That _was_ a narrow escape! said Alice, a good deal frightened at the
sudden change, but very glad to find herself still in existence; and
now for the garden! and she ran with all speed back to the little
door: but, alas! the little door was shut again, and the little golden
key was lying on the glass table as before, and things are worse than
ever, thought the poor child, for I never was so small as this
before, never! And I declare it s too bad, that it is!
As she said these words her foot slipped, and in another moment,
splash! she was up to her chin in salt water. Her first idea was that
she had somehow fallen into the sea, and in that case I can go back by
railway, she said to herself. (Alice had been to the seaside once in
her life, and had come to the general conclusion, that wherever you go
to on the English coast you find a number of bathing machines in the
sea, some children digging in the sand with wooden spades, then a row
of lodging houses, and behind them a railway station.) However, she
soon made out that she was in the pool of tears which she had wept when
she was nine feet high.
I wish I hadn t cried so much! said Alice, as she swam about, trying
to find her way out. I shall be punished for it now, I suppose, by
being drowned in my own tears! That _will_ be a queer thing, to be
sure! However, everything is queer to-day.
Just then she heard something splashing about in the pool a little way
off, and she swam nearer to make out what it was: at first she thought
it must be a walrus or hippopotamus, but then she remembered how small
she was now, and she soon made out that it was only a mouse that had
slipped in like herself.
Would it be of any use, now, thought Alice, to speak to this mouse?
Everything is so out-of-the-way down here, that I should think very
likely it can talk: at any rate, there s no harm in trying. So she
began: O Mouse, do you know the way out of this pool? I am very tired
of swimming about here, O Mouse! (Alice thought this must be the right
way of speaking to a mouse: she had never done such a thing before, but
she remembered having seen in her brother s Latin Grammar, A mouse of
a mouse to a mouse a mouse O mouse! ) The Mouse looked at her rather
inquisitively, and seemed to her to wink with one of its little eyes,
but it said nothing.
10