The Queen’s croquet game had no straight arches, no round balls, and almost no rules. Card soldiers bent over to form hoops. Hedgehogs uncurled and wandered away. Flamingo mallets twisted their necks to stare at Alice.
Everyone played at once. The Queen quarrelled with every player and ordered a new head removed every minute. The King quietly pardoned people behind her back, so the executioner had nobody to execute.
The Cheshire Cat’s grin appeared above Alice. She complained about the game until the Queen noticed him.
“Off with his head!”
The executioner argued that one could not cut off a head without a body. The King said anything with a head could lose it. The Duchess, summoned as the Cat’s owner, arrived after the grin had vanished.
The Queen returned to croquet, then ordered a Gryphon to take Alice to the Mock Turtle.
“What is a Mock Turtle?” Alice whispered.
“The thing Mock Turtle Soup is made from,” said the Queen, which explained nothing.
On a rocky shore sat the saddest creature Alice had ever seen, with a turtle’s body and a calf’s head. He sighed so deeply that his flippers shook.
The Mock Turtle described his school under the sea. His teacher was an old turtle called Tortoise because he “taught us.” Lessons included Reeling and Writhing, the different branches of Arithmetic—Ambition, Distraction, Uglification, and Derision—and Drawling, Stretching, and Fainting in Coils.
“How many hours of lessons?” Alice asked.
“Ten the first day, nine the next, then eight.”
“That is why they are called lessons,” said the Gryphon. “They lessen each day.”
Alice decided this was a much better arrangement than school at home.
The two creatures asked about her adventures. When Alice recited a poem, the words came out wrong again. The Mock Turtle then offered to show her the Lobster Quadrille.
He and the Gryphon began dancing around Alice, pretending to throw lobsters into the sea. The Mock Turtle had just started a sad song about beautiful soup when a cry rang across the garden:
“The trial is beginning!”
The Gryphon seized Alice’s hand, and they raced toward the court.