Module3:Alice in Wonderland
Alice and her big sister were sitting on the grass. Her sister was reading a book, but Alice had nothing to read. She looked at her sister's book again. There were no pictures in it.
"What good is a book without pictures?" She wondered.
It was a very hot day, and Alice wondered what to do. "I'm so sleepy," she said to herself. "Shall I look for some flowers, or is it too hot?"
She saw a leaf falling from a tree, but she was too sleepy to look at it.
Just then, a white rabbit ran by, very near to her. That does not happen every day, but Alice did not wonder about it. She did not wonder very much even when the rabbit said to itself, "Oh! Oh! I shall be too late!"
But she did wonder when the rabbit took a watch out of its pocket and looked at it.
"A rabbit with a pocket? " Alice asked herself. "And a watch in it?"
She jumped up and ran after the White Rabbit. She was just in time to see him go down a big rabbit hole.
Alice went into the hole too. She didn't stop to wonder how she could get out again.
The rabbit hole went along just under the ground, and then… Alice was falling … down…down… down.
She was not falling quickly. She had time to wonder 'What's going to happen next?" She looked down, but there was no light there.
Down, down, down. "Oh!" she said, "it's a long way. I shall never be afraid of falling again. I wonder where the hole will come out.
Down, down, down. "Will Dinah wonder where I am tonight?" Alice asked herself. (Dinah was Alice's cat.) 'Will they remember her milk at tea time? Oh, Dinah! Why aren't you here with me? There are no mice here, but there may be some bats. Do cats eat bats, I wonder?" Alice was beginning to get sleepy. "Do cats eat bats?" she asked herself. "Do cats eat bats?" And sometimes she asked, "Do bats eat cats?"
Thump! Bump! Alice came down on something that was not very hard.
She sat up quickly. She could still see the White Rabbit, far away along the rabbit hole.
" Run!" Alice told herself, and she ran very quickly after the White Rabbit,
"Oh, my ears!" she heard him say. "How late it's getting!" Then he went quickly through an opening at the side of the rabbit hole.
Alice ran through the opening. She was in a long hall, and she could not see the White Rabbit.
There were doors on every side of the hall, but she could not open any of them, and she could not find the opening from the rabbit hole.
"What can I do?" she wondered. Then she saw a little table. It was a glass table, and there was a very small golden key on it. " Will it open one of the doors?" she wondered. She went to all the doors, but the key was much too small to open any of them. "It must open something," she told herself.
Then she saw a very little door, hidden near one of the big doors. The little key opened it. Alice put her head down and looked through it into a very beautiful garden. She could see a lot of flowers and grass, and she wanted to go there. But the door was much too small. Sadly she shut it again and took the key back to the table.
"Why can't I become smaller?" Alice wondered. "It's not like home here-it's more magic-so there must be a way to get smaller." She looked at the glass table. There was a little bottle on it. ("That was not on the table before," Alice told herself.) She read a note on the bottle. It was in very good, big writing: "Drink me'.
" I shall try just a little," Alice said, " a very little." She tried it, and it was very nice. She drank some more.
" Oh! My feet are much smaller and much nearer," Alice said. "I must be very small now."
She was. "Now I can go through the little door." she told herself
She went to the door, but she could not open it, and the key was on the glass table. She could see it through the glass, but she was now much too small to get it. She tried to get to it up one of the glass legs, but she could not.
The poor little girl sat down and cried.
"Alice! Alice!" she said bravely. "It's no good crying like that. Stop it at once!" She sometimes spoke to herself like that, but it did not help her this time. She was still crying when she saw a little glass box under the table.
Alice opened the box. There was a very small cake in it. "Eat me", she read.
"Yes, I shall eat it," Alice said. "If I grow bigger after that, I can get the key. If I grow smaller, I can get under the door into the garden." So she ate the cake.
2.Pig and Pepper
When Alice was not too big to go through the door, she went up to it. The house was very noisy inside.
There's no bell," she told herself, "and nobody would hear a bell. There's too much noise."
She opened the door and went in.
She wanted to cover her ears because of the noise, but she could not do that in front of the Duchess[女公爵].
The Duchess was sitting on a very small chair. She had a baby in her arms. The cook was at the fire, making soup in a very big pot.
"There's too much pepper[n. 胡椒；辣椒；胡椒粉] in that soup," Alice said to herself. It was hard to say anything because the pepper made her sneeze[vi. 打喷嚏 n. 喷嚏] so much. Even the Duchess was sneezing, and the baby sneezed and cried without stopping.
