Alice was thoroughly puzzled. “Does the boots and shoes!” she repeated in a wondering tone.
“Why, what are _your_ shoes done with?” said the Gryphon. “I mean, what makes them so shiny?”
Alice looked down at them, and considered a little before she gave her answer. “They’re done with blacking, I believe.”
“Boots and shoes under the sea,” the Gryphon went on in a deep voice, “are done with a whiting. Now you know.”
“And what are they made of?” Alice asked in a tone of great curiosity.
“Soles and eels, of course,” the Gryphon replied rather impatiently: “any shrimp could have told you that.”
“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.”