CHAPTER TWO

Alice Cries a Lake of Tears

"Life is getting more and more curiouser," said Alice, who suddenly realized that she was also forgetting how to speak good and proper English. Perhaps it was the cake, but what did grammar have to do with making one smaller or larger? Suddenly she cried, "Now I'm getting larger and larger like the largest telescope in the world."

Looking down at the ground, she saw to her amazement that her feet were so far away from her head that they were almost out of sight. "Good-bye, feet!" she cried out to them.

"Oh, my poor little feet, I wonder who is going to put on your shoes and stockings now, dears? I surely won't be able to. I'm much too far away to take care of you myself."

"Dear feet, you must manage to do the best you can," she said. "Still," she thought, "I must be kind to them or perhaps they won't walk or step the way I want to go. Let me think a while. Oh, yes, I'll give them a new pair of boots at Christmas every year."

And she went on planning to herself how she would manage such a thing. "How funny it'll be, sending presents to my own feet. Oh, what strange nonsense I'm talking!"

Alice started to wonder why she was thinking such strange thoughts when all of a sudden her head hit the roof of the hall. Now she was more than nine feet tall.

Quickly Alice picked up the little gold key and ran off to the garden door. But poor Alice! All she could manage, now that she was so large, was to lie on her side and look with one eye through the passage into the garden. Getting through to the garden was even more hopeless than before. Sad and defeated, she again burst into tears.

"You ought to be ashamed of yourself," Alice scolded herself once again, "such a great girl like you crying in this manner. Stop this moment, I tell you," she commanded herself. But Alice went on crying all the same, crying until there was a large pool of her own tears around her about four inches deep that reached halfway down the hall.

Soon, she heard the soft sound of feet coming from a distance. Hastily she dried her eyes, because she couldn't see who was coming through all her tears. Who would it be but the White Rabbit returning, splendidly dressed, with a pair of white kid gloves in one hand and a large fan in the other.

Again he was hopping along like he was in a great hurry. He kept repeating to himself, over and over, "Oh! The Duchess, the Duchess! Oh! Think how angry she'll be, if I've kept her waiting!"

Alice was so desperate for help that she was ready to ask anybody. So when the Rabbit came near, she went up to him quite shyly and said, "If you please, Sir."

But to Alice's surprise, the Rabbit stopped when he saw her and hurriedly ran away, dropping his white kid gloves and fan. He sped away into the darkness as fast as he could go.

Alice decided to pick up the fan and gloves. As the hall was very hot, she started to madly fan herself while continuing to talk to herself.

"Dear, oh dear! How terribly strange everything is today," she said in a confused voice. "Yesterday things were just as usual. I wonder if it's me who has changed in the night? Let me see if I can remember. Am I sure that I was the same person as last night when I got up this morning? I think I can almost remember feeling just a little different. But if I'm not the same, then who in the world am I? Ah, there's a big puzzle for me!"

Alice started to think of all the other little girls she knew that were of the same age as herself. She was trying to figure out if she might have been exchanged for any of them.

"I'm almost definitely sure I'm not Ada," she said, "for her hair has such long curls, and mine is not curly in the least. I'm sure I can't be Mabel, for I know all sorts of facts and smart things, and she knows hardly any. Besides, she's she, and I'm I, and oh, dear, how puzzling this is all becoming!"

As she was speaking, the wheels in Alice's mind kept turning around and around. "Maybe I should try to remember all the things I used to know. Let me see: four times seven is—oh, dear! I shall never get to finish if I start this way. Let's try geography. London is the capital of Paris, and Paris is the capital of Rome—oh no, that's all wrong, I'm quite sure. Oh dear, I must have been changed in the middle of the night for Mabel. Maybe I should repeat 'How doth the little ... '"

Thus she folded her hands on her lap, as if she were repeating her school lessons. But her voice sounded dry and strange, and the words would not come out in quite the same way as they used to:

"How doth the little crocodile

Improve his shining tail,

And pour the waters of the Nile

On every golden scale!"

"How cheerfully he seems to grin

How neatly spreads his claws,

And welcomes little fishes in,

With gently smiling jaws!"

"Oh, certainly those are not the right words," said Alice, and she started to cry again. Her eyes filled again with tears, but she continued, "I must be Mabel after all. I shall have to go and live in her ugly little house and hardly have any toys to play with at all. Plus, I'll have so many lessons to learn again! Well, what am I to do? No, I've made up my mind about it. If I'm Mabel, then I'm staying down here. Even if someone were to put their head down the hole and say, 'Come up again, dear!' It'll be of no use. I will have to look up and ask, 'Who am I, then?'"

Alice took a deep breath, stopped all her thinking for a moment and then continued. "So tell me who I am first! If I like being that person, then I'll come up. If I don't, then I'll stay down here till I hear the right name and I become somebody else—but, oh dear!" the confused girl cried with another sudden burst of tears, "I do wish somebody would come along and put his head down here. I'm so very, very tired of being alone!"

As she was speaking, Alice had put on one of the Rabbit's white kid gloves. She was surprised when she looked down and realized what she had done.

"How could I have managed to do that?" she wondered. "I must be growing small again."

