"Oh! Oh, dear! Ouch! Oh, how it hurts!"
"My, what in the world can that be?" asked Uncle Wiggily. "It sounds like an adventure all right."
"I think it is," answered Alice. "It's probably Tweedledum and Tweedledee fighting."
"Fighting? Tweedledee and Tweedledum?" asked the surprised bunny.
"Oh, it's only in fun," laughed Alice, "and they have to do it because it's that way in the book, for if they didn't things wouldn't come out right. Yes, there they are." And she pointed off through the trees, where Uncle Wiggily saw two round, fat, little boys, dressed exactly the same, and looking so like one another that no one could tell them apart, except when they were together—just like twins, you know.
"Oh, I'm so glad to see you!" called Alice to the two queer fat chaps. They were as round as barrels, both of them. Uncle Wiggily noticed that on the collar of one was the word DUM, while on the other was the word DEE.
"Tweedle, the rest of their name, is on the back of their collars," Alice explained. "As it's the same for both, they didn't need it in front."
Then the fat boys turned around, like tops slowly spinning, and, surely enough, on the back of the white collar of each were letters spelling TWEEDLE.
"I'm glad to see you," spoke Uncle Wiggily. "I heard you—sort of—er—well, you know," he went on, diffident-like, not wishing to say he had heard the brothers quarreling.
"Oh, it's all right, we do that every day," said Tweedledee.