【正文】 familiarly with them, as if she had known them all her life. Indeed, she had quite a long argument with the Lory, who at last turned sulky, and would only say, “I’m older than you, and must know better.” And this Alice would not allow, without knowing how old it was, and, as the Lory positively refused to tell its age, there was no more to be said. At last the Mouse, who seemed to be a person of authority among them, called out, “Sit down, all of you, and listen to me! I’ll soon make you dry enough!” They all sat down at once, in a large ring, with the Mouse in the middle. Alice kept her eyes anxiously fixed on it, for she felt sure she would catch a bad cold if she did not get dry very soon. “ Ahem!” said the Mouse with an important air. “Are you all ready? This is the driest thing I know. Silence all round, if you please! ‘William the Conqueror, whose cause was favoured by the pope, was soon submitted to by the English, who wanted leaders, and had been of late much accustomed to usurpation and conquest. Edwin and Morcar, the earls of Mercia and Northumbria——’” “ Ugh!” said the Lory, with a shiver. “ I beg your pardon!” said the Mouse, frowning, but very politely. “ Did you speak?” “ Not I!” said the Lory, hastily. “ I thought you did,” said the Mouse. “I proceed. ‘Edwin and Morcar, the earls of Mercia and Northumbria, declared for him。 and, when it had finished this short speech, they all cheered. Alice thought the whole thing very absurd, but they all looked so grave that she did not dare to laugh。 est ma chatte?”, which was the first sentence in her French lessonbook. The Mouse gave a sudden leap out of the water, and seemed to quiver all over with fright. “ Oh, I beg your pardon!” cried Alice hastily, afraid that she had hurt the poor animal’s feelings. “I quite fot you didn39。 and she was quite surprised to find that she remained the same size. To be sure, this is what generally happens when one eats cake。 and that, if you cut your finger very deeply with a knife, it usually bleeds。 About Carroll: Charles Lutwidge Dodgson (January 27, 1832 – January 14, 1898), better known by the pen name Lewis Carroll, was an English author, mathematician, logician, Anglican clergyman, and photographer. His most famous writings are Alice39。 for she had read several nice little stories about children who had got burnt, and eaten up by wild beasts, and other unpleasant things, all because they would not remember the simple rules their friends had taught them: such as, that a redhot poker will burn you if your hold it too long。 and if it makes me grow smaller, I can creep under the door: so either way I’ll get into the garden, and I don’t care which happens!” She ate a little bit, and said anxiously to herself “Which way? Which way?”, holding her hand on the top of her head to feel which way it was growing。 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 saltwater. 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 e to the general conclusion that, wherever you go to on the English coast, you find a number of bathingmachines in the sea, some children digging in the sand with wooden spades, then a row of lodginghouses, and behind them a railway station.) However, she soon made 10 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 today.” 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 outoftheway 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. “ Perhaps it doesn’t understand English,” thought Alice. “I daresay it’s a French mouse, e over with William the Conqueror.” (For, with all her knowledge of history, Alice had no very clear notion how long ago anything had happened.) So she began again: “O249。 and the whole party at once crowded round her, calling out, in a confused way, “Prizes! Prizes!” Alice had no idea what to do, and in despair she put her hand in her pocket, and pulled out a box of fits (luckily the salt water had not got into it), and handed them round as prizes. There was exactly one apiece, all round. “ But she must have a prize herself, you know,” said the Mouse. “ Of course,” the Dodo replied very gravely. “What else have you got in your pocket?” he went on, turning to Alice. “ Only a thimble,” said Alice sadly. “ Hand it over here,” said the Dodo.