Rose and Ruth and Alice continued their walk across the meadow. The two visitors had lots of questions to ask, and Alice chatted back gleefully.
“It is so very nice having you with me,” she said. “I’ve been lonely so much, and I’ve wished so hard that some other little girl would only go through the Looking-Glass or into Wonderland with me. You see, talking things over is half the fun, and now we can talk everything over as we go along—I wonder why the grass looks so far away——”
To be sure it did.
“We—we’ve grown, just as the Red Queen said we would, only how fast,” quavered Rose, a good deal disturbed. “Do you suppose it really is going barefoot that’s done it?”
“Do you know,” Alice replied, “Looking-Glass Land and Wonderland have got mixed up. We’re popping up and down just as I always do in Wonderland. But it is nice up here, isn’t it?”
Indeed it was. The view was so fine. By this time all three of the little girls were at least twenty feet high, and they were still growing.
“Well, we aren’t little girls any longer,” Ruth remarked, “though I feel like one the same as ever, don’t you? Why, it’s like climbing a hill, only ever so much faster! Look over there. Isn’t it a village? And see what a crowd of people. Let’s go.”
“I think we’d better try to grow down a bit,” said Alice. “You see, if we get among those people while we are so tall they may not like it.”
“Yes, but how are we to grow small?” Rose wanted to know, in a worried tone.
“Put on your shoes and stockings, stupid,” said a voice, and there was the Red Queen whirling past them in the air.