She shrinks of course...but out of her clothes too...

“What a curious feeling!” said Alice; “I must be shutting up like a telescope.”

To her dismay, she started to shrink, smaller, and smaller. Her clothes started to become far too large for poor Alice, and as she started to realize this she grabbed at her clothes and tried desperately to keep them over her body, but it was no use to her at all. Soon, her clothes began to become too heavy for her to carry, and so she was stuck shrinking and shrinking.

And so it was indeed: she was now only ten inches high, and her face only slightly brightened up at the thought that she was now the right size for going through the little door into that lovely garden. First, however, she waited for a few minutes to see if she was going to shrink any further: she felt a little nervous about this; “for it might end, you know,” said Alice to herself, “in my going out altogether, like a candle. I wonder what I should be like then?” And she tried to fancy what the flame of a candle is like after the candle is blown out, for she could not remember ever having seen such a thing.

After a while, finding that nothing more happened, she stepped out of her clothes and decided on going into the garden at once; but, alas for poor Alice! when she got to the door, she found she had forgotten the little golden key, and when she went back to the table for it, she found she could not possibly reach it: she could see it quite plainly through the glass, and she tried her best to climb up one of the legs of the table, but it was too slippery; and when she had tired herself out with trying, the poor girl sat down and cried.

“Come, there’s no use in crying like that!” said Alice to herself, rather sharply; “I advise you to leave off this minute!” She generally gave herself very good advice, (though she very seldom followed it), and sometimes she scolded herself so severely as to bring tears into her eyes; and once she remembered trying to box her own ears for having cheated herself in a game of croquet she was playing against herself, for this curious child was very fond of pretending to be two people. “But it’s no use now,” thought poor Alice, “to pretend to be two people! Why, there’s hardly enough of me left to make one respectable person!”

Soon her eye fell on a little glass box that was lying under the table: she opened it, and found in it a very small cake, on which the words “EAT ME” were beautifully marked in currants. “Well, I’ll eat it,” said Alice, “and if it makes me grow larger, I can reach the key AND get dressed, hopefully; and if it makes me grow smaller, I can creep under the door; so either way I’ll get into the garden, and I don’t care which happens!” she tells herself, hoping that her nakedness will remain hidden from all but herself.

She ate a little bit, and said anxiously to herself, “Which way? Which way?”, holding her hand on the top of her head to feel which way it was growing, and she was quite surprised to find that she remained the same size: to be sure, this generally happens when one eats cake, but Alice had got so much into the way of expecting nothing but out-of-the-way things to happen, that it seemed quite dull and stupid for life to go on in the common way.

So she set to work, and very soon finished off the cake.

“Curiouser and curiouser!” cried Alice (she was so much surprised, that for the moment she quite forgot how to speak good English); “now I’m opening out like the largest telescope that ever was!” At the realization that she was growing, Alice makes a mad dash toward her clothes, and for a moment she is able to easily pull her dress back on over her head, but the moment is quite temporary. “Oh drat!” she exclaims as her dress rips completely with horrible sound, rendering it unwearable. Alice whimpers as she realizes that this means she is stuck being naked.

Just then her head struck against the roof of the hall: in fact she was now more than twelve feet high, and she at once took up the little golden key and hurried off to the garden door.

Poor Alice! It was as much as she could do, lying down on one side, to look through into the garden with one eye; but to get through was more hopeless than ever: she sat down and began to cry again.

“You ought to be ashamed of yourself,” said Alice, “a great girl like you,” (she might well say this), “to go on crying in this way! Stop this moment, I tell you!” But she went on all the same, shedding gallons of tears, until there was a large pool all round her, about four inches deep and reaching half down the hall.