"You're going to the front door," said Nicholas. "Mummers ought to go to the back."
"We don't know where it is," said Robin, 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 didn'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 ask 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 house-keeper; "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 house-keeper, 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 house-keeper helping them, and chatting 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 flustered hearing the bell go so late, and----"