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 in 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
lefthand bit.
'Come, my head's free at last!' said Alice in a tone of delight, which changed into
alarm in another moment, when she found that her shoulders were nowhere to be found:
all she could see, when she looked down, was an immense length of neck, which seemed
to rise like a stalk out of a sea of green leaves that lay far below her.
'What CAN all that green stuff be?' said Alice. 'And where HAVE my shoulders got to?
And oh, my poor hands, how is it I can't see you?' She was moving them about as she spoke,
but no result seemed to follow, except a little shaking among the distant green leaves.
As there seemed to be no chance of getting her hands up to her head, she tried to get her
head down to them, and was delighted to find that her neck would bend about easily in any
direction, like a serpent. She had just succeeded in curving it down into a graceful zigzag,
and was going to dive in among the leaves, which she found to be nothing but the tops of the
trees under which she had been wandering, when a sharp hiss made her draw back in a hurry:
a large pigeon had flown into her face, and was beating her violently with its wings.
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