The cottage was looking its brightest, and was as warm as a zam[5] oven, when a gay little laugh came through the keyhole, and a merry little face peeped into the room. In another minute a Dinky Man came out of the keyhole and sat on the wooden latch of the door and gazed curiously about him.
He was ever so dinky, but as cheerful-looking as a robin, in his bright red cloak and his quaint steeple hat; the face under the hat was almost as brown as an apple-pip, and only a shade or two lighter than his whiskers and beard, and his queer little eyes were full of laughter and fun.
‘Are the little maid and her grannie asleep?’ called a voice through the keyhole as the Dinky Man sat on the latch surveying the room.
‘I think so,’ he answered. ‘They are still as mice when Madam Puss is close to their hole. You are safe to come in.’
‘Then in we’ll come,’ cried the little voice; and in the twinkling of an eye a tiny little fellow dressed in green came through the keyhole and pushed off the Dinky Man sitting on the latch, who fell on his head on old Tamsin’s lime-ash floor.
Scores of little whiskered Piskeys—some in steeple hats and red flowing cloaks, some in green coats and red caps—came through the keyhole, and when they had swung themselves down by the durn[6] of the door, they looked towards the bed.
‘I’ll get up on the bed and see if the little maid is really asleep,’ said one of the Piskeys; and he climbed up to the top of the fiddle-back chair close to the bed and looked down on the child.
‘Is she asleep?’ asked the other little Piskeys eagerly.
‘As sound asleep as a seven-sleeper,’[7] answered the Dinky Man, ‘and so is Grannie Tredinnick,’ sending his glance to the head of the bed. ‘Get up on to the bed as soon as you like, to order the little maid’s dreams—the sooner the better. We are powerless to do harm after twelve o’clock, being the night of the Birth.’
‘But we have come to do good, not to do harm,’ cried the Piskeys one and all, ‘and we will begin at once.’