“Please do,” she answered.
“It’s a trap for ideas,” replied the Knight, in a weak voice. “You see, so many ideas run wild, and if only they could be trapped we could tame them and use them.... You haven’t any wild ideas, have you?” he added this anxiously.
“Why, Marmie tells me I have,” Rose returned, “but I don’t see exactly how one could trap them.”
“Not one—no, not one. But several might. And that’s just where my invention comes in.”
At this moment Ruth came running up.
“Oh, girls,” she called, “the Mock Turtle is going to give a dance, and he’s asking all the rest, and us, too. So come over, it’s going to be such fun!”
“A dance,” said the White Knight, sorrowfully. “If it were only a song! You know I can sing tunes of my own invention,” he added, turning to Rose. “But it’s very exhausting, and the Mock Turtle has no real stamina.”
The three girls shook hands with him gravely, and he walked to his horse, that had been quietly cropping grass all this while.
“I’ll send you one of my traps as soon as it’s made,” he called back to Rose.
“Thank you ever so much,” she answered, and then the three girls hastened toward the house of the Mock Turtle, before which a large and strange crowd was collected.