`I never said I didn't!' interrupted Alice.

`You did,' said the Mock Turtle.

`Hold your tongue!' added the Gryphon, before Alice could speak again. The Mock Turtle went on.

`We had the best of educations--in fact, we went to school every day--'

`I've been to a day school, too,' said Alice. `You needn't be so proud as all that.'

`With extras?' asked the Mock Turtle, a little anxiously.

`Yes,' said Alice: `we learned French and music.'

`And washing?' said the Mock Turtle.

`Certainly not!' said Alice, indignantly.

`Ah! Then yours wasn't a really good school,' said the Mock Turtle in a tone of great relief. `Now, at ours, they had, at the end of the bill, "French, music and washing--extra".'

`You couldn't have wanted it much,' said Alice; `living at the bottom of the sea.'

`I couldn't afford to learn it,' said the Mock Turtle with a sigh. `I only took the regular course.'

`What was that?' inquired Alice.

`Reeling and Writhing, of course, to begin with,' the Mock Turtle replied; `and then the different branches of Arithmetic--Ambition, Distraction, Uglification, and Derision.'

`I never heard of "Uglification",' Alice ventured to say. `What is it?'

The Gryphon lifted up both its paws in surprise. `Never heard of uglifying!' it exclaimed. `You know what to beautify is, I suppose?'

`Yes,' said Alice doubtfully: `it means--to--make--anything--prettier.'

`Well, then,' the Gryphon went on, `if you don't know what to uglify is, you are a simpleton.'

Alice did not feel encouraged to ask any more questions about it: so she turned to the Mock Turtle, and said `What else had you to learn?'

`Well, there was Mystery,' the Mock Turtle replied, counting off the subjects on his flappers--`Mystery, ancient and modern, with Seaography: then Drawling--the Drawling-master was an old conger-eel, that used to come once a week: he taught us Drawling, Stretching, and Fainting in Coils.'

`What was that like?' said Alice.

`Well, I ca'n't show it you, myself,' the Mock Turtle said. `I'm too stiff. And the Gryphon never learnt it.'

`Hadn't time,' said the Gryphon: `I went to the Classical master, though. He was an old crab, he was.'

`I never went to him,' the Mock Turtle said with a sigh. `He taught Laughing and Grief, they used to say.'

`So he did, so he did,' said the Gryphon, sighing in his turn; and both creatures hid their faces in their paws.