"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.
"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 Mock Tur-tle.