The cook was not sneezing, but she was making a great noise with the cooking things-crash! bang! smash!
There was a very big cat, too, and it was not sneezing. It was sitting near the fire, and it had a grin from ear to ear on its face.
"Can girls speak first to duchesses, or must they wait for the duchesses to speak to them?" Alice wondered.
The Duchess did not speak, so Alice asked: "Please tell me why your cat grins like that."
" It's a Cheshire cat," said the Duchess, " and that's why. Pig !" She shouted the last word, and Alice jumped. But the Duchess was shouting at the baby, and not at Alice. So Alice spoke again.
"I didn't know that Cheshire cats always grin. I have never seen any cat grinning."
"They all can," said the Duchess, "and most of them do."
"I didn't know that." Alice said.
"You don't know much!"
Alice thought, "I must think of something new to speak about." But just then the cook took the soup pot off the fire and began to throw things at the Duchess. One thing came through the air after another: pots, jars, irons, knives. Some of the things hit the Duchess and the baby. The Duchess did nothing, and the baby was making so much noise that it could not make any more.
"Oh, please don't throw any more things at the baby." Alice cried. "You'll hit its pretty nose."
"It isn't your baby," the Duchess said, and she began to sing to it. After every line she gave it a great shake. The words were:
Speak roughly to your little boy,
And beat him when he sneezes:
He only does it to annoy,
Because he knows it teases.
Perhaps those were not the words. It was hard for Alice to hear them because the baby was making so much noise.
"Here!" the Duchess said. "You can have the baby for a time if you like." As she was speaking, she threw the baby to Alice, adding, "I must get ready to play croquet with the Queen," and going quickly out of the room. The cook threw a pot after her, but it did not hit her.
Alice caught the baby, but it was hard to make it stay still in her arms. She took it out of the house, and after a time it stopped sneezing. It did not stop crying, but it began to make noises like a baby pig. Its eyes were becoming very small, and its nose was changing and becoming more like apig's nose.
"It is a pig!" Alice told herself. She put it down on the ground, and it ran happily away, making pig noises.
Alice looked round her. She jumped a little when she saw the Cheshire Cat sitting in one of the trees near her.
The Cat only grinned when it saw Alice.
"It looks kind," she thought, "but perhaps it will get angry quickly like all the people and animals here." So she tried to speak in a pleasing way.
"Cheshire Cat, dear," she said.
Its grin grew bigger. not smaller, so she knew that it was pleased.
"Will you tell me, please," she said, "which way I must o from here?"
" Yes," said the Cat, " but mustn't you tell me where you want to go?"
"Well, any place--" Alice began.
"Then you can go any way," the Cat said.
"--if it is a place," Alice said.
" If you walk that way, you'll get to a Hatter's house. Hatters make hats, you know. And if you walk that way, you'll find a March Hare. The Hatter's mad, and the March Hare's mad."
" But I don't want to meet mad people," Alice said.
Oh, there's no way not to meet them. We're all mad here. I'm mad. You're mad."
"How do you know I'm mad?" Alice asked.
"You must be mad," the Cat said. "Everybody who comes here is mad. Are you going to play croquet with the Queen today?"
"That would be very nice," said Alice, "but nobody has asked me yet."
"You'll see me there," the Cheshire Cat said.
It did not go away, but it was not there any more. It just disappeared. Alice did not wonder about this, but she was still looking at the place when it appeared again. " What happened to the baby?" it asked.
"It became a pig," Alice said.
"I thought it would," said the Cat, and disappeared again.
Alice waited. "Perhaps it will appear again," she thought. But it did not appear, and she began to walk towards the March Hare's home.
"I have seen hatters before," she said to herself. "I would like to see a March Hare. This is May, not march, so perhaps the March Hare isn't very mad."
Just then, she looked up, and there was the Cheshire Cat again, sitting in another tree.
"Did you say pig, or fig?" said the Cat.
"I said pig," Alice answered. "And please stop appearing and disappearing so quickly. I don't like it."
The Cat disappeared a little at a time. The last part that Alice could see was its grin. It was there after the other parts had gone.
" I have seen a cat without a grin very many times," Alice thought. "but a grin without a cat! I never saw anything like that before."
When the Cheshire Cat's grin had gone, Alice began to walk again towards the March Hare's house. She saw it through the trees, and it was not so small as the Duchess's house. Alice had the bits of mushroom in her pockets. She quickly ate a little of the bit that made her bigger. Then she walked towards the house.