--- title: Alice in Wonderland, chapter IV, part 2: Little Bill, the pebbles and the puppy — a lesson of Mova's school · trees and pragmatics description: «Alice in Wonderland, chapter IV, part 2: Little Bill, the pebbles and the puppy», a lesson of the books course of Mova's primary school, sentence by sentence with dependency trees and pragmatics. It begins: Outside the house a whole crowd arrives with ladders, and after a lot of shouting they decid --- [Mova](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) · [this page in HTML](https://mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/books/8-alice-ch4-part2-little-bill/) [home](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) / [corpora](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/) / [school](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/) / [Books](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/books/) / Alice in Wonderland, chapter IV, part… # Alice in Wonderland, chapter IV, part 2: Little Bill, the pebbles and the puppy Lesson 8 of the books course of Mova's primary school: 20 sentences, each with its syntax tree and pragmatics. The lessons are written for Mova, and their agreed trees are part of Mova corpus 0.4 (CC BY-SA 4.0). How Mova does on its tests: [the lesson at school](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/school-run/books/8-alice-ch4-part2-little-bill/). - [0](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/books/8-alice-ch4-part2-little-bill/0/) — Outside the house a whole crowd arrives with ladders, and after a lot of shouting they decide that poor Bill, a lizard, must climb down the chimney to deal with the giant. - [1](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/books/8-alice-ch4-part2-little-bill/1/) — Alice gives one sharp kick with the foot she has up the chimney, and Bill shoots out "like a sky-rocket"; when the Rabbit talks of burning the house down, Alice threatens to set her cat Dinah on them. - [2](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/books/8-alice-ch4-part2-little-bill/2/) — Next they throw pebbles in at the window, but the pebbles turn into little cakes; Alice eats one, shrinks, and runs past the crowd into a thick wood. - [3](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/books/8-alice-ch4-part2-little-bill/3/) — There a puppy, enormous to tiny Alice, bounds at her; she keeps it busy with a stick, dodging round a thistle, until it gets tired and she escapes. - [4](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/books/8-alice-ch4-part2-little-bill/4/) — Resting, she wonders what to eat or drink to grow again, and peeps over a big mushroom to find a large blue caterpillar sitting on top: noisy and slapstick first, then quiet and curious. - [5](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/books/8-alice-ch4-part2-little-bill/5/) — Alice hears a rumbling of little cartwheels and many voices: "Where's the other ladder?—Why, I hadn't to bring but one; Bill's got the other". - [6](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/books/8-alice-ch4-part2-little-bill/6/) — They tie the ladders together, because one alone does not "reach half high enough"; a loose slate (a flat stone tile of the roof) falls with a crash, and someone shouts "Heads below!", which means watch out below. - [7](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/books/8-alice-ch4-part2-little-bill/7/) — Nobody wants to go down the chimney, so it is "Bill's to go down"; Alice says "they seem to put everything upon Bill!", meaning he gets all the jobs nobody wants. - [8](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/books/8-alice-ch4-part2-little-bill/8/) — Alice draws her foot down the chimney, waits till she hears a little animal scrambling close above her, says "This is Bill," and gives "one sharp kick" to stop it; a chorus cries "There goes Bill!" - [9](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/books/8-alice-ch4-part2-little-bill/9/) — Bill, feeble and squeaky, says "something comes at me like a Jack-in-the-box, and up I goes like a sky-rocket!"; a Jack-in-the-box is a toy figure that springs out of a box, and a sky-rocket is a firework. - [10](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/books/8-alice-ch4-part2-little-bill/10/) — The Rabbit says "We must burn the house down!", and Alice shouts "If you do, I'll set Dinah at you!", after which there is "a dead silence". - [11](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/books/8-alice-ch4-part2-little-bill/11/) — Alice thinks "If they had any sense, they'd take the roof off." - [12](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/books/8-alice-ch4-part2-little-bill/12/) — The Rabbit orders "A barrowful will do, to begin with", meaning a wheelbarrow full, and a shower of pebbles rattles in at the window. - [13](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/books/8-alice-ch4-part2-little-bill/13/) — The pebbles turn into little cakes, and Alice reasons that a cake "can't possibly make me larger", so it "must make me smaller, I suppose". - [14](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/books/8-alice-ch4-part2-little-bill/14/) — She shrinks, runs out, and sees Bill the Lizard being held up by two guinea-pigs, who give him something out of a bottle; the crowd rushes at her, but she escapes into a thick wood. - [15](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/books/8-alice-ch4-part2-little-bill/15/) — Her plan is first "to grow to my right size again" and second "to find my way into that lovely garden", but "she had not the smallest idea how to set about it". - [16](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/books/8-alice-ch4-part2-little-bill/16/) — An enormous puppy reaches out a paw to her; Alice speaks to it "in a coaxing tone" (gently and sweetly), but she is afraid it might be hungry and eat her. - [18](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/books/8-alice-ch4-part2-little-bill/18/) — At last the puppy sits panting with its tongue out, and Alice runs off and leans against a buttercup to rest; later she says "what a dear little puppy it was!" - [19](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/books/8-alice-ch4-part2-little-bill/19/) — She looks under the big mushroom, on both sides of it and behind it, and then thinks of looking on the top: there, on top of the mushroom, as tall as she is, sits a large blue caterpillar "with its arms folded, quietly smoking a long hookah"; a hookah is a tall smoking pipe with water in it, and smoking is very bad for health. - [20](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/books/8-alice-ch4-part2-little-bill/20/) — Old words in today's English: "I fancy" = I think, "don't be particular" = don't be fussy, "a deal too flustered" = much too upset and muddled, "made believe" = pretended. - ← previous: [Alice in Wonderland, chapter IV, part 1: Stuck in the White Rabbit's house](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/books/7-alice-ch4-part1-the-rabbits-house/) - next →: [Alice in Wonderland, chapter V, part 1: Advice from a Caterpillar](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/books/9-alice-ch5-part1-advice-from-a-caterpillar/) - ↑ back to [Books](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/books/)