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."