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 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.

III.—­The Adventures in the Wood

Once in the wood, she was anxious to get back to her right size again, and then to get into that lovely garden.  But how?  Peeping over a mushroom, she beheld a large blue caterpillar sitting on the top with its arms folded, quietly smoking a long hookah, and taking not the smallest notice of her or of anything else.  At length, in a sleepy sort of way, it began talking to her, and she told it what she wanted so much—­to grow to her right size again.

“I should like to be a little longer,” she said.  “Three inches is such a wretched height to be.”

“It is a very good height indeed,” said the Caterpillar angrily, rearing itself upright as it spoke (it was exactly three inches high).

“But I’m not used to it,” pleaded poor Alice in a piteous tone.  And she thought to herself, “I wish the creatures wouldn’t be so easily offended.”

“You’ll get used to it in time,” said the Caterpillar; and it put the hookah into its mouth and began smoking again.

This time Alice waited patiently until it chose to speak again.  In a minute or two the Caterpillar took the hookah out of its mouth and yawned once or twice, and shook itself.  Then it got down off the mushroom, and crawled away into the grass, merely remarking as it went, “One side will make you grow taller, and the other side will make you grow shorter.”

“One side of what?  The other side of what?” thought Alice to herself.

“Of the mushroom,” said the Caterpillar, just as if she had asked it aloud and in another moment it was out of sight.

Alice remained looking thoughtfully at the mushroom for a minute, trying to make out which were the two sides of it and as it was perfectly round, she found this a very difficult question.  However, at last she stretched her arms round it as far as they would go, and broke off a bit of the edge with each hand.

“And now which is which?” she said to herself, and nibbled a little of the right-hand bit to try the effect.  The next moment she felt a violent blow underneath her chin; it had struck her foot!

She was a good deal frightened by this very sudden change, but she felt that there was no time to be lost, as she was shrinking rapidly, so she set to work at once to eat some of the other bit.  Her chin was pressed so closely against her foot that there was hardly room to open her mouth; but she did it at last, and managed to swallow a morsel of the left-hand bit.