The Caterpillar

    The Caterpillar 1

The Caterpillar looked at Alice and said nothing.

    "Perhaps it doesn't speak', Alice thought.

    But at last it did speak. "Who are you?" it asked.

    " It was a hard question." Alice answered, but not very quickly: "I--I don't know. "I knew who I was this morning, but I have changed -- more than once -- I think.""How?" the Caterpillar asked.

    It was another hard question. Alice said, " It's just that--changing from one thing to another is very hard.""No, it isn't."Alice thought about that. "Perhaps it isn't hard for you," she said. She knew that caterpillars 2 change more than once before they become butterflies. "But it is hard for me.""For you? Who are you?"The Caterpillar had asked that question before, and Alice was near to becoming angry. She said, "Perhaps you can tell me who you are before I tell you who I am?""Why?"It was another hard question. Alice could not answer it, so she began to walk away.

    "Come back!" the Caterpillar called. "I want to say something."Alice went back to the mushroom 3.

    "You must never be angry." the Caterpillar said.

    "Is that all?" Alice asked. She was angry.

    "No!"Alice waited. "Perhaps it will say something if I wait," she thought.

    The Caterpillar got down from the mushroom and began to move away. As it went, it said: "One side will make you grow bigger, and the other side will make you grow smaller."Alice did not say anything, but she thought, "One side of what? The other side of what?

    Perhaps the Caterpillar heard her thinking 4, because it said, "Of the mushroom." Then it went into the grass, and Alice never saw it again.

    Alice looked at the mushroom. It was round, like all mushrooms 5. "How can it have two sides-one side and the other side?" she wondered.

    At last she put her arms round the top, as far as they would go. She took a bit of the mushroom with each hand.

    "And now which bit will make me bigger?" she asked herself. She took a very small bite 6 from one. "Oh!" she cried, as her head hit her foot. She just got a small bite from the other side into her mouth before it was too late. That made her bigger.

    Then she tried very small bites 7 from one side on the other, and at last she was not too big and not too small.

    " Now I must find that beautiful garden," she said.

    Alice began to walk through the trees. She came to a garden, but it was not the garden that she saw before. There was a house in it -- a very small house.

    "I'm much too big," Alice thought. "If I go there like this, the people in the house will be afraid. I'll eat some mushroom from the art that makes me small."