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“Then are you the mummers who come round at Christmas, and act in people’s kitchens, and people give them money, that mamma used to tell us about?” said Robin.

St. George of England looked at his companions as if for counsel as to how far they might commit themselves, and then replied, with Yorkshire caution, “Well, I suppose we are.”

“And do you go out in the snow from one house to another at night; and, oh, don’t you enjoy it?” cried Robin.

“We like it well enough,” St. George admitted.

Robin bought a copy of “The Peace Egg.” He was resolved to have a nursery performance, and to act the part of St. George himself. The others were willing for what he wished, but there were difficulties.

In the first place, there are eight characters in the play, and there were only five children. They decided among themselves to leave out the “Fool,” and mamma said that another character was not to be acted by any of them, or, indeed, mentioned; “the little one who comes in at the end,” Robin explained. Mamma had her reasons, and these were always good. She had not been altogether pleased that Robin had bought the play. It was a very old thing, she said, and very queer; not adapted for a child’s play.

If mamma thought the parts not quite fit for the children to learn, they found them much too long; so, in the end, she picked out some bits for each, which they learned easily, and which, with a good deal of fighting, made quite as good a story of it as if they had done the whole. What may have been wanting otherwise was made up for by the dresses, which were charming.

Robin was St. George, Nicholas the Valiant Slasher, Dora the Doctor, and the other two Hector and the King of Egypt. “And now we’ve no Black Prince!” cried Robin, in dismay.

“Let Darkie be the Black Prince,” said Nicholas. “When you have your stick he’ll jump for it, and then you can pretend to fight with him.”

“It’s not a stick, it’s a sword,” said Robin “However, Darkie may be the Black Prince.”

“And what’s Pax to be?” asked Dora; “for you know he will come if Darkie does, and he’ll run in before everybody else, too.”

“Then he must be the Fool,” said Robin; “and it will do very well, for the Fool comes in before the rest, and Pax can have his red coat on, and the collar with the little bells.”

VI.

Robin thought that Christmas would never come. To the Captain and his wife it seemed to come too fast. They had hoped it might bring reconciliation with the old man, but it seemed they had hoped in vain.

There were times, now, when the Captain almost regretted the old bachelor’s bequest. The familiar scenes of her old home sharpened his wife’s grief. To see her father every Sunday in church, with marks of age and infirmity upon him, but with not a look of tenderness for his only child, this tried her sorely.

“She felt it less abroad,” thought the Captain. “An English home, in which she frets herself to death, