"If I'd been the whiting," said Alice, whose thoughts were still
running on the song, "I'd have said, to the porpoise, 'Keep back,
please; we don't want YOU with us!'"

"They were obliged to have him with them," the Mock Turtle said; "no
wise fish would go anywhere without a porpoise."

"Wouldn't it really?" said Alice in a tone of great surprise.

"Of course not," said the Mock Turtle; "why, if a fish came to ME, and
told me he was going a journey, I should say 'With what porpoise?'"

"Don't you mean 'purpose'?" said Alice.

"I mean what I say," the Mock Turtle replied in an offended tone.

And the Gryphon added, "Come, let's hear some of YOUR adventures."

"I could tell you my adventures--beginning from this morning," said
Alice a little timidly; "but it's no use going back to yesterday,
because I was a different person then."

"Explain all that," said the Mock Turtle.

"No, no! the adventures first," said the Gryphon in an impatient tone;
"explanations take such a dreadful time."

So Alice began telling them her adventures from the time when she
first saw the White Rabbit; she was a little nervous about it just at