“Well, perhaps not just what it _is_,” he said. “But I might tell you about what it’s _for_.” Rose began to feel bewildered. “Please do,” she answered. “It’s a trap for ideas,” replied the Knight, in a weak voice. “You see, so many ideas run wild, and if only they could be trapped we could tame them and use them.... You haven’t any wild ideas, have you?” he added this anxiously. “Why, Marmie tells me I have,” Rose returned, “but I don’t see exactly how one could trap them.” “Not one—no, not one. But several might. And that’s just where my invention comes in.” At this moment Ruth came running up. “Oh, girls,” she called, “the Mock Turtle is going to give a dance, and he’s asking all the rest, and us, too. So come over, it’s going to be such fun!” “A dance,” said the White Knight, sorrowfully. “If it were only a song! You know I can sing tunes of my own invention,” he added, turning to Rose. “But it’s very exhausting, and the Mock Turtle has no real stamina.” The three girls shook hands with him gravely, and he walked to his horse, that had been quietly cropping grass all this while. “I’ll send you one of my traps as soon as it’s made,” he called back to Rose. “Thank you ever so much,” she answered, and then the three girls hastened toward the house of the Mock Turtle, before which a large and strange crowd was collected. There was the Gentleman dressed in white paper with his friend the Goat in spectacles, walking about arm in arm and apparently discussing the contents of a newspaper from which the Gentleman in white paper read aloud bits of news. Rose heard him read an item that sounded like this: “Billing and Cooing are to play the finals next Tuesday of the past week. A large and enthusiastic crowd cheered the victor, whose name we hope to secure the instant it is known.” “Perfectly ridiculous,” grunted the Goat. “I might be supposed to know _something_ of Billing, mightn’t I? Well, it’s poppycock, that’s what it is.” At this moment the cow slipped an arm—or it must have been a leg, Rose thought later, into the one not taken by the Goat, and leaned affectionately over the Gentleman in white paper. “And who knows about Cooing if not I?” she whispered, but in so loud a way that Rose couldn’t help hearing. “And I tell you it’s false as moonshine.” Humpty Dumpty and Tweedledum and Tweedledee were all three sitting in a row on the coping in front of the Mock Turtle’s house. They were panting and fanning themselves, and they smiled amiably at the three girls. “Have you learnt how to be real yet?” asked Tweedledee, in a loud voice. “Or contrariwise?” demanded his brother. “It’s your turn,” announced Humpty Dumpty. But the girls couldn’t stop there. They wanted to join the dancers, who were spinning round and round in the dizziest, jolliest sort of a way in the middle of the square. The grass had vanished and in its place was a round shining floor, that looked like ice.