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23

CHAPTER IV. THE RABBIT SENDS IN A LITTLE BILL 

There was a dead silence instantly and Alice thought to herself, T wonder 
what they will do next! If they had any sense, they'd take the roof off.' After 
a minute or two they began moving about again, and Alice heard the Rabbit say, 
A barrowful will do, to begin with.' 

A barrowful of whatT 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. 'I'll put a stop to this,' she said to herself and shouted 
out, 'You'd better not do that again!' which produced another dead silence. 

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; and as it 
can't possibly make me larger, it must make me smaller, I suppose.' 

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. The poor little Lizard, Bill, was in the middle, being held up by two 
guinea-pigs, who were giving it something out of a bottle. 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 think that will be the best plan.' 

It sounded an excellent plan, no doubt, and very neatly and simply arranged; 
the only difficulty was, that she had not the smallest idea how to set about it; and 
while she was peering about anx- 
iously among the trees, a little sharp 
bark just over her head made her look 
up in a great hurry. 

An enormous puppy was looking 
down at her with large round eyes, 
and feebly stretching out one paw, try- 
ing to touch her. 'Poor little thing!' 
said Alice in a coaxing tone and she 
tried hard to whistle to it; but she was 
terribly frightened all the time at the 
thought that it might be hungry, in 
which case it would be very likely to 
eat her up in spite of all her coaxing. 

Hardly knowing what she did she 
picked up a little bit of stick and held 
it out to the puppy; whereupon the