At last the Caterpillar took the hubble-bubble out of its mouth and said to Alice in a lazy, sleepy voice. "Who are you?"

Alice replied shyly, "I—I'm not sure, sir. I know who I was when I got up this morning but I think I have changed several times since then."

Very seriously the caterpillar said, "What do you mean by that? Explain yourself!"

"I'm afraid I can't, sir," said Alice, "because I'm not myself at all. You see, so far today, I have been so many different sizes and that makes everything very confusing." She straightened up and said very seriously, "I think you should tell me who you are first."

"Why?" said the Caterpillar.

Because Alice could not think of any good reason for this and also because the Caterpillar was, in her opinion, a bit rude, she turned away.

"Come back!" the Caterpillar called after her. "I've something important to say!" Alice turned and came back again.

"Don't get angry," said the Caterpillar.

"Is that the important thing you want to say?" said Alice, swallowing down her anger as well as she could.

"No," said the Caterpillar.

It unfolded its arms, took the hubble-bubble out of its mouth again and said, "So you think you have changed, do you?"

"I'm afraid, I have, sir," said Alice. "I can't remember things I used to remember and I don't stay the same size, even for ten minutes!"

"What size do you want to be?" asked the Caterpillar.

"Oh, I don't really mind," Alice replied quickly, "only I don't like changing so often, you know. I would like to be a little bigger, sir, if you wouldn't mind," said Alice. "Seven centimetres is such a horrible height to be."

"It is a very good height to be!" said the Caterpillar angrily, standing up as it spoke (it was exactly seven centimetres high).

In a minute or two, the Caterpillar got down off the mushroom and crawled away into the grass, saying, 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.

"Of the mushroom," said the Caterpillar, as if she had asked the question aloud. Then, the caterpillar disappeared into the grass.

Alice remained looking thoughtfully at the mushroom for a minute, trying to decide which were the two sides. At last she stretched her arms around the mushroom 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 under her chin. Her chin had hit her foot!

She was frightened by this very sudden change because she was shrinking rapidly. Quickly Alice ate some of the other bit. Her chin was pressing so closely against her foot that it was difficult for her to open her mouth but she did it at last and managed to swallow some of the left-hand bit of mushroom.

"Great! My head's free at last!" said Alice but all she could see, when she looked down, was her very long neck, which was sticking out of a sea of green leaves far down below her.

"Where have my shoulders gone? Oh, my poor hands. Why can't I see them?" She was delighted to find that her neck could bend about easily in any direction like a snake. Alice made her neck into a zigzag and was going to go down into the leaves 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.

"Snake!" cried the Pigeon.

"I'm not a snake!" said Alice indignantly. "Leave me alone!"

"I've tried nesting in the roots of trees and I've tried banks and I've tried hedges," the Pigeon continued, "but those snakes! I can't escape from them!"

Alice was more and more confused.

"As if it wasn't trouble enough hatching the eggs," said the Pigeon, "but I must be on the look-out for snakes, night and day! And just as I'd taken the highest tree in the wood," continued the Pigeon, raising its voice to a shriek, "and just as I was thinking I would be free of them at last, they come wriggling down from the sky! Ugh, snakes!"

"But I'm not a snake, I tell you!" said Alice. "I'm a... I'm a... I'm a little girl," she added with doubt because she had changed size so many times in just one day.

"You're looking for eggs, I know you are," said the Pigeon "and what does it matter to me whether you're a little girl or a snake?"

"It matters a good deal to me," said Alice quickly "but I'm not looking for eggs and even if I were, I don't like them raw."

"Well, buzz off, then!" said the Pigeon in a sulky tone, as it settled down again into its nest. Alice crouched down among the trees as well as she could, for her neck kept getting tangled in the branches. Every now and then she had to stop and untwist it. After a while, she remembered that she still had the pieces of mushroom in her hands and she started nibbling very carefully, first at one and then at the other and sometimes growing taller and sometimes growing shorter until she had succeeded in bringing herself down to her normal height.

It was so long since she had been anything near the right size that it felt quite strange at first. "The next thing is to get into that beautiful garden. How can I do it, I wonder?" As she said this, she arrived suddenly to an open place, with a little house in it about one metre and a bit high. "Whoever lives there," thought Alice, "will be very frightened of me if I am too big." She did not go near the house until she was the right size which was twenty-three centimetres high.