"Oh, dear!" said Alice. "What shall we do?"
"I don't know, I'm sure," answered the bunny. "This is quite too bad. If only the Blue Caterpillar—"
"Hush!" exclaimed a fuzzy voice down in the grass near the elephant's left front foot. "Don't say a word. I'll help you," and along came crawling a big Blue Caterpillar, with a folded toadstool umbrella and a long-stemmed pipe on his back.
"That elephant is very ticklish," said the Blue Caterpillar. "Watch me make him squirm. And when he squirms he'll have to uncurl his trunk to scratch himself, and when he does that—"
"We'll get away!" whispered Uncle Wiggily.
"Exactly!" said the Blue Caterpillar. So he crawled up the elephant's leg, and tickled the big animal on its ear.
"Oh, dear!" cried the elephant. "How itchy I am!" and he uncurled his trunk to scratch himself, and then Uncle Wiggily and Alice could run away safely, and the mosquitoes didn't get them after all. Then Alice told the Blue Caterpillar about the Duchess wanting the hams smoked and the crawling creature said he'd attend to it, and puff smoke on them from his pipe.
So everything came out all right, I'm glad to say, and if the starch doesn't all come out of the collar so it has to lie down instead of standing up straight at the moving picture show, I'll tell you next about Uncle Wiggily and the Hatter.