Chasing a White Rabbit leads Alice into a fantastical world where logic dissolves. She fluctuates wildly in size, encounters rude and eccentric inhabitants, and survives a terrifying royal trial, ultimately realizing the absurdity of the fantasy is nothing more than a pack of cards.
The White Rabbit returns, dressed splendidly and muttering anxiously about the Duchess. Alice desperately asks for help, but the Rabbit drops his gloves and fan in fright and scurries away. Alice picks up the fan and gloves to cool herself, and as she fans herself, she begins to shrink. While shrinking, she questions her identity, fearing she has turned into a different child named Mabel because she can no longer recite her multiplication tables or geography lessons correctly. She realizes the fan is causing her to shrink and drops it just in time to avoid vanishing completely.
Now tiny, she runs with all speed back to the little door, but alas, it is locked and the golden key lies on the glass table far out of reach. Things seem worse than ever, for she has never been so small. Suddenly, she slips and falls into the pool of tears she cried when she was large. As she swims about, she encounters a Mouse. She attempts to converse with it in English and French, but repeatedly offends the rodent by mentioning her cat Dinah and a dog that a farmer says kills rats. The Mouse swims away in anger, but Alice coaxes it back by promising not to speak of cats or dogs.
The pool becomes crowded with various birds and animals that have fallen in, including a Duck, a Dodo, a Lory, and an Eaglet. The Mouse suggests they swim to shore so he can explain his history. Alice leads the way, and the strange party swims together through the water toward the bank.
Having swum to shore with the motley company of birds and beasts, Alice now found herself on dry land once more—but hardly in better circumstances, for she and all her companions were thoroughly soaked, their fur and feathers dripping as they gathered together on the mossy bank. The chill of the water made them shiver, and some began to complain of the discomfort, while others shook themselves vigorously in an attempt to get dry. It was at this awkward moment, with the whole ridiculous assembly standing about in puddles and debating how on earth to warm themselves, that the Dodo proposed what seemed to everyone a most singular solution to their predicament.
The dripping wet party gathers on the bank, arguing uncomfortably about how to get dry. The Mouse, assuming a position of authority, begins reciting a dry history of William the Conqueror, but the narrative is interrupted by the Lory and the Duck with questions and complaints. When Alice notes that she is still wet, the Dodo interrupts to propose a more energetic remedy: a Caucus-race.
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