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  1. THROUGH THE LOOKING-GLASS
  2. By Lewis Carroll
  3. CHAPTER I. Looking-Glass house
  4. One thing was certain, that the WHITE kitten had had nothing to do with
  5. it:--it was the black kitten's fault entirely. For the white kitten had
  6. been having its face washed by the old cat for the last quarter of
  7. an hour (and bearing it pretty well, considering); so you see that it
  8. COULDN'T have had any hand in the mischief.
  9. The way Dinah washed her children's faces was this: first she held the
  10. poor thing down by its ear with one paw, and then with the other paw she
  11. rubbed its face all over, the wrong way, beginning at the nose: and
  12. just now, as I said, she was hard at work on the white kitten, which was
  13. lying quite still and trying to purr--no doubt feeling that it was all
  14. meant for its good.
  15. But the black kitten had been finished with earlier in the afternoon,
  16. and so, while Alice was sitting curled up in a corner of the great
  17. arm-chair, half talking to herself and half asleep, the kitten had been
  18. having a grand game of romps with the ball of worsted Alice had been
  19. trying to wind up, and had been rolling it up and down till it had all
  20. come undone again; and there it was, spread over the hearth-rug, all
  21. knots and tangles, with the kitten running after its own tail in the
  22. middle.
  23. 'Oh, you wicked little thing!' cried Alice, catching up the kitten, and
  24. giving it a little kiss to make it understand that it was in disgrace.
  25. 'Really, Dinah ought to have taught you better manners! You OUGHT,
  26. Dinah, you know you ought!' she added, looking reproachfully at the old
  27. cat, and speaking in as cross a voice as she could manage--and then she
  28. scrambled back into the arm-chair, taking the kitten and the worsted
  29. with her, and began winding up the ball again. But she didn't get on
  30. very fast, as she was talking all the time, sometimes to the kitten, and
  31. sometimes to herself. Kitty sat very demurely on her knee, pretending to
  32. watch the progress of the winding, and now and then putting out one
  33. paw and gently touching the ball, as if it would be glad to help, if it
  34. might.
  35. 'Do you know what to-morrow is, Kitty?' Alice began. 'You'd have guessed
  36. if you'd been up in the window with me--only Dinah was making you tidy,
  37. so you couldn't. I was watching the boys getting in sticks for the
  38. bonfire--and it wants plenty of sticks, Kitty! Only it got so cold, and
  39. it snowed so, they had to leave off. Never mind, Kitty, we'll go and
  40. see the bonfire to-morrow.' Here Alice wound two or three turns of the
  41. worsted round the kitten's neck, just to see how it would look: this led
  42. to a scramble, in which the ball rolled down upon the floor, and yards
  43. and yards of it got unwound again.
  44. 'Do you know, I was so angry, Kitty,' Alice went on as soon as they were
  45. comfortably settled again, 'when I saw all the mischief you had been
  46. doing, I was very nearly opening the window, and putting you out into
  47. the snow! And you'd have deserved it, you little mischievous darling!
  48. Wha