Having at last succeeded in reducing her four-footed torments to such a measure of obedience that, when thoroughly tired of scampering and scratching, they condescended to follow her, Alice entered a grass field, and had walked half across it ere she discovered the alarming fact that there were some cows grazing in it; one of which she, to her intense discomposure, immediately decided to be a bull, because, as she afterwards graphically described it, “it moo’d so low down its throat that it almost growled at her.” Of course all bulls being mad, and a mad bull being enough to frighten anybody, Alice began to run; which feat of activity (or activity of feet, if any reader should prefer the phrase so transposed) charmed the dogs--who thought she did it for their express delectation--to such an extent, that they began to bark furiously, which frightened the cow (for despite her base voice, she was a “very” cow after all, and fortunately a quiet one into the bargain), so that, exalting her tail, and twisting it like a corkscrew for the greater effect, she also set off running, thereby adding to Alice’s terror to such a degree, that, if a providential stile had not mercifully rescued her, the consequences might have been serious. This last “spirt,” however, brought her to Markum’s cottage, where she found the baby in a great state of slobbering splendour--very red, ugly, and promising, and altogether (as an assistant old lady, not to say hag, rather the worse for something that had dropped into her tea out of the gin-bottle, and who, from the accident, was in an extensive condition of maudlin and inappropriate Christianity, piously observed), a “little crowing mercy.” Having done her duty by this young child--that is, having said it was very pretty, which, to speak mildly, was untrue--and a very fine child, which, as far as regarded its dress, it certainly was--and exactly like its father, which was an awful----well, never mind, pious fraud we’ll call it,--Alice tipped the inappropriate Christian half-a-crown (in exchange for which she received a tipsy blessing), and took leave, having obtained geographical instructions by which she might, on her homeward route, avoid the proximity of the _basso profundo_ cow. The walk back (with the trifling exception of an episode wherein Ginger disturbed the tenants of a wasps’-nest) proved singularly uneventful, and Alice, in her secret soul, pronounced the whole expedition a failure--which, as it had cured her headache, was very ungrateful of her; but she was so engrossed by a little pain about the heart, which nothing but her husband’s return could cure, that she had entirely forgotten her headache.