CHAPTER VIII
CHRISTMAS MUMMING
It was Christmas Eve when we went mumming, and oh! how glorious the moonlight was! Down in our streets and up over our hills the moon shines clearer than it does anywhere else on the face of the globe, I'll wager.
Massa, Mina and I had dressed ourselves up in fancy costumes. "If any one asks where you are from," said Mother, when we were ready to start, "you can safely say, 'From the Land of Fantasy.' You certainly look as if you came from there."
Massa had on a light blue dress trimmed with gold-colored cord. It was one of Mother's heirlooms from Great-grandmother Krag, and had a tiny short waist and big puffed sleeves. Massa wore also a green velvet hat, and her thick long flaxen hair hung loose down her back.
Mina was dressed in silk from top to toe; an old-time dress of flowered brown silk with a train, a green silk shawl and a big white silk bonnet that came away out beyond her face.
When the others were ready, there was nothing fine left for me, so I had to take a white petticoat, and a dressing sacque, and a big old-fashioned Leghorn hat that Mother had worn when she was young. To decorate myself a little, I carried a beautifully carved tine in one hand and a red parasol in the other. We all wore masks, of course,—big pasteboard masks, which came away down over our chins, with enormous noses and highly colored red cheeks.
Well, off we went and soon stood at the foot of our hill in a most daring mood, ready for all sorts of pranks.
I don't know who proposed that we should go first to Mrs. Berg's, but we all chimed in at once. We crept softly up to her door-step.
Unluckily for us, as it happened, Mrs. Berg has a great iron weight on her street door,—so that it will shut of itself, you know. What the matter was, I can't imagine, but as soon as we had given one knock at the door, down fell that iron weight to the floor with a thundering crash. We were so frightened that we were on the point of running away when Mrs. Berg and her husband came bustling out to the door with a lighted lamp.
"No, thanks," said Mrs. Berg, as soon as she caught sight of us. "I don't want anything to do with such jugglery as this! Out with you, and that quickly!"
"Oh, no, little Marie," said her husband. "You ought to ask the little young ladies in. They are not street children, don't you see?" Mina's magnificent clothes evidently made an impression on him.
Mrs. Berg mumbled something about its being all the same to her what sort of people we were, but Mr. Berg had already opened the door and respectfully asked us to walk in.
It was as hot as a bake-oven in the sitting-room, and so stuffy and thick with tobacco smoke that I thought I should smother behind my mask. Mr. Berg bowed and bowed and set out three chairs for us in the middle of the room. Now we had planned at home that we would use only P-speech while mumming, for then no one would know us.
"May I ask where these three elegant ladies come from?" asked Mr. Berg.
Massa undertook to answer, but she was never very clever at P-speech and she got all mixed up:
"From-prom. Fan-tan-pan—pi-ta—sa-si p-p-p——" she stammered, in a hopeless tangle, while Mina and I were ready to burst with laughter.
"Bless us! These must be foreigners from some very distant land,—they speak such a curious language. You must treat them with something, Marie."
Marie didn't appear very willing to treat us to anything, but she went over to a corner cupboard and brought out a few cookies,—pale, baked-to-death "poor man's cookies." They looked poor, indeed! I shuddered before I stuck a piece into my mouth.
To eat with a mask on, when the mouth is no wider than the slit in a savings-bank, has its difficulties, I can tell you. The little I did get in tasted of camphor. Mrs. Berg must have kept her medicines in the same closet with the cakes.
"Perhaps the little ladies would like something more," said Mr. Berg.
"No, thanks—No-po, thanks-panks." And we all three rose to go. We curtsied and curtsied. Mr. Berg bowed and bowed. Mrs. Berg turned the key in the street door after us with a snap, and I heard her say something about "that long-legged young one of the judge's!"
Oh! how we laughed! "Now we will go to Mrs. Pirk's," said I.
"Inger Johanne! Are you crazy? She is worse than Mrs. Berg!"
"That makes it all the more wildly exciting! Come on!"
We crept stealthily into Mrs. Pirk's kitchen. It was pitch dark in there except for a little light through the keyhole of the sitting-room.
"Hush! Keep still!" Mrs. Pirk coughed suddenly and we all quaked.
"Now she will surely come!" Silence again. We were half-choked with laughter.
"I am going to clear my throat," said I. "Ahem!"
"Ahem!" I gave a very loud, strong one the second time.
A chair was hastily shoved aside in the sitting-room, the door opened, a sharp light fell on our three fantastic figures, and Mrs. Pirk stood in the doorway with her spectacles on her nose. I stepped forward.
"Good-pood day-pay!" Mrs. Pirk went like a flash to the fireplace and grabbed a broom-stick.
"Get out!" she cried. "Out with you!"
So out of the door we ran, stumbling and tumbling over each other, Mrs. Pirk after us with her uplifted broom, out into the moonlit street. Oh! it was unspeakable fun to be chased out-of-doors that way by Mrs. Pirk!
Well—then we went on to the Macks'.
They were sitting alone in their big light sitting-room, as we went in. Mrs. Mack was playing "patience" and Mr. Mack sat by her side smoking his long pipe and pointing out with the end of it which card he thought she ought to take next.
We pressed close together around the door and curtsied.
"Why, see! Welcome to youth and joy!" said Mrs. Mack, rising. "What nice young people these are to come to visit a pair of old folks like us!"
Mr. Mack came forward and pointed with the end of his pipe over our heads, saying:
"Up on the sofa with you! Up on the sofa with you, all three!"
So there we sat, as if we were distinguished guests, with the lamp shining full upon us.
"I see you have a tine with you," said Mr. Mack, looking at the tine I carried. "Have you something to sell, perhaps? And where may these pretty little ladies be from?"
"I-pi sell-pell butter-putter," said I.
"We are from the Land of Fantasy," said Massa, without attempting P-speech again.
"Why! They don't make butter in the Land of Fantasy, do they?" asked Mrs. Mack.
Just then the servant came in with an immense tray, and on it was something very different from Mrs. Berg's camphorated cookies, I assure you! I thought with grief of my mask mouth no bigger than a savings-bank slit.
"And now what about unmasking?" said Mr. Mack. "That is, if these ladies from the Land of Fantasy are willing to liven up an evening for a couple of old people."
Were willing! We took our masks off in a jiffy. But, would you believe it? Mr. Mack said he knew me the very minute we came in!
Mrs. Mack took a glass of Christmas mead and recited:
"Oh! I remember the happy ways
Of my gay and innocent childhood days.
And I love to feel that my old heart swells,
With the same pure joy that in childhood dwells."
"Mamma composed that herself," said Mr. Mack, gazing admiringly at his wife.
Later in the evening, Mrs. Mack danced the minuet for us, holding up her skirt and singing in a delicate old-lady voice. Then she said:
"Do you remember, Mack? Do you remember that they were playing that air the evening you asked me to marry you?"
"Do I remember?" And Mr. Mack and his wife beamed tenderly at each other.
"Think! That such a homely woman as I should get married!" said Mrs. Mack to us on the sofa.
"You homely!" and Mr. Mack gave the dear old lady a kiss right on the mouth.
"Now we shall see, children, whether, when you get old, you have done like Mack and me. We have danced a minuet our whole life through, and the memories of youth have been our music."
When we went home at the end of the evening, we had our pockets crammed full of apples and nuts and cakes.
It is jolly fun to go out mumming at Christmas! Just try it!