Instead of fire, the animals bombarded Alice with a shower of little pebbles that rattled in through the window. Alice noticed the pebbles were turning into little cakes. Reasoning that eating one must make her smaller, she swallowed a cake and began to shrink rapidly. Once small enough to fit through the door, she ran out of the house, past the waiting crowd of animals, and escaped into a thick wood.
Alice wandered through the woods, intent on regaining her proper size and finding the lovely garden. Her search was interrupted when a large puppy bounded over her. Alice, fearing she might be eaten, played with the puppy using a stick, dodging behind a thistle to avoid being trampled. Exhausted by the encounter, she rested against a buttercup and looked around for something to eat or drink to change her size. Spotting a large mushroom her own height, she stretched up on tiptoe to peer over the top. There, she saw a large blue Caterpillar sitting on the mushroom, smoking a long hookah and paying her no attention.
Alice and the Caterpillar regarded each other in silence until the insect demanded to know who she was. Alice explained that she had changed sizes several times since morning and hardly knew her own identity. The Caterpillar sternly rejected her confusion, insisting that such changes were not queer. When Alice suggested he might feel differently when transforming into a butterfly, he contemptuously asked who she was again. Irritated by his short remarks, Alice demanded to know his identity, but he merely told her to keep her temper.
The Caterpillar then asked Alice to recite a poem. She attempted “You are old, Father William,” but the words came out altered. The Caterpillar condemned the recitation as wrong from beginning to end. Alice expressed a desire to be a little larger, as three inches was a wretched height, but the Caterpillar took offense, declaring three inches a very good height. He crawled away, remarking that one side of the mushroom would make her grow taller and the other shorter.
Alice broke off pieces of the mushroom and nibbled one, shrinking so rapidly that her chin struck her foot. She quickly ate the other piece, which caused her neck to stretch immensely until her shoulders were lost to sight. As she tried to navigate the trees, a Pigeon attacked her, screaming “Serpent!” The Pigeon insisted that Alice’s long neck proved she was a serpent looking for eggs. Alice argued that she was a little girl who sometimes ate eggs, but the Pigeon retorted that any egg-eater was a kind of serpent.
Alice crouched among the trees, carefully nibbling the mushroom pieces until she successfully returned to her usual height. She felt strange to be the right size again and focused on her plan to enter the beautiful garden. She came upon a little house about four feet high, realizing she must shrink to avoid frightening the inhabitants. Alice nibbled the mushroom until she was nine inches high and then approached the house.
Alice stood before the little house when a Fish-Footman emerged from the wood to deliver a letter to a Frog-Footman. They exchanged the Queen’s invitation for croquet with solemn formality, bowing until their curls entangled. Alice laughed at the spectacle, but when she attempted to enter, the Frog-Footman argued that knocking was useless because he was on the same side of the door and the noise inside was too loud. He ignored her questions to stare vacantly at the sky, proving perfectly idiotic. Exasperated by his nonsense, Alice opened the door herself and stepped into a kitchen filled with thick smoke and pepper.
Inside, the Duchess nursed a howling baby while the Cook threw pots and crockery at them. The air was so thick with pepper that everyone sneezed violently except the Cook and a grinning Cheshire Cat. Alice tried to converse with the Duchess about grinning cats, but the woman interrupted Alice’s lecture on the earth’s rotation with violent threats and a lullaby about beating children. Suddenly, the Duchess flung the baby at Alice so she could prepare for croquet, and the Cook hurled a frying-pan after her as she departed.
Alice carried the strange, howling baby into the fresh air, fearing for its safety in such a violent environment. As she watched, the child’s features contorted; its nose turned into a snout, its eyes shrank, and it began to grunt. Realizing it had turned into a pig, Alice set it down, relieved to see it trot away a handsome pig compared to the ugly child it was.
A short distance away, Alice encountered the Cheshire Cat sitting in a tree. The Cat explained that everyone in Wonderland was mad, including Alice herself, using a logical loop involving dogs and his own reversed behavior. When Alice asked for directions, the Cat suggested she visit either the Hatter or the March Hare, noting that they were both mad. The Cat vanished and reappeared, confirming the baby’s fate as a pig, before slowly disappearing again until only its grin remained floating in the air.
Alice proceeded toward the March Hare’s house, which she identified by its ear-shaped chimneys and thatched fur roof. She nibbled the mushroom to grow to about two feet high, then approached the house timidly, hoping the Hare would not be raving mad.
Alice approached a table set out under a tree where the March Hare, the Hatter, and a sleeping Dormouse were having tea. Upon seeing her, the trio shouted that there was no room, despite the large table, forcing Alice to sit in an armchair at the end. The March Hare offered wine that did not exist, then criticized Alice for sitting without an invitation. When the Hatter rudely commented on her hair, Alice scolded him, only to be met with the unanswerable riddle of why a raven is like a writing-desk. The conversation devolved into a nonsensical debate about the difference between saying what one means and meaning what one says.
The Hatter soon broke the silence to consult his pocket watch, which he claimed was two days wrong because the March Hare put butter in the works. Alice was puzzled to see the watch told the day but not the time. The Hatter explained that he had quarreled with Time itself during a concert for the Queen of Hearts, where he sang a distorted song. Accused of “murdering time,” he was now trapped in a perpetual six o’clock, explaining why the tea-party never ended and they must constantly change seats to find clean cups.
Growing tired of the riddles, the Hatter and March Hare woke the Dormouse to tell a story. The Dormouse recounted a tale of three sisters who lived at the bottom of a treacle-well, eating nothing but treacle and consequently falling ill. Alice’s logical questions about the well frustrated the group, and the Dormouse explained the sisters were learning to draw things beginning with M, including “muchness.” When Alice attempted to understand, the Hatter rudely told her she should not talk. Fed up with the madness, Alice walked off, vowing never to return, while the occupants tried to stuff the Dormouse into a teapot.
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