"That doesn't make sense, but it sounds like an excellent way to get free milk."
"Exactly! Captain Ramshackle is hoping to get a free bottle of milk, and more power to his elbow."
"He's going to drink the milk with his elbow?"
"Of course not," laughed Miss Computermite. "You're really rather stupid for a girl."
"And you're really rather large for a termite," said Alice.
"Au contraire," replied the termite (in French), "you're rather small for a girl." And as she listened to this answer, millions, indeed trillions of other termites thundered past Alice (some of them on bicycles) until Alice thought that she was caught up in a gigantic wave of termite frenzy.
"How on earth do you answer the questions?" Alice asked, still running.
"Well," Miss Computermite began, also still running, "it's all based on the beanery system."
"Whatever's that?"
"Well, a bean is either here, or it's not here. Don't you agree?"
"I agree entirely," replied the running Alice.
"So then, logically, if a bean is here it counts as one bean, and if it isn't here, it counts as a not bean. And from this knowledge, when the beans are arranged in patterns, it is possible to spell out many the question and many the answer. Why, with only a mere octet of beans (or not beans) one can spell out all of the numbers and all of the letters of the alphabet. And quite a few punctuation marks as well! So then, imagine a trillion beans! What problems you could work out with a trillion beans! And the same principle applies to termites of course: a termite is either here, or it isn't here. And we termites are even better than beans at being here or not being here because we've got legs, and therefore we can move much faster than beans."
"What about jumping beans?" asked Alice.
"Don't talk to me about jumping beans," replied the termite, angrily.
"So, this Captain Ramshackle asks the Queen a question, and all you termites answer it."
"That's correct."
"Where does Captain Ramshackle live?" shouted Alice, loudly. (She had to shout this question out loudly, because the noise of six times a trillion termite legs, all of them running, can make a fearsome thundering.)
"Captain Ramshackle", began the termite, mysteriously, "lives outside the mound." She said these last three words very mysteriously indeed. In fact, she said them mysteriously mysteriously.
Alice was rather excited by this news. "Does that mean," she shouted, "that I can get outside of the mound?" Alice was excited because she was almost certain that Whippoorwill had found his way out of the termite mound by now.
"Why, that's exactly where you're going," answered Miss Computermite, "because this is how we tell Captain Ramshackle the answers to his questions: we march out from the mound so that the Captain can study our formation and, by studying our formation, by noting which termites are here and which are not here, the Captain can find out the solution to his latest question."
"But I thought you said that this latest question didn't have an answer?"
"It doesn't, and that's why I'm scurrying around even more than is usual. I'll tell you one thing though..."
"And what's that?" shouted Alice, grateful to know that Miss Computermite was only going to tell her one thing: Alice had learned more than enough things already that afternoon.
"Why, only that you're a part of the answer, Alice; otherwise, why are you running so very quickly?"
"And what happens after you've answered the Captain's question?"
"We all march back into the mound again, of course, carrying the next question."
But Alice had no intention of marching back into the mound; once she was out, she was staying out. "Maybe I shall be home in time for my writing lesson," she said to herself: Which gave her an idea. "Miss Computermite," she said out loud, "you're awfully good at answering questions, aren't you?"
"I most certainly am. Fire away, young girl."
"Answer me this then: What is the correct usage of an ellipsis?"
"No, no... don't tell me... let me think..." the computermite pondered, "I know it... I'm sure that I do... now let me just... there... I have it!"
"Yes?" urged Alice excitedly.
"The correct usage of an ellipsis..." the Computermite announced grandly, "is for the removal of greenfly from a rose bush."
"I beg your pardon?"
"An ellipsis... it's a kind of gardening implement... isn't it?"
"Oh, this is no good at all!" spluttered Alice. "My Great Aunt will be furious!"
This statement stopped Miss Computermite completely in her tracks. "You've got a great ant?" she asked, astonished.
"I most certainly have. Her name is Ermintrude."
"The great ant has got a name?!"
"Yes she has, and very, very strict she is too."
"Upon my mound!" squeaked the termite in a frightened voice.
"What's wrong, Miss Computermite?" asked Alice. "You look quite scared."
"Just keep your great ant Ermintrude away from me!" the termite pronounced, and then off she set at an even faster pace than before.
"I wonder what's bothering Miss Computermite?" pondered Alice. "Did I say something wrong?" And then she set off after the termite, doing her utmost to catch up.
Presently Alice did catch up, and just as she did so, she saw a faint light glowing from a distant hole in the mound. The trillions, even zillions, of termites were all scurrying forwards into the light and Alice was quite caught up in their rush: she was a part of the answer.
And then, quite suddenly, Alice was wriggling like a worm in a pair of giant tweezers as she was carried upwards into the sky. Up, up, up. How dizzy Alice felt! "My, my!" cried a faraway voice, "What have we here? I do believe I've got a wurm in my computermite mound!" The voice said the word worm with a U inside it, and Alice could hear the U inside the word wurm as it was said. "How splendid!" the voice cried. Alice couldn't see where the voice was coming from, and she didn't really care to, because right about then Alice was dropped from the tweezers so that she landed on a sheet of glass. The sheet of glass was quickly slid under another piece of glass which looked very much like a glass eye. Alice was squashed flat! "Now then," said the voice, "let us see what we have captured. Magnification: five and ten and fiftyfold!"
Alice realized then that she was being looked at, rather closely, and she tried to think about what had a glass eye that allowed somebody to look at you rather too closely. "I'm being looked at through a microscope!" was her answer. She had seen her Great Uncle Mortimer use a microscope in his study; he used it to examine his numbers and his radishes.
"My, my!" the faraway voice stated. "We seem to be looking at a tiny girl, a minuscule girl, an ever-so-small girl. What's she doing in my computermite mound? What a very splendidly random occurrence!"
Alice looked up the glass eye of the microscope and saw another eye -- a giant eye -- an almost human eye -- looking back down at her. "Oh, if only I could travel up this microscope," thought Alice, "then I could become my real size again." But after all, she had already that afternoon climbed up the pendulum of a clock and vanished and shrunk, so this shouldn't be too difficult a task for her. And so it proved. Alice felt herself passing through the glass eye of the microscope and then through another glass eye, and then through yet another glass eye, and yet another, and then finally a final glass eye, and by this time she felt quite faint! In fact, Alice fainted quite away!