Part 38 (2/2)
”Well, before its mouth, then. It's just as 'propriate, I guess. Come over here, and get into line, Eunice. You go first and I'll follow, and the children will come on behind. We must go up with weeping and wailing and gnas.h.i.+ng our teeth,” said Cricket, getting Biblical.
”How do you gnash your tooths?” inquired Helen.
”I'll show you,” said Cricket, immediately rolling her eyes, and opening and shutting her mouth with such fearful snaps of her teeth, that Helen instantly retreated behind Zaidee for protection. ”Clutch your hair with both hands, this way, and get into procession.”
”Yes, but where's the sacrifice?” asked Eunice, suddenly recollecting this important part of the ceremony.
”I declare! I forgot all about it! What _shall_ we sacrifice?”
”We finded a little dead mouse in the woodshed after breakfast,” said Zaidee. ”We were going to give him to George Was.h.i.+ngton for dessert to-day. We buried it in the cemi-terror to keep till it was dinner-time.”
”That will do. Dig it up. George Was.h.i.+ngton can sacrifice his mouse.”
While Zaidee was unearthing George W.'s intended dessert, Cricket had found a s.h.i.+ngle for a bier. They made a bed of seaweed on it, and stretched the little dead mouse thereon.
”I've an idea!” exclaimed Eunice. ”Let's call the idol the Jabberwock, and sing the Jabberwock song as we go up.”
”Splendid!” cried Cricket, clapping her hands. ”How does it go?
”'Beware the Jabberwock, my son, With jaws that bite and claws that catch.'
”Isn't that it?”
”That's the second verse,” said Eunice ”Don't you remember,
”''Twas brillig, and the slimy sea--?'”
”Yes, now I do. All ready.”
So the procession formed itself anew. Zaidee and Helen bore the s.h.i.+ngle-bier in front, Eunice and Cricket came behind, tearing their hair, and chanting in doleful tones how
”The Jabberwock, with eyes of flame, Came whiffling through the tulgey wood, And burbled as it came!”
Then, with appropriate ceremonies, they offered up the mouse to the Jabberwock, and then, joining hands, they danced around it, howling and shrieking.
”More! more!” growled Cricket, in awful tones, that were supposed to come from the yawning throat of the Jabberwock. The smaller children, by this time, were wildly excited, and ready to offer up all their possessions.
”You may have my Crumples,” screamed Zaidee, making a dive for a little white china cat that lay near by with a pile of other playthings that the children had been playing with.
”We must stone it to pieces first,” said Cricket, ”and offer up the ashes,” and soon the china cat lay in fragments, and its ”ashes” were offered up.
”Let's take this old rubber-baby of Kenneth's,” proposed Cricket. ”You don't care for it, do you, baby? It has a hole in its head.”
Kenneth looked doubtfully at his beloved Jacob for a moment, and then, quite carried away by the excitement of the occasion, he cried out, valiantly:
”You may have Dacob for ze Dabberwock.”
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