'It's the thing Mock Turtle Soup is made from,' said the Queen.

We ate some turtle soup.

'You did,' said the Mock Turtle.

'And washing?' said the Mock Turtle.

'Two lines!' cried the Mock Turtle.

Sing her Turtle Soup, will you, old fellow?'

CHAPTER IX The Mock Turtle's Story

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

'Explain all that,' said the Mock Turtle.

'I should like to have it explained,' said the Mock Turtle.

'It all came different!' the Mock Turtle repeated thoughtfully.

'Would you like to see a little of it?' said the Mock Turtle.

'Once,' said the Mock Turtle at last, with a deep sigh, 'I was a real Turtle.'

'I don't even know what a Mock Turtle is.'

'Or would you like the Mock Turtle to sing you a song?'

'With extras?' asked the Mock Turtle a little anxiously.

At last the Gryphon said to the Mock Turtle, 'Drive on, old fellow!

'I couldn't afford to learn it.' said the Mock Turtle with a sigh.

'Of course,' the Mock Turtle said 'advance twice, set to partners ' ' change lobsters, and retire in same order,' continued the Gryphon.

'But about his toes?' the Mock Turtle persisted.

'Turn a somersault in the sea!' cried the Mock Turtle, capering wildly about.

'Well, I can't show it you myself,' the Mock Turtle said 'I'm too stiff.

'Come, let's try the first figure!' said the Mock Turtle to the Gryphon.

'I mean what I say,' the Mock Turtle replied in an offended tone.

'Well, I never heard it before,' said the Mock Turtle 'but it sounds uncommon nonsense.'

Then the Queen left off, quite out of breath, and said to Alice, 'Have you seen the Mock Turtle yet?'

At last the Mock Turtle recovered his voice, and, with tears running down his cheeks, he went on again

'You're wrong about the crumbs,' said the Mock Turtle 'crumbs would all wash off in the sea.

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

'Oh, as to the whiting,' said the Mock Turtle, 'they you've seen them, of course?'

The Mock Turtle sighed deeply, and drew the back of one flapper across his eyes.

'What is the use of repeating all that stuff,' the Mock Turtle interrupted, 'if you don't explain it as you go on?

'The lobsters!' shouted the Gryphon, with a bound into the air.

The Mock Turtle sighed deeply, and began, in a voice sometimes choked with sobs, to sing this

'Ah! then yours wasn't a really good school,' said the Mock Turtle in a tone of great relief.

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

'We called him Tortoise because he taught us,' said the Mock Turtle angrily 'really you are very dull!'

So they went up to the Mock Turtle, who looked at them with large eyes full of tears, but said nothing.

'Up, lazy thing!' said the Queen, 'and take this young lady to see the Mock Turtle, and to hear his history.

'Reeling and Writhing, of course, to begin with,' the Mock Turtle replied 'and then the different branches of Arithmetic Ambition, Distraction, Uglification, and Derision.'

'They were obliged to have him with them,' the Mock Turtle said 'no wise fish would go anywhere without a porpoise.'

Six species of sea turtles come to the reef to breed the green sea turtle, leatherback sea turtle, hawksbill turtle, loggerhead sea turtle, flatback turtle, and the olive ridley.

'When we were little,' the Mock Turtle went on at last, more calmly, though still sobbing a little now and then, 'we went to school in the sea.

'Chorus again!' cried the Gryphon, and the Mock Turtle had just begun to repeat it, when a cry of 'The trial's beginning!' was heard in the distance.

These words were followed by a very long silence, broken only by an occasional exclamation of 'Hjckrrh!' from the Gryphon, and the constant heavy sobbing of the Mock Turtle.