In Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, the Dormouse says that the three sisters live in a treacle well.
The story appears during the Mad Hatter’s tea party, where the Dormouse describes three young sisters named Elsie, Lacie, and Tillie. They live at the bottom of a treacle well, eat treacle, and spend their time drawing things that begin with the letter M, including “muchness,” “memory,” and “mousetraps.”
Alice finds the story confusing because treacle is a thick syrup, and a well filled with it would be an impossible place to live. That deliberate impossibility reflects Lewis Carroll’s use of logic, wordplay, and dreamlike reversals throughout the book.
The answer is often mixed up with other memorable locations in Wonderland, especially the pool of tears and the rabbit hole. The Dormouse’s tale is also absent from some screen adaptations; Disney’s animated version substitutes the song “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Bat” for much of the book’s original tea-party storytelling.