But she had not long to doubt, for the next moment a shower of little pebbles came rattling in at the window and some of them hit her in the face. Alice noticed, with some surprise, that the pebbles were all turning into little cakes as they lay on the floor and a bright idea came into her head. "If I eat one of these cakes," she thought, "it's sure to make some change in my size."

So she swallowed one of the cakes and was delighted to find that she began shrinking directly. As soon as she was small enough to get through the door, she ran out of the house and found quite a crowd of little animals and birds waiting outside. They all made a rush at Alice the moment she appeared, but she ran off as hard as she could and soon found herself safe in a thick wood.

"The first thing I've got to do," said Alice to herself, as she wandered about in the wood, "is to grow to my right size again; and the second thing is to find my way into that lovely garden. I suppose I ought to eat or drink something or other, but the great question is 'What?'"

Alice looked all around her at the flowers and the blades of grass, but she could not see anything that looked like the right thing to eat or drink under the circumstances. There was a large mushroom growing near her, about the same height as herself. She stretched herself up on tiptoe and peeped over the edge and her eyes immediately met those of a large blue caterpillar, that was sitting on the top, with its arms folded, quietly smoking a long hookah and taking not the smallest notice of her or of anything else.