But this is taking us
away from Alice's speech to the kitten. `Let's pretend that you're
the Red Queen, Kitty! Do you know, I think if you sat up and folded
your arms, you'd look exactly like her. Now do try, there's a
dear!' And Alice got the Red Queen off the table, and set it up
before the kitten as a model for it to imitate: however, the thing
didn't succeed, principally, Alice said, because the kitten
wouldn't fold its arms properly. So, to punish it, she held it up
to the Looking-glass, that it might see how sulky it was -- `and if
you're not good directly,' she added, `I'll put you through into
Looking-glass House. How would you like THAT?'
`Now, if you'll only attend, Kitty, and not talk so much, I'll tell
you all my ideas about Looking-glass House. First, there's the room
you can see through the glass -- that's just the same as our
drawing room, only the things go the other way. I can see all of it
when I get upon a chair -- all but the bit behind the fireplace.
Oh! I do so wish I could see THAT bit! I want so much to know
whether they've a fire in the winter: you never CAN tell, you know,
unless our fire smokes, and then smoke comes up in that room too --
but that may be only pretence, just to make it look as if they had
a fire. Well then, the books are something like our books, only the
words go the wrong way; I know that, because I've held up one of
our books to the glass, and then they hold up one in the other
room.
`How would you like to live in Looking-glass House, Kitty? I wonder
if they'd give you milk in there? Perhaps Looking-glass milk isn't
good to drink -- But oh, Kitty! now we come to the passage. You can
just see a little PEEP of the passage in Looking-glass House, if
you leave the door of our drawing-room wide open: and it's very
like our passage as far as you can see, only you know it may be
quite different on beyond. Oh, Kitty! how nice it would be if we
could only get through into Looking- glass House! I'm sure it's
got, oh! such beautiful things in it!
Let's pretend there's a way of getting through into it, somehow,
Kitty. Let's pretend the glass has got all soft like gauze, so that
we can get through. Why, it's turning into a sort of mist now, I
declare! It'll be easy enough to get through -- ' She was up on the
chimney-piece while she said this, though she hardly knew how she
had got there. And certainly the glass WAS beginning to melt away,
just like a bright silvery mist.
In another moment Alice was through the glass, and had jumped
lightly down into the Looking-glass room. The very first thing she
did was to look whether there was a fire in the fireplace, and she
was quite pleased to find that there was a real one, blazing away
as brightly as the one she had left behind. 'So I shall be as warm
here as I was in the old room,' thought Alice: 'warmer, in fact,
because there'll be no one here to scold me away from the fire. Oh,
what fun it'll be, when they see me through the glass in here, and
can't get at me!'
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