skirt, a
big red sash, an armful of bangles and bracelets, and the guitar hung
over her shoulder, completed her disguise.

"Sing a lil'?" she asked, smiling persuasively and kissing her hand to
the party.

Then she sat down on the pile of cushions and played and sang, first a
quaint little folk-song suited to her part, and then one or two dashing
popular airs, until the unaccommodating fudge was quite forgotten,
except by Betty, who stirred and frowned, and examined the flame and
tested the thickness of the rich brown liquid, quite unnoticed. Eleanor
had just shrugged her shoulders and announced, "I no more sing, now,"
when somebody else knocked on the door, or rather pushed it open, and a
grotesque figure slouched in.

At least half of it was head, black and awful, with gruesome green
features. Short, unjointed arms came out of its waist, with green claws
dangling where the hands should have been; and below its short skirt
flapped the tails of a swallow-tail coat. The girls were too much
astonished to speak, as the creature advanced silently into the room,
and without a word began dancing something that, as Katherine expressed
it afterward, was a cross between a double-shuffle and a skirt-dance.
When it had succeeded in reducing its audience to a state of abject and
tearful mirth, the creature stopped suddenly, announced, "You've seen
the Jabberwock," in sepulchral tones, and flopped on to the end of a
couch, saying breathlessly, "Mary Brooks, please help me out of this.
I'm suffocating."

"How did you do it, Miss Lewis?" inquired the stately senior, who was
Mary's guest, wiping her eyes and gasping for breath as she spoke.

"It's perfectly simple," drawled Roberta indifferently. "The head is my
black silk petticoat. I painted on the features, because the children
like to have me do it at home, and it's convenient to be ready. The arms
are a broom-handle, stuck through the sleeves of this old coat, which is
buttoned around my waist."

"And now you're going to do the Bandersnatch, aren't you?" inquired the
senior craftily, perceiving that the other side of the petticoat was
decorated with curious red spots.

"I--how did you--oh, no," said Roberta, blushing furiously, and stuffing
the telltale petticoat under a convenient pillow. "I don't know why I
brought the things for this. I never meant to do it up here. I--I hope
you weren't bored. I just happened to think of it, and Eleanor couldn't
sing forever, and tha