Eunice and Cricket shouted with laughter.
"She means, "We beseech Thee to hear us,"" cried Cricket, choking, quite as if she never made any mistakes on her own account. But other people"s mistakes are _so_ different from our own. Helen, her sensitive feelings dreadfully hurt, instantly retired under her ap.r.o.n, and refused to be comforted. They always had to be careful about laughing at Helen, whereas Zaidee never seemed to mind.
"Never mind, pet," said Eunice, kissing and petting her. "It wasn"t a very bad mistake."
"What"s this?" said Cricket, to change the subject She had been plunging her arm down deep in the sand, and had struck something big and bony.
She cleared away the loose sand.
"That"s our cemi-terror," explained Zaidee; "we"d been having a frinyal before we had Sunday school, and we buried that thing. We finded it in the field the other day. Let"s pull it up now, Helen. We"ve had lots of frinyals, Cricket, and we"ve buried ever so many things in our cemi-terror. Turkles and things like that, you know."
Cricket, with some difficulty, extricated the object. It was a great skull of a cow, bleached as white as snow.
""Liza says it was a cow, once," observed Zaidee, poking her fingers in the big holes where the eyes once were. "It was a pretty funny cow, _I_ think. She says it has undressed all its flesh off, and we"re all like that inside. But I"m not, see?" and Zaidee opened her mouth wide and offered it for inspection. "Mine"s all red inside."
"Mamma says we"re made of dust," said Helen, thoughtfully. "If we"re made out of dust, I don"t see why we don"t get all muddy inside when we drink."
"I guess that"s why my hands get so dirty," said Zaidee, suddenly, looking at her small, grimy palms with close attention. "I guess it sifts right through my skin. Course I can"t keep clean when it keeps sifting through all the time, and "Liza says she _don"t_ see _how_ I get myself _so_ dirty," with a funny imitation of Eliza"s tones. "I"m going to tell her I can"t help it. If she keeps scrubbing me as fast as it comes out, it may get all used up inside of me sometime," went on Zaidee, who was nothing if not logical.
Helen thoughtfully squeezed Eunice"s arm, trying to squeeze some dust out, she said.
"Yours is all used up, I guess," she concluded, as she met with no success.
Cricket set the skull upon the high stone which Kenneth had been using for a pulpit.
"Look, Eunice! It looks just like an idol, sitting up there and grinning. Oh, let"s play we"re idollers ourselves and worship it! We"ll build a shrine for it, and we"ll offer it sacrifices. Come on!" and Cricket, with her usual energy, fell to work instantly, building stones up for an altar.
CHAPTER XXIII.
THE JABBERWOCK.
"Let me help build up the shrime, too," said Zaidee, bringing up stones also. "I want to offer sacrumfices."
"You and Helen bring a lot of dried seaweed to decorate it," said Cricket, working busily. "That"s right, Kenneth. Bring all the pretty sh.e.l.ls you can, and we"ll put them all around the sides. Look, Eunice!
doesn"t it look fine already!"
They had built up the "shrime" to a large square pile, about two feet high, on the top of which the grinning skull reposed. The dry seaweed draped the rough stones, and Kenneth"s sh.e.l.ls were arranged about it.
"Now we must begin to offer sacrifices," said Cricket. "We _must_ have dishevelled hair, Eunice, as the women always do in stories. I can"t muss mine up much more than it always is," regretfully, "but you can take your braid out, and throw your hair all around. Oh, that"s _lovely_!" as Eunice loosened her heavy, dark braid, and threw the long, straight ma.s.ses all about. "How beautifully dishevelled you are!"
"I"m glad I don"t have to offer sacrifices every day," laughed Eunice, "for dishevelled hair is _not_ comfortable, at least as dishevelled as this. Perhaps I wouldn"t mind a little bit of it."
"Come here, Zaidee, if you wish to join the procession," and Eunice caught her small sister, and rubbed her hands vigorously over her short, soft, straight hair, till it fairly stood on end. Helen"s hair curled like Cricket"s, in a golden, fluffy ma.s.s.
"Now, we"re all ready. We must march up before the shrine, and lay our sacrifices at the feet of the idol, and bow down before it."
"It hasn"t any foots," observed Zaidee.
"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 gnashing 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 Washington 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 Washington can sacrifice his mouse."
While Zaidee was unearthing George W."s intended dessert, Cricket had found a shingle 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 shingle-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."