What a bother it must be to a Caterpillar, counting over such a lot of legs, every night, to make sure it hasn’t lost any of them!
And another great bother must be, having to settle which leg it had better move first. I think, if you had forty or fifty legs, and if you wanted to go a walk, you’d be such a time in settling which leg to begin with, that you’d never go a walk at all!
And what did Alice and the Caterpillar talk about, I wonder?
Well, Alice told it how very confusing it was, being first one size and then another.
And the Caterpillar asked her if she liked the size she was, just then.
And Alice said she would like to be just a little bit larger——three inches was such a wretched height to be! (Just mark off three inches on the wall, about the length of your middle finger, and you’ll see what size she was.)
And the Caterpillar told her one side of the mushroom would make her grow taller, and the other side would make her grow shorter.
So Alice took two little bits of it with her to nibble, and managed to make herself quite a nice comfortable height, before she went on to visit the Duchess.