 flock together.«
    »Only mustard isn't a bird,« Alice remarked.
    »Right, as usual,« said the Duchess: »what a clear way you have of putting
things!«
    »It's a mineral, I think,« said Alice.
    »Of course it is,« said the Duchess, who seemed ready to agree to everything
that Alice said: »there's a large mustard-mine near here. And the moral of that
is - The more there is of mine, the less there is of yours.«
    »Oh, I know!« exclaimed Alice, who had not attended to this last remark.
»It's a vegetable. It doesn't look like one, but it is.«
    »I quite agree with you,« said the Duchess; »and the moral of that is - Be
what you would seem to be - or, if you'd like it put more simply - Never imagine
yourself not to be otherwise than what it might appear to others that what you
were or might have been was not otherwise than what you had been would have
appeared to them to be otherwise.«
    »I think I should understand that better,« Alice said very politely, »if I
had it written down: but I ca'n't quite follow it as you say it.«
    »That's nothing to what I could say if I chose,« the Duchess replied, in a
pleased tone.
    »Pray don't trouble yourself to say it any longer than that,« said Alice.
    »Oh, don't talk about trouble!« said the Duchess. »I make you a present of
everything I've said as yet.«
    »A cheap sort of present!« thought Alice. »I'm glad people don't give
birthday-presents like that!« But she did not venture to say it out loud.
    »Thinking again?« the Duchess asked, with another dig of her sharp little
chin.
    »I've a right to think,« said Alice sharply, for she was beginning to feel a
little worried.
    »Just about as much right,« said the Duchess, »as pigs have to fly; and the
m--«
    But here, to Alice's great surprise, the Duchess's voice died away, even in
the middle of her favourite word »moral«, and the arm that was linked into hers
began to tremble. Alice looked up, and there stood the Queen in
