“But do let’s have tea too,” Betty had proposed. “I hate the chocolate that the girls make, and I don’t believe tea keeps many of us awake. Did I tell you that mother sent a big box of cheese crackers?”
The spread was to be in Betty’s room, partly because she owned the only chafing-dish in the house, and partly because eighteen girls–the nine hostesses and the one guest asked by each–could get into it without uncomfortable crowding. Eleanor had lent her pile of floor cushions and her beloved candlesticks for the occasion, everybody had contributed cups and saucers. Betty and Helen had spent the afternoon “fixing up,” and the room wore a very festive air when the girls dropped in after dinner to see if the preparations were complete.
“I think we ought to start the fudge before they come,” said Betty, remembering the procedure at Miss King’s party.
“Oh, no,” protested Eleanor. “Half-past eight is early enough. Why, most of the fun of a spread is mixing the things together and taking turns tasting and stirring.”
“It would be awkward to finish eating too early, when that’s the only entertainment,” suggested Rachel.
“Or the candy might give out before ten,” added Mary Rich.
The majority ruled, and as some of the girls were late, and one had some very amusing blue-prints to exhibit, it was considerably after half-past eight before the fudge was started. At first it furnished plenty of excitement. Betty, who had been appointed chief fudge-maker, left it for a moment, and it took the opportunity to boil over. When it had settled down after this exploit, it refused to do anything but simmer. No amount of alcohol or of vigorous and persistent stirring had any effect upon it, and Betty was in despair. But Eleanor, who happened to be in a gracious mood, came gallantly to the rescue. She quietly disappeared and returned in a moment, transformed into a gypsy street singer. She had pulled down her black hair and twisted a gay scarf around it. Over her shirt-waist she wore a little velvet jacket; and a short black 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.”