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!"