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THROUGH THE LOOKING-GLASS

And What Alice Found There

CHAPTER I. Looking-Glass house

One thing was certain, that the white kitten had had nothing to do with it:—it was the black kitten’s fault entirely. For the white kitten had been having its face washed by the old cat for the last quarter of an hour (and bearing it pretty well, considering); so you see that it couldn’t have had any hand in the mischief.

The way Dinah washed her children’s faces was this: first she held the poor thing down by its ear with one paw, and then with the other paw she rubbed its face all over, the wrong way, beginning at the nose: and just now, as I said, she was hard at work on the white kitten, which was lying quite still and trying to purr—no doubt feeling that it was all meant for its good.

But the black kitten had been finished with earlier in the afternoon, and so, while Alice was sitting curled up in a corner of the great arm-chair, half talking to herself and half asleep, the kitten had been having a grand game of romps with the ball of worsted Alice had been trying to wind up, and had been rolling it up and down till it had all come undone again; and there it was, spread over the hearth-rug, all knots and tangles, with the kitten running after its own tail in the middle.

“How seriously you take it, old dear!” said Alice one of her arms round the kitten, and the other fondling the kitten’s head, with her chin resting on its soft fur. “And yet you might know better than to get into such a state about it. You know I haven’t the slightest use for a ball of worsted until I’ve wound it up; and now I haven’t wound up a single scrap of it! Do you know how long it took me to get it at all like that?”

She touched the ball, and the kitten, thinking this a hint to go on with the game, gave a little spring, and the ball rolled across the floor.

“Oh, I’m sorry!” cried Alice, jumping up. “I didn’t mean to do that! There, there, we’ll put it away nicely, put it away nicely, oh!”

She tried to get the ball in her lap, but it always rolled out again. After several unsuccessful attempts, she sat on the floor and tried to roll it back into the work-basket. This time it rolled across the room, and among the legs of the great armchair, and stopped.

“That was a fine one!” Alice said to the kitten. “And you’re a very naughty kitten, aren’t you? And I’ve had enough of this, so I shall go down the chimney this way, and climb up the outside, and come in at the window!”

It was a strange thought for a little girl to take in her head, but it seemed quite natural to Alice to say whatever came uppermost in her mind. And so, as she said it, she was already climbing up the great brick chimney-piece.

She soon found that the chimney was a good deal taller on the inside than it seemed from the outside. The soot fell into her folds of dress, and she could hardly get to the top.

“I wonder if I shall get out that way?” she said to herself. “It doesn’t look so easy as I thought: it’s awfully stuffy up here. I wonder what would happen if I dropped down again.”

She tried to look down, but it was so dark and narrow that she could see nothing but a little bit of the grate at the bottom.

“It’s no use trying to get out this way,” she said at last. “I shall have to go back the way I came. I wish I hadn’t tried to climb in: it’s so very dusty.”

She turned round, but found that the opening she had come through was now blocked up with a thick, soft, white substance, which looked like snow, but was warmer to the touch.

“Well, this is new!” said Alice. “Never mind, I suppose I can get through it, if I push hard enough; and since I’ve got so high up already, I may as well try to get to the top.”

So she pushed, as hard as she could, but the soft substance yielded less and less with every push, as if the chimney were getting narrower and narrower above her.

“Oh, I believe I shall have to go back, after all!” said Alice; “and I hate going back! It’s all very well to say ‘go back,’ but it’s a great deal easier to go on than to go back. You don’t know how strong the temptation is to go on a little farther and see what happens next!”

Just as she said this, she felt a little sharp sting, just on her nose. She looked up, but it was no use, for the roof was still far above her. She tried to look down again, but the opening was now completely blocked by the soft white stuff.

“It’s no use,” she said. “I must try to push through.”

She gave one last, mighty shove, and found herself tumbling out into the open air.

“Where am I?” she said, as she floated gently down. She was not falling through the air, as she expected, but floating gently down like a feather. The white substance seemed to have turned into a soft, feathery cloud, and she was drifting slowly downward.

“This is a very odd way of coming down a chimney!” she thought. “I wonder if it’s the right way to come down, though. Perhaps it’s the only way to get into the Looking-Glass world.”

She drifted down and down, till at last, with a gentle bump, she landed in a soft bed of moss, right in front of a small, neat house, with a bright green door. The house was very small, but the garden that surrounded it was very large, and full of the most wonderful flowers she had ever seen.

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