"

Alice did not feel encouraged to ask any more questions about it, so she
turned to the Mock Turtle and said, "What else had you to learn?"

"Well, there was Mystery," the Mock Turtle replied, counting off the
subjects on his flappers, "--Mystery, ancient and modern, with
Seaography: then Drawling--the Drawling-master was an old conger-eel,
that used to come once a week: _he_ taught us Drawling, Stretching, and
Fainting in Coils."

"What was _that_ like?" said Alice.

"Well, I can't show it you myself," the Mock Turtle said: "I'm too
stiff. And the Gryphon never learnt it."

"Hadn't time," said the Gryphon: "I went to the Classical master,
though. He was an old crab, _he_ was."

"I never went to him," the Mock Turtle said with a sigh: "he taught
Laughing and Grief, they used to say."

"So he did, so he did," said the Gryphon, sighing in his turn; and both
creatures hid their faces in their paws.

"And how many hours a day did you do lessons?" said Alice, in a hurry to
change the subject.

"Ten hours the first day," said the Mock Turtle: "nine the next, and so
on."

"What a curious plan!" exclaimed Alice.

"That's the reason they're called lessons," the Gryphon remarked:
"because they lessen from day to day."

This was quite a new idea to Alice, and she thought over it a little
before she made her next remark. "Then the eleventh day must have been a
holiday."

"Of course it was," said the Mock Turtle.

"And how did you manage on the twelfth?" Alice went on eagerly.

"That's enough about lessons," the Gryphon interrupted in a very decided
tone: "tell her something about the games now."

CHAPTER X

[Sidenote: _The Lobster Quadrille_]

THE Mock Turtle sighed deeply, and drew the back of one
flapper across his eyes. He looked at Alice, and tried to speak, but,
for a minute or two, sobs choked his voice. "Same as if he had a bone in
his throat," said the Gryphon: and it set to work shaking him and
punching him in the back. At last the Mock Turtle recovered his voice,
and, with tears running down his cheeks, went on again:

"You may not have lived much under the sea--" ("I haven't," said Alice)
"and perhaps you were never even introduced to a lobster--" (Alice began
to say "I once tasted----" but checked herself hastily, and said "No,
never") "--so you can have no idea what a delightful thing a Lobster
Quadrille is!"

"No, indeed," said Alice. "What sort of a dance is it?"

"Why," said th