now. Which shall sing?"

"Oh, _you_ sing," said the Gry-phon. "I don't know the words."

So they danced round and round Al-ice, now and then tread-ing on her
toes when they passed too close. They waved their fore paws to mark the
time, while the Mock Tur-tle sang a queer kind of song, each verse of
which end-ed with these words:

"'Will you, won't you, will you, won't you, will you join the dance?

Will you, won't you, will you, won't you, won't you join the dance?'"

"Thank you, it's a fine dance to watch," said Al-ice, glad that it was
o-ver at last.

"Now," said the Gry-phon, "tell us a-bout what you have seen and done in
your life."

"I could tell you of the strange things I have seen to-day," said
Al-ice, with some doubt as to their wish-ing to hear it.

"All right, go on," they both cried.

So Al-ice told them what she had been through that day, from the time
when she first saw the White Rab-bit. They came up quite close to her,
one on each side, and sat still till she got to the part where she tried
to say, "You are old, Fath-er Wil-liam," and the words all came wrong.
Then the Mock Tur-tle drew a long breath and said, "That's quite
strange!"

"It's all as strange as it can be," said the Gry-phon.

"It all came wrong!" the Mock Tur-tle said, while he seemed to be in
deep thought. "I should like to hear her try to say some-thing now. Tell
her to be-gin." He looked at the Gry-phon as if he thought it had the
right to make Al-ice do as it pleased.

[Illustration]

"Stand up and say, 'Tis the voice of the Slug-gard,'" said the Gry-phon.

"How they do try to make one do things!" thought Al-ice. "I might just
as well be at school at once." She stood up and tried to re-peat it, but
her head was so full of the Lob-ster Dance, that she didn't know what
she was say-ing, and the words all came ver-y queer, in-deed:

"'Tis the voice of the lob-ster; I heard him de-clare,
'You have baked me too brown, I must su-gar my hair.'
As a duck with its eye-lids, so he with his nose
Trims his belt and his but-tons, and turns out his toes."

"That's not the way I used to say it when I was a child," said the
Gry-phon.

"Well, I never heard it before," said the Mock Tur-tle, "but there's no
sense in it at all."

Al-ice did not speak; she sat down with her face in her hands, and
thought, "Will things nev-er be as they used to an-y more?"

"I should like you to tell what it means," said the Mo