== Looking-Glass House
One thing was certain, that the #emph[white] kitten had had nothing to
do with it:---it was the black kitten's fault entirely. For the white
kitten had been having its face washed by the old cat for the last
quarter of an hour (and bearing it pretty well, considering); so you see
that it #emph[couldn't] have had any hand in the mischief.

The way Dinah washed her children's faces was this: first she held the
poor thing down by its ear with one paw, and then with the other paw she
rubbed its face all over, the wrong way, beginning at the nose: and just
now, as I said, she was hard at work on the white kitten, which was
lying quite still and trying to purr---no doubt feeling that it was all
meant for its good.

But the black kitten had been finished with earlier in the afternoon,
and so, while pov/S vrb/be/ sitting curled up in a corner of the great
arm-chair, half talking to pov/r and half asleep, the kitten had been
having a grand game of romps with the ball of worsted pov/S had been
trying to wind up, and had been rolling it up and down till it had all
come undone again; and there it was, spread over the hearth-rug, all
knots and tangles, with the kitten running after its own tail in the
middle.

“Oh, you wicked little thing!” alt/first and second or third/pov/S
cried/cried pov/S/, catching up the kitten, and giving it a little kiss
to make it understand that it was in disgrace. “Really, Dinah ought to
have taught you better manners! You #emph[ought];, Dinah, you know you
ought!” pov/s added, looking reproachfully at the old cat, and speaking
in as cross a voice as pov/s could manage---and then pov/s scrambled
back into the arm-chair, taking the kitten and the worsted with pov/o,
and began winding up the ball again. But pov/s didn't get on very fast,
as pov/s vrb/be/ talking all the time, sometimes to the kitten, and
sometimes to pov/r. Kitty sat very demurely on pov/p knee, pretending to
watch the progress of the winding, and now and then putting out one paw
and gently touching the ball, as if it would be glad to help, if it
might.

“Do you know what to-morrow is, Kitty?” pov/S began. “You'd have guessed
if you'd been up in the window with me---only Dinah was making you tidy,
so you couldn't. I was watching the boys getting in sticks for the
bonfire---and it wants plenty of sticks, Kitty! Only it got so cold, and
it snowed so, they had to leave off. Never mind, Kitty, we'll go and see
the bonfire to-morrow.” Here pov/S wound two or three turns of the
worsted round the kitten's neck, just to see how it would look: this led
to a scramble, in which the ball rolled down upon the floor, and yards
and yards of it got unwound again.

“Do you know, I was so angry, Kitty,” pov/S went on as soon as plv/s
were comfortably settled again, “when I saw all the mischief you had
been doing, I was very nearly opening the window, and putting you out
into the snow! And you'd have deserved it, you little mischievous
darling! What have you got to say for yourself? Now don't interrupt me!”
pov/s went on, holding up one finger. “I'm going to tell you all your
faults. Number one: you squeaked twice while Dinah was washing your face
this morning. Now you can't deny it, Kitty: I heard you! What's that you
say?” (pretending that the kitten was speaking.) “Her paw went into your
eye? Well, that's #emph[your] fault, for keeping your eyes open---if
you'd shut them tight up, it wouldn't have happened. Now don't make any
more excuses, but listen! Number two: you pulled Snowdrop away by the
tail just as I had put down the saucer of milk before her! What, you
were thirsty, were you? How do you know she wasn't thirsty too? Now for
number three: you unwound every bit of the worsted while I wasn't
looking!

“That's three faults, Kitty, and you've not been punished for any of
them yet. You know I'm saving up all your punishments for Wednesday
week---Suppose they had saved up all #emph[my] punishments!” pov/s went
on, talking more to herself than the kitten. “What #emph[would] they do
at the end of a year? I should be sent to prison, I suppose, when the
day came. Or---let me see---suppose each punishment was to be going
without a dinner: then, when the miserable day came, I should have to go
without fifty dinners at once! Well, I shouldn't mind #emph[that] much!
I'd far rather go without them than eat them!

“Do you hear the snow against the window-panes, Kitty? How nice and soft
it sounds! Just as if some one was kissing the window all over outside.
I wonder if the snow #emph[loves] the trees and fields, that it kisses
them so gently? And then it covers them up snug, you know, with a white
quilt; and perhaps it says, ‘Go to sleep, darlings, till the summer
comes again.' And when they wake up in the summer, Kitty, they dress
themselves all in green, and dance about---whenever the wind blows---oh,
that's very pretty!” alt/first and second or third/pov/S cried/cried
pov/S/, dropping the ball of worsted to clap pov/p hands. “And I do so
#emph[wish] it was true! I'm sure the woods look sleepy in the autumn,
when the leaves are getting brown.

