VII. THE BLUE CATERPILLAR.

Would you like to know what happened to Alice, after she had got away from the Puppy¹? It was far too large an animal, you know, for her to play with. (I don’t suppose you would much enjoy playing with a young Hippopotamus², would you? You would always be expecting to be crushed³ as flat as a pancake under its great heavy feet!) So Alice was very glad to run away, while it wasn’t looking.

Well, she wandered up and down, and didn’t know what in the world to do, to make herself grow up to her right size again. Of course she knew that she had to eat or drink something: that was the regular rule, you know: but she couldn’t guess what thing.

Alice looking at the blue caterpillar⁴ sitting on a mushroom

However, she soon came to a great mushroom, that was so tall that she couldn’t see over the top of it without standing⁵ on tip-toe. And what do you think she saw? Something that I’m sure you never talked to, in all your life!

It was a large Blue Caterpillar.

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 wretched⁶ 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 nibble⁷, and managed to make herself quite a nice comfortable height, before she went on to visit the Duchess.

Duchess holding a baby while Alice looks on and the cook is cooking

1 puppy   

n.小狗，幼犬

参考例句：

• You must school your puppy to obey you.你要训练你的小狗服从你。
• Their lively puppy frisks all over the house.他们的小狗在屋里到处欢快地蹦跳。

2 hippopotamus   

n.河马

参考例句：

• The children enjoyed watching the hippopotamus wallowing in the mud.孩子们真喜观看河马在泥中打滚。
• A hippopotamus surfs the waves off the coast of Gabon.一头河马在加蓬的海岸附近冲浪。

3 crushed   

a.压碎的，倒碎的

参考例句：

• The car was completely crushed under the truck. 小轿车被卡车压得完全变形了。
• The box was crushed when the car ran over it. 汽车辗过箱子时把它给压碎了。

4 caterpillar   

n.毛虫，蝴蝶的幼虫

参考例句：

• A butterfly is produced by metamorphosis from a caterpillar.蝴蝶是由毛虫脱胎变成的。
• A caterpillar must pass through the cocoon stage to become a butterfly.毛毛虫必须经过茧的阶段才能变成蝴蝶。

5 standing   

n.持续，地位；adj.永久的，不动的，直立的，不流动的

参考例句：

• After the earthquake only a few houses were left standing.地震过后只有几幢房屋还立着。
• They're standing out against any change in the law.他们坚决反对对法律做任何修改。

6 wretched   

adj.可怜的，不幸的，卑鄙的，质量差的，恶劣的

参考例句：

• What a wretched life they lived in the workhouse!他们在济贫院里过的生活真悲惨！
• He was wretched when he failed the examination.由于考试不及格，他很痛苦。

7 nibble   

n.轻咬，啃；v.一点点地咬，慢慢啃，吹毛求疵

参考例句：

• Inflation began to nibble away at their savings.通货膨胀开始蚕食他们的存款。
• The birds cling to the wall and nibble at the brickwork.鸟儿们紧贴在墙上，啄着砖缝。