Nurse Crab squared her claws like Amazonian elbows, and rolled her protuberant eyes scornfully.
"Feel their pulses," suggested the Carpenter.
"They haven't got any," snapped Dr. Lobster. "Besides my claws are not suited for pulse-feeling."
"Make 'em put their tongues out," hinted the Walrus.
"Tongues?" sneered Dr. Lobster, derisively. "Don't you know that, like Charles Reade's nigger, oysters are 'darned anomalies,'—
'Because they have beards without any chin,
And get out of bed to be tucked in.'"
"Old riddles are more painful than bad puns," protested the bed-ridden bivalve. "Tucked in, indeed. Well, I shall never get out of bed again, that's one thing," he continued, with a spitefully triumphant look at the Walrus and the Carpenter.
"Oh, don't say that!" said the Carpenter, tearfully.
The Artful Oyster looked at him,