“There’s plenty of room!” said Alice indignantly.  And she sat down in a large armchair at one end of the table.

“What day of the month is it?” asked the Hatter, turning to Alice.

He had taken his watch out of his pocket and was looking at it uneasily, shaking it every now and then, and holding it to his ear.

Alice considered a little, and said, “The fourth.”

“Two days wrong,” sighed the Hatter.  “I told you butter wouldn’t suit the works,” he added, looking angrily at the March Hare.

“It was the best butter,” the March Hare meekly replied.

“But some crumbs must have got in as well,” the Hatter grumbled.  “You shouldn’t have put it in with the bread-knife.”

The March Hare took the watch and looked at it gloomily, then he dipped it into his cup of tea, and looked at it again, but he could think of nothing better to say than “It was the best butter, you know.”

“It’s always tea-time with us here,” explained the Hatter, “and we’ve no time to wash the things between whiles.”

“Then you keep moving round, I suppose?” said Alice.

“Exactly so,” said the Hatter; “as the things get used up.”

“But when you come to the beginning again?” Alice ventured to ask.

“Suppose we change the subject,” the March Hare interrupted, yawning.  “I vote the young lady tells us a story.”

“I’m afraid I don’t know one,” said Alice, rather alarmed at the proposal.

“Then the Dormouse shall!” they both cried.  “Wake up the Dormouse!” And they pinched it on both sides at once.

The Dormouse slowly opened its eyes.  “I wasn’t asleep,” it said, in a hoarse, feeble voice.  “I heard every word you fellows were saying.”

“Tell us a story,” said the March Hare.

“Yes, please do!” pleaded Alice.

“And be quick about it,” added the Hatter, “or you’ll be asleep again before it’s done.”

“Once upon a time there were three little sisters,” the Dormouse began in a great hurry, “and their names were Elsie, Lacie, and Tillie and they lived at the bottom of a well——­”

“What did they live on?” said Alice, who always took a great interest in questions of eating and drinking.

“They lived on treacle,” said the Dormouse, after thinking a minute or two.

“They couldn’t have done that, you know,” Alice gently remarked, “they’d have been ill.”

“So they were very ill.”

Alice helped herself to some tea and bread and butter, and then turned to the Dormouse and repeated her question, “Why did they live at the bottom of the well?”

The Dormouse again took a minute or two to think about it, and then said, “It was a treacle-well.”

“There’s no such thing,” Alice was beginning very angrily, but the Hatter and the March Hare went “Sh! sh!”

“I want a clean cup,” interrupted the Hatter.  “Let’s all move one place on.”  He moved on as he spoke, and the Dormouse followed him; the March Hare moved into the Dormouse’s place, and Alice rather unwillingly took the place of the March Hare.