The Peace Egg and Other tales | Page 8

and he rang the front-door bell. There was a pause. Then lights shone, steps were heard, and at last a sound of much unbarring, unbolting, and unlocking. It might have been a prison. Then the door was opened by an elderly, timid-looking woman, who held a tallow candle above her head.
"Who's there," she said, "at this time of night?"
"We're Christmas mummers," said Robin, stoutly; "we don't know the way to the back door, but--"
"And don't you know better than to come here?" said the woman. "Be off with you, as fast as you can."
"You're only the servant," said Robin. "Go and ask your master and mistress if they wouldn't like to see us act. We do it very well."
"You impudent boy, be off with you!" repeated the woman. "Master'd no more let you nor any other such rubbish set foot in this house--"
"Woman!" shouted a voice close behind her, which made her start as if she had been shot, "who authorizes you to say what your master will or will not do, before you've asked him? The boy is right. You are the servant, and it is not your business to choose for me whom I shall or shall not see."
"I meant no harm, sir, I'm sure," said the housekeeper; "but I thought you'd never--"
"My good woman," said her master, "if I had wanted somebody to think for me, you're the last person I should have employed. I hire you to obey orders, not to think."
"I'm sure, sir," said the housekeeper, whose only form of argument was reiteration, "I never thought you would have seen them--"
"Then you were wrong," shouted her master. "I will see them. Bring them in."
He was a tall, gaunt old man, and Robin stared at him for some minutes, wondering where he could have seen somebody very like him. At last he remembered. It was the old gentleman of the blue cloak.
The children threw off their wraps, the housekeeper helping them, and chattering ceaselessly, from sheer nervousness.
"Well, to be sure," said she, "their dresses are pretty too. And they seem quite a better sort of children, they talk quite genteel. I might ha' knowed they weren't like common mummers, but I was so flusterated hearing the bell go so late, and--"
"Are they ready?" said the old man, who had stood like a ghost in the dim light of the flaring tallow candle, grimly watching the proceedings.
"Yes, sir. Shall I take them to the kitchen, sir?"
"--for you and the other idle hussies to gape and grin at? No. Bring them to the library," he snapped, and then stalked off, leading the way.
The housekeeper accordingly led them to the library, and then withdrew, nearly falling on her face as she left the room by stumbling over Darkie, who slipped in last like a black shadow.
The old man was seated in a carved oak chair by the fire.
"I never said the dogs were to come in," he said.
"But we can't do without them, please," said Robin, boldly. "You see there are eight people in 'The Peace Egg,' and there are only five of us; and so Darkie has to be the Black Prince, and Pax has to be the Fool, and so we have to have them."
"Five and two make seven," said the old man, with a grim smile; "what do you do for the eighth?"
"Oh, that's the little one at the end," said Robin, confidentially. "Mamma said we weren't to mention him, but I think that's because we're children.--You're grown up, you know, so I'll show you the book, and you can see for yourself," he went on, drawing "The Peace Egg" from his pocket: "there, that's the picture of him, on the last page; black, with horns and a tail."
The old man's stern face relaxed into a broad smile as he examined the grotesque woodcut; but when he turned to the first page the smile vanished in a deep frown, and his eyes shone like hot coals with anger. He had seen Robin's name.
"Who sent you here?" he asked, in a hoarse voice. "Speak, and speak the truth! Did your mother send you here?"
Robin thought the old man was angry with them for playing truant. He said, slowly, "N--no. She didn't exactly send us; but I don't think she'll mind our having come if we get back in time for supper. Mamma never forbid our going mumming, you know."
"I don't suppose she ever thought of it," Nicholas said, candidly, wagging his curly head from side to side.
"She knows we're mummers," said Robin, "for she helped us. When we were abroad, you know, she used to tell us about the mummers acting at Christmas, when she was a little girl; and so we thought we'd be mummers, and so we acted to Papa and Mamma, and so we