Read Alice’s Adventures In Wonderland Online

21

CHAPTER IV. THE RABBIT SENDS IN A LITTLE BILL 


'Oh, you foolish Alice!' she answered herself, 'How can you learn lessons in 
here? Why, there's hardly room for you, and no room at all for any lesson-books!' 

And so she went on, taking first one side and then the other, and making quite 
a conversation of it altogether; but after a few minutes she heard a voice outside 
and stopped to listen. 

'Mary Ann! Mary Ann!' said the voice, 'Fetch me my gloves this moment!' 
Then came a little pattering of feet on the stairs. Alice knew it was the Rabbit 
coming to look for her, and she trembled till she shook the house, quite forgetting 
that she was now about a thousand times as large as the Rabbit and had no reason 
to be afraid of it. 

Presently the Rabbit came up to the door and tried to open it; but, as the door 
opened inwards and Alice's elbow was pressed hard against it, that attempt proved 
a failure. Alice heard it say to itself, 'Then I'll go round and get in at the window.' 

'That you won't' thought Alice 
and, after waiting till she fancied she 
heard the Rabbit just under the win- 
dow, she suddenly spread out her 
hand, and made a snatch in the air. 
She did not get hold of anything, but 
she heard a little shriek and a fall and 
a crash of broken glass, from which 
she concluded that it was just possible 
it had fallen into a cucumber-frame or 
something of the sort. 

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 honour!' 

'Digging for apples, indeed!' said 
the Rabbit angrily, 'Here! Come and 
help me out of thisV (Sounds of more 
broken glass.) 

'Now tell me, Pat, what's that in the window?' 

'Sure, it's an arm, yer honour!' (He pronounced it 'arrum.') 

An arm, you goose! Who ever saw one that size? Why, it fills the whole 
window ! ' 

'Sure, it does, yer honour; but it's an arm for all that.' 

'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; such as, 'Sure, I don't like it, yer honour, at all, at all!' - 'Do as I tell you,