“Kitty, can you play chess? Now, don't smile, my dear, I'm asking it
seriously. Because, when we were playing just now, you watched just as
if you understood it: and when I said ‘Check!' you purred! Well, it
#emph[was] a nice check, Kitty, and really I might have won, if it
hadn't been for that nasty Knight, that came wiggling down among my
pieces. Kitty, dear, let's pretend---” And here I wish I could tell you
half the things pov/S used to say, beginning with pov/p favourite phrase
“Let's pretend.” Pov/s had had quite a long argument with pov/p sister
only the day before---all because pov/S had begun with “Let's pretend
we're kings and queens;” and pov/p sister, who liked being very exact,
had argued that plv/s couldn't, because there were only two of pov/o,
and pov/S had been reduced at last to say, “Well, #emph[you] can be one
of them then, and #emph[I'll] be all the rest.” And once pov/s had
really frightened pov/p old nurse by shouting suddenly in her ear,
“Nurse! Do let's pretend that I'm a hungry hyaena, and you're a bone.”

But this is taking us away from pov/P 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 pov/S 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, pov/S said, because the kitten wouldn't
fold its arms properly. So, to punish it, pov/s held it up to the
Looking-glass, that it might see how sulky it was---“and if you're not
good directly,” pov/s added, “I'll put you through into Looking-glass
House. How would you like #emph[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 #emph[that] bit! I want so much to know whether they've a fire in
the winter: you never #emph[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 #emph[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 #emph[was] beginning to melt away, just like a
bright silvery mist.

In another moment pov/S vrb/be/ through the glass, and had jumped
lightly down into the Looking-glass room. The very first thing pov/s did
was to look whether there was a fire in the fireplace, and pov/s 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,” alt/first and second or third/pov/s
thought/thought pov/S/: “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!”

Then pov/s began looking about, and noticed that what could be seen from
the old room was quite common and uninteresting, but that all the rest
was as different as possible. For instance, the pictures on the wall
next the fire seemed to be all alive, and the very clock on the
chimney-piece (you know you can only see the back of it in the
Looking-glass) had got the face of a little old man, and grinned at
pov/o.

“They don't keep this room so tidy as the other,” pov/S thought to
pov/r, as pov/s noticed several of the chessmen down in the hearth among
the cinders: but in another moment, with a little “Oh!” of surprise,
pov/s was down on pov/p hands and knees watching them. The chessmen were
walking about, two and two!

“Here are the Red King and the Red Queen,” pov/S said (in a whisper, for
fear of frightening them), “and there are the White King and the White
Queen sitting on the edge of the shovel---and here are two castles
walking arm in arm---I don't think they can hear me,” pov/s went on, as
pov/s put pov/p head closer down, “and I'm nearly sure they can't see
me. I feel somehow as if I were invisible---”

Here something began squeaking on the table behind pov/S, and made pov/o
turn pov/p head just in time to see one of the White Pawns roll over and
begin kicking: pov/s watched it with great curiosity to see what would
happen next.

“It is the voice of my child!” the White Queen cried out as she rushed
past the King, so violently that she knocked him over among the cinders.
“My precious Lily! My imperial kitten!” and she began scrambling wildly
up the side of the fender.

“Imperial fiddlestick!” said the King, rubbing his nose, which had been
hurt by the fall. He had a right to be a #emph[little] annoyed with the
Queen, for he was covered with ashes from head to foot.

Pov/S vrb/be/ very anxious to be of use, and, as the poor little Lily
was nearly screaming herself into a fit, pov/s hastily picked up the
Queen and set her on the table by the side of her noisy little daughter.

The Queen gasped, and sat down: the rapid journey through the air had
quite taken away her breath and for a minute or two she could do nothing
but hug the little Lily in silence. As soon as she had recovered her
breath a little, she called out to the White King, who was sitting
sulkily among the ashes, “Mind the volcano!”

“What volcano?” said the King, looking up anxiously into the fire, as if
he thought that was the most likely place to find one.

“Blew---me---up,” panted the Queen, who was still a little out of
breath. “Mind you come up---the regular way---don't get blown up!”

