The White Rabbit returns, now splendidly dressed and carrying a pair of white kid gloves and a large fan. Alice asks him for help, but the Rabbit is so frightened that he drops the gloves and fan and runs away. Alice picks them up and starts fanning herself while she wonders what it is that has made this day so different from every other. She decides that she must have been changed into another girl in the night as she can’t remember her multiplication tables or geography correctly and isn’t able to recite a poem properly.
The fanning makes Alice shrink again until she is two feet high. She tries again to enter the door but it is still locked and the key is still lying on the table. Then she slips and falls into her own pool of tears.
She encounters a Mouse who fell into the pool too, but she frightens him when she starts talking about her cat Dinah and a dog. He promises her to tell her why he hates cats and dogs and they swim to the shore, taking other creatures that fell into the pool too with them