I’ll tell you, soon, what Alice and the Caterpillar talked about: but first let us have a good look at the picture.
That curious thing, standing in front of the Caterpillar, is called a “hookah”: and it’s used for smoking. The smoke comes through that long tube, that winds round and round like a serpent.
And do you see its long nose and chin? At least, they _look_ exactly like a nose and chin, don’t they? But they really _are_ two of its legs. You know a Caterpillar has got _quantities_ of legs: you can see some more of them, further down.
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.
Would you like to hear about Alice’s visit to the Duchess? It was a very interesting visit indeed, I can assure you.
Of course she knocked at the door to begin with: but nobody came: so she had to open it for herself.
Now, if you look at the picture, you’ll see exactly what Alice saw when she got inside.
The door led right into the kitchen, you see. The Duchess sat in the middle of the room, nursing the Baby. The Baby was howling. The soup was boiling. The Cook was stirring the soup. The Cat----it was a _Cheshire_ Cat----was grinning, as Cheshire Cats always do. All these things were happening just as Alice went in.