Pov/S watched the White King as he slowly struggled up from bar to bar,
till at last pov/s said, “Why, you'll be hours and hours getting to the
table, at that rate. I'd far better help you, hadn't I?” But the King
took no notice of the question: it was quite clear that he could neither
hear pov/o nor see pov/o.

So pov/S picked him up very gently, and lifted him across more slowly
than pov/s had lifted the Queen, that pov/s mightn't take his breath
away: but, before pov/s put him on the table, pov/s thought pov/s might
as well dust him a little, he was so covered with ashes.

Pov/s said afterwards that pov/s had never seen in all pov/p life such a
face as the King made, when he found himself held in the air by an
invisible hand, and being dusted: he was far too much astonished to cry
out, but his eyes and his mouth went on getting larger and larger, and
rounder and rounder, till pov/p hand shook so with laughing that pov/s
nearly let him drop upon the floor.

“Oh! #emph[please] don't make such faces, my dear!” pov/s cried out,
quite forgetting that the King couldn't hear pov/o. “You make me laugh
so that I can hardly hold you! And don't keep your mouth so wide open!
All the ashes will get into it---there, now I think you're tidy enough!”
pov/s added, as pov/s smoothed his hair, and set him upon the table near
the Queen.

The King immediately fell flat on his back, and lay perfectly still: and
pov/S vrb/be/ a little alarmed at what pov/s had done, and went round
the room to see if pov/s could find any water to throw over him.
However, pov/s could find nothing but a bottle of ink, and when pov/s
got back with it she found he had recovered, and he and the Queen were
talking together in a frightened whisper---so low, that pov/S could
hardly hear what they said.

The King was saying, “I assure, you my dear, I turned cold to the very
ends of my whiskers!”

To which the Queen replied, “You haven't got any whiskers.”

“The horror of that moment,” the King went on, “I shall never,
#emph[never] forget!”

“You will, though,” the Queen said, “if you don't make a memorandum of
it.”

Pov/S looked on with great interest as the King took an enormous
memorandum-book out of his pocket, and began writing. A sudden thought
struck pov/o, and pov/s took hold of the end of the pencil, which came
some way over his shoulder, and began writing for him.

The poor King looked puzzled and unhappy, and struggled with the pencil
for some time without saying anything; but pov/S vrb/be/ too strong for
him, and at last he panted out, “My dear! I really #emph[must] get a
thinner pencil. I can't manage this one a bit; it writes all manner of
things that I don't intend---”

“What manner of things?” said the Queen, looking over the book (in which
pov/S had put “#emph[The White Knight is sliding down the poker. He
balances very badly];”) “That's not a memorandum of #emph[your]
feelings!”

There was a book lying near pov/O on the table, and while pov/s sat
watching the White King (for pov/s was still a little anxious about him,
and had the ink all ready to throw over him, in case he fainted again),
pov/s turned over the leaves, to find some part that pov/s could read,
“---for it's all in some language I don't know,” pov/s said to herself.

It was like this.

#include "poems/jabberwocky-mirrored.typ"

Pov/s puzzled over this for some time, but at last a bright thought
struck pov/o. “Why, it's a Looking-glass book, of course! And if I hold
it up to a glass, the words will all go the right way again.”

This was the poem that pov/S read.

#include "poems/jabberwocky.typ"

“It seems very pretty,” pov/s said when pov/s had finished it, “but it's
#emph[rather] hard to understand!” (You see pov/s didn't like to
confess, even to pov/r, that pov/s couldn't make it out at all.)
“Somehow it seems to fill my head with ideas---only I don't exactly know
what they are! However, #emph[somebody] killed #emph[something];: that's
clear, at any rate---”

“But oh!” alt/first and second or third/pov/S thought/thought pov/S/,
suddenly jumping up, “if I don't make haste I shall have to go back
through the Looking-glass, before I've seen what the rest of the house
is like! Let's have a look at the garden first!” Pov/s vrb/be/ out of
the room in a moment, and ran down stairs---or, at least, it wasn't
exactly running, but a new invention of pov/a for getting down stairs
quickly and easily, as pov/S said to pov/r. Pov/s just kept the tips of
pov/p fingers on the hand-rail, and floated gently down without even
touching the stairs with pov/p feet; then pov/s floated on through the
hall, and would have gone straight out at the door in the same way, if
pov/s hadn't caught hold of the door-post. Pov/s vrb/be/ getting a
little giddy with so much floating in the air, and was rather glad to
find pov/r walking again in the natural way.