The Mock Turtle sighed and wiped his eyes. He tried to speak, but he was crying too much. The Gryphon hit him on the back to help him. Finally, the Mock Turtle spoke. He asked Alice if she knew about a Lobster Quadrille (a dance where people move in lines and squares).
Alice said, "No, I do not know it. What is it?" The Mock Turtle and the Gryphon explained the dance. First, you make two lines along the beach. You take a lobster for a partner. You jump and throw the lobsters into the sea. Then you swim after them and change partners.
"It must be a very pretty dance," Alice said. The Mock Turtle asked if she wanted to see it. Alice said yes. The two creatures began to dance around Alice. They moved very solemnly. They stepped on Alice's toes sometimes.
The Mock Turtle sang a song while they danced. The song was about a whiting (a small sea fish) and a snail. In the song, the fish asked the snail to dance. The snail said the sea was too far. But the fish said there was another shore on the other side.
"Thank you," Alice said when they finished. "It was an interesting dance." Alice said she liked the song about the whiting. She almost said she ate whiting for dinner. But she stopped herself quickly.
The Gryphon told Alice that whitings are very useful. "They polish the shoes under the sea," the Gryphon said. Alice was surprised. She looked at her own shoes. She used black polish for her shoes. The Gryphon said sea shoes are made of soles (a flat fish that also means the bottom of a shoe) and eels.
Then the Gryphon asked Alice to tell her story. Alice told them about the White Rabbit. She told them about the house and the Caterpillar. She said that she forgot her poems. The Mock Turtle and the Gryphon thought this was very curious.
"Stand up and say a poem now," the Gryphon said. Alice stood up and tried to say a poem about a lobster. But the words were wrong again. The poem said the lobster was brown and used sugar in his hair. The Mock Turtle said it was nonsense.
Alice sat down and put her face in her hands. She was very confused. She wanted things to be normal again. The Gryphon asked the Mock Turtle to sing another song. The Mock Turtle began to sing a song about soup.
The song was called "Beautiful Soup." The Mock Turtle sang about the green, hot soup in a bowl. He sang very sadly and he cried. Alice listened to the beautiful words.
Suddenly, a voice shouted in the distance. "The trial is beginning!" the voice cried. The Gryphon took Alice by the hand. They ran away very fast. Alice was out of breath. "What trial is it?" Alice asked. But the Gryphon only said, "Come on!" and they ran faster.