"If I'd been the whiting," said Alice, whose thoughts were still running on the song, "I'd have said, to the porpoise, 'Keep back, please; we don't want YOU with us!'"
"They were obliged to have him with them," the Mock Turtle said; "no wise fish would go anywhere without a porpoise."
"Wouldn't it really?" said Alice in a tone of great surprise.
"Of course not," said the Mock Turtle; "why, if a fish came to ME, and told me he was going a journey, I should say 'With what porpoise?'"
"Don't you mean 'purpose'?" said Alice.
"I mean what I say," the Mock Turtle replied in an offended tone.
And the Gryphon added, "Come, let's hear some of YOUR adventures."
"I could tell you my adventures—beginning from this morning," said Alice a little timidly; "but it's no use going back to yesterday, because I was a different person then."
"Explain all that," said the Mock Turtle.
"No, no! the adventures first," said the Gryphon in an impatient tone; "explanations take such a dreadful time."