Alice was not a bit hurt: the earth was quite soft, and she jumped up in a moment. She looked around only to find herself standing in a long corridor under the ground. The walls and the floor and the ceiling of the tunnel were made of dirt, and it curved away in both directions until Alice felt quite funny trying to decide which way to go. "Oh Whippoorwill," she cried, "wherever have you flown to?" And then she heard three men approaching around the corridor's bend. She knew it was three men because she could hear six footsteps making a dreadful noise. But what should come around the corner but a rather large white ant! He was quite the same size as Alice and he had on a tartan waistcoat and a pair of velvet trousers. (Although I suppose you can't really have a pair of six-legged trousers: you can have a sextet of trousers - but that sounds too much like a very strange musical composition.) Dangling between the ant's antennae was an open newspaper which completely obscured his face, and from behind which he could be heard muttering to himself:

"Tut, tut, tut! How dare they? Why, that's disgusting! Tut, tut, tut!" The newspaper was called News of the Mound and if Alice had managed a look at the newspaper's date she would have received a nasty shock, but all her attention was focused on the headline, which read: TERMITES FOUND ON THE MOON! Alice was so puzzled by this news, and the ant was so engrossed in his reading, that they both banged into each other!

"Who in the earth are you?" the ant grumbled, folding up his paper and looking rather surprised to find Alice standing there.

"I'm Alice," replied Alice, politely.

"You're a lis?" the ant said. "What in the earth is a lis?"

"I'm not a lis. My name is Alice." Alice spelt her name: "A-L-I-C-E."

"You're a lice!" the ant cried. "We don't want no lice in this mound!"

"I'm not a lice, I'm Alice! I'm a girl."