The Junior Classics, Volume 6: Old-Fashioned Tales
General
The Junior Classics, Volume 6: Old-Fashioned Tales
Children's literature
And so she went on, taking first one side and then the other, and
making quite a conversation of it altogether; but after a few minutes
she heard a voice outside, and stopped to listen.
"Mary Ann! Mary Ann!" said the voice. "Fetch me my gloves this
moment!" Then came a little pattering of feet on the stairs. Alice
knew it was the Rabbit coming to look for her, and she trembled till
she shook the house, quite forgetting that she was now about a
thousand times as large as the Rabbit, and had no reason to be afraid
of it.
Presently the Rabbit came up to the door, and tried to open it; but,
as the door opened inward, and Alice's elbow was pressed hard against
it, that attempt proved a failure. Alice heard it say to itself, "Then
I'll go round and get in at the window."
"_That_ you won't!" thought Alice, and, after waiting till she fancied
she heard the Rabbit just under the window, she suddenly spread out
her hand, and made a snatch in the air. She did not get hold of
anything, but she heard a little shriek and a fall, and a crash of
broken glass, from which she concluded that it was just possible it
had fallen into a cucumber-frame, or something of the sort.
Next came an angry voice--the Rabbit's--"Pat! Pat! Where are you?" And
then a voice she had never heard before, "Sure then I'm here! Digging
for apples, yer honor!"
"Digging for apples, indeed!" said the Rabbit, angrily. "Here! Come
and help me out of _this_!" (Sounds of more broken glass.)
"Now tell me, Pat, what's that in the window?"
"Sure, it's an arm, yer honor!" (He pronounced it "arrum.")
"An arm, you goose! Who ever saw one that size? Why, it fills the
whole window!"
"Sure, it does, yer honor: but it's an arm for all that."
"Well, it's got no business there, at any rate: go and take it away!"
There was a long silence after this, and Alice could only hear
whispers now and then; such as "Sure, I don't like it, yer honor, at
all, at all!" "Do as I tell you, you coward!" and at last she spread
out her hand again, and made another snatch in the air. This time
there were _two_ little shrieks, and more sounds of broken glass.
"What a number of cucumber-frames there must be!" thought Alice. "I
wonder what they'll do next! As for pulling me out of the window, I
only wish they _could_! I'm sure _I_ don't want to stay in here any
longer!"
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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