She got up and went to the table to measure her height against it. As much as it was possible to guess, she was now only about two feet high. To make matters worse, she was continuing to shrink even more rapidly. She soon realized that she had been furiously fanning herself smaller! Quickly, she dropped the fan, just in time to save herself from shrinking away altogether.

"That was close," said Alice, frightened at the sudden change in her height. But, she was very glad to find that she was small enough to go into the garden.

The determined girl quickly ran back to the little door, but it was shut again, and she remembered putting the gold key back on the glass table. "Things are worse than ever," cried Alice, "for I never was this small before, never. And I definitely say it's too bad that I forgot to carry the key!"

At that moment her foot slipped and in another moment, splash! She was swimming up to her chin in salty water. Alice first thought that she had somehow fallen into the sea, but then she realized that she was in the lake of tears which she had cried when she was nine feet tall.

"Dear me! I wish I hadn't cried so much before," said Alice as she swam about the lake, trying to find her way out. "Now I'm going to be punished by drowning in my own tears. That will be odd, to be sure. However, everything is odd today."

Suddenly she heard something splashing not very far away in the lake. At first, because of the noise, she thought it must be some large animal like a walrus or a hippopotamus. Then she remembered how small she had become and was quite surprised to see what was splashing about was only a mouse.

"I wonder if it's of any use," thought Alice, "speaking to this mouse? Everything is so strange down here, that I'm sure it's very likely he can talk. At any rate, there's no harm in trying to speak to him. I hope he won't run away like that Rabbit."

So she began. "Oh, Mouse," she cried out, "do you know how I can get out of this lake? I'm so very tired of swimming here. Oh, Mouse!"

Alice guessed that this must be the right way of addressing a mouse, although she had never addressed a mouse before.

The Mouse looked at her rather oddly and then winked at her with one eye. Yet he didn't say anything.

"Perhaps he doesn't speak English," thought Alice. "My guess is that he's one of those French mice that came here with William the Conqueror" However, the imaginative girl, despite all her knowledge of history, didn't seem to have the tiniest idea how long ago William the Conqueror had come.

Alice couldn't remember how to say "hello" in French, so she decided to ask him the first question that was in her French lesson book, "Ou est ma chatte?" She did know, of course, that in English that meant, "Where is my cat?"

The Mouse quickly leaped out of the water like lightning and started to shake all over with fright.

"Oh, I'm very sorry," cried Alice to the Mouse. She was afraid she had hurt the little animal's feelings. "I completely forgot you didn't like cats."

"Not like cats!" the Mouse replied, shaking from fright and anger. "I'm sure you wouldn't like cats either if you were me."

"Well, probably not," admitted Alice, trying to speak calmly so that she wouldn't anger the mouse again. "But don't be angry about it. I'm sure that if you could meet my cat, Dinah, you'd start to take a liking to cats."

"She is such a good and sweet cat," Alice continued, swimming lazily in the pool. "She likes to sit and purr by the fire, licking her sweet paws and washing her whiskers. She's also rather good at catching mice, too. Oh, how horrible of me! I do beg your pardon." cried Alice again, realizing that she had again upset the Mouse, "I promise I won't mention Dinah any more, if it will make you feel better."

"Yes, indeed," cried the Mouse, who was still shaking from his head to the end of his tail. "As if I would even think about talking of such a subject! My family has always hated cats—they are such nasty, mean, low, worthless things! Don't let me hear you speak about it again."

"Indeed I won't," said Alice, trying to change the subject to a more friendly one. "Are you—are you fond of—of dogs?"

The Mouse did not say anything, so Alice eagerly went on. "There is such a sweet little dog that lives near our house—a bright-eyed puppy that can fetch sticks when you throw them for fun. He sits and begs for his food and can do all sorts of tricks. Actually his owner is a farmer who says that his dog can kill all the rats on the farm, and—oh, dear," realized Alice, "I'm afraid I've upset you again by saying too much."

And right she was, for the Mouse was swimming away as fast as he could. This was making quite a lot of noise in the pool, too.

Alice decided to try once more and called softly after him, "Mouse, dear, please come back! I promise I won't talk about either cats or dogs, since I can't say anything that will upset you."

Hearing this, the Mouse turned around and slowly swam back to Alice. His face was quite white from fright, and he said in a low shaky voice, "Let's swim to the shore, and then I'll tell you my life story. Perhaps then you will be able to understand why I hate cats and dogs."

The Mouse couldn't have suggested a better plan, for the lake was getting rather crowded all of a sudden with all the birds and animals that had fallen into it. Alice could not believe her own eyes. She looked at the great lake that had once been her own tears. It was odd enough that she had once been big enough to cry a lake of tears big enough for her and the Mouse to swim in. But now there was barely room for the two of them! Creatures of every kind were swimming in it as well. There was a Duck and a Dodo, a big and clumsy bird that cannot fly; also in the lake were a brightly colored bird known as a Lory, a baby eagle and several other strange and curious creatures that Alice didn't even recognize. As if she were the leader of this strange group of animals, Alice led the way and the whole party followed her, swimming to the shore.

(end of section)