"Please, let me pass," she said pleasantly.

"I find I have taken the wrong road." "No, you haven't, dearie," said one of the men, who from a superior neatness of apparel might have been a clerk.

"You've come the right road, for you've met us.

And now you're not going away." And he came forward with a protecting arm.
Alice, genuinely frightened, tried to cross the stream and escape by the other side.

But the crossing was difficult, and she slipped at the outset and wet her ankles.