Sweetie Belle stood up and saw that she had been sitting on a little glass box. It opened and she found a series of very small cookies within, with the words "EAT ME" beautifully marked in chocolate chips.

"Curiouser and curiouser," she thought.

She took one of the cookies from the box and thought to herself again.

"If it makes me grow taller, then I can reach the key... And if it makes me grow smaller, I can creep under the door. Either way, I'll get into the garden,"

And she didn't care which happened.

So, she took a bite and she began to grow.

Eventually, she was over nine feet high. She grew so rapidly that her head struck against the ceiling of the room, and when she looked down at her feet, they seemed almost out of sight.

"I'm stuck!" she cried. "I'm stuck! What am I supposed to do?"

Suddenly, she heard the pattering of little feet in the distance.

It was Angel Bunny, splendidly dressed and carrying a pair of white kid-gloves and a fan.

He came trotting along in a great hurry, muttering to himself.

"Oh! The Princess will be absolutely savage if I've kept her waiting!"

Sweetie Belle, feeling so desperate that she was ready to ask for help from anyone, spoke in a low, timid voice.

"Please, Angel, can you help me?"

Angel turned around slowly, looked up at her and shrieked, dropping the white kid-gloves and the fan. Then, Sweetie Belle began to shed gallons of tears, until there was a large pool at her feet, four inches deep.

"Are you crying?" Angel asked.

"Yes!"

"Well, fortunately, I speak both 'crying' and 'sobbing' fluently," he said as he hopped from one side to the other, dodging Sweetie Belle's tears. "But I can't stay. I'm late!"

He opened one of the doors and scurried away into the darkness as hard as he could go.

"Yesterday, everything was normal," Sweetie Belle thought, her eyes still full of tears.

She looked down at her hands and was surprised to see that she was wearing Angel Bunny's white kid-gloves and holding the fan.

And she was shrinking again.

"I wonder what's making me grow smaller," she said. "It must be this fan."

Indeed, the cause of her shrinking was the fan, and she hastily dropped it and removed the gloves, just in time to save herself from shrinking away altogether as she went under the water. And when she came up for air, she found herself in an old sewer tunnel, and wishing she hadn't cried so much.

Just then, she heard something splashing about in the water a little way off, and she saw that it was a man who looked an awful lot like someone she knew back home.

"Dr. Hooves!" she cried.

The man swam as hard as he could, making quite a commotion in the tunnel as he went.

"Dr. Hooves... Dr. Hooves!" she called softly after him.

When the man heard her, he turned around slowly and looked at her rather inquisitively. His face was quite pale.

"How did you know my name, young lady?" he said in a low, soothing, and compassionate voice.

"I'm sorry. You looked like someone I know,"

"I'm late. Come with me. I have a very important lecture to deliver. And everyone will be there!"