Alice in Wonderland | Page 9

you may not feel as I do," said Al-ice; "all I know is, it feels queer to me to change so much."
"You!" said the Cat-er-pil-lar with its nose in the air. "Who are you?"
Which brought them back to the point from which they start-ed. Al-ice was not pleased at this, so she said in as stern a voice as she could, "I think you ought to tell me who you are first."
"Why?" said the Cat-er-pil-lar.
As Al-ice could not think what to say to this and as it did not seem to want to talk, she turned a-way.
"Come back!" said the Cat-er-pil-lar. "I have some-thing to say to you!"
Al-ice turned and came back.
"Keep your tem-per," said the Cat-er-pil-lar.
"Is that all?" asked Al-ice, while she hid her an-ger as well as she could.
"No," said the Cat-er-pil-lar.
Al-ice wait-ed what seemed to her a long time, while it sat and smoked but did not speak. At last, it took the pipe from its mouth, and said, "So you think you're changed, do you?"
"I fear I am, sir," said Al-ice, "I don't know things as I once did--and I don't keep the same size, but a short while at a time."
"What things is it you don't know?"
"Well, I've tried to say the things I knew at school, but the words all came wrong."
"Let me hear you say, 'You are old, Fath-er Wil-liam,'" said the Cat-er-pil-lar.
Al-ice folded her hands, and be-gan:--
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"'You are old, Fath-er Wil-liam,' the young man said, 'And your hair has be-come ver-y white, And yet you stand all the time on your head-- Do you think, at your age, it is right?'
"'In my youth,' Fath-er Wil-liam then said to his son, 'I feared it might in-jure the brain; But now that I know full well I have none, Why, I do it a-gain and a-gain.'
"'You are old,' said the youth, 'shall I tell you once more? And are now quite as large as a tun; Yet you turned a back som-er-set in at the door-- Pray, tell me now, how was that done?'
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"'In my youth,' said the sage, as he shook his gray locks. I kept all my limbs ver-y sup-ple By the use of this oint-ment--one shil-ling the box-- Al-low me to sell you a coup-le.'
"'You are old,' said the youth, and your jaws are too weak For an-y thing tough-er than su-et; Yet you ate up the goose, with the bones and the beak: Pray, how did you man-age to do it?'
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"'In my youth,' said his fath-er, 'I took to the law And ar-gued each case with my wife; And the ver-y great strength, which it gave to my jaw, Has last-ed the rest of my life.'
"'You are old,' said the youth; 'one would hard-ly sup-pose That your eye was as stead-y as ev-er; Yet you bal-ance an eel on the end of your nose-- What makes you al-ways so clev-er?'
[Illustration]
"'I have re-plied to three ques-tions, and that is e-nough,' Said the fath-er; 'don't give your-self airs! Do you think I can lis-ten all day to such stuff? Be off, or I'll kick you down-stairs!'"
"That is not said right," said the Cat-er-pil-lar.
"Not quite right, I fear," said Al-ice, "some of the words are changed."
"It is wrong from first to last," said the Cat-er-pil-lar; then did not speak for some time. At last it said, "What size do you want to be?"
"Oh, I don't care so much as to size, but one does'nt like to change so much, you know."
"I don't know," it said.
Al-ice was too much vexed to speak, for she had nev-er, in all her life, been talked to in that rude way.
"Do you like your size now?" asked the Cat-er-pil-lar.
"Well, I'm not quite so large as I would like to be," said Al-ice; "three inch-es is such a wretch-ed height to be."
"It is a good height, in-deed!" said the Cat-er-pil-lar, and reared it-self up straight as it spoke. (It was just three inch-es high.)
"But I'm not used to it!" plead-ed poor Al-ice. And she thought, "I wish the things wouldn't be so ea-sy to get mad!"
"You'll get used to it in time," the Cat-er-pil-lar said, and put the pipe to its mouth, and Al-ice wait-ed till it should choose to speak. At last it took the pipe from its mouth, yawned once or twice, then got down from its perch and crawled off in the grass. As it went it said, "One side will make you tall, and one side will make you small.
"One side of what?" thought Al-ice to her-self.
"Of the mush-room," said the Cat-er-pil-lar, just as if it had heard her speak; soon it was out of sight.
Al-ice stood and looked at the mush-room a long time and tried to make out which were the two sides of it; as it was round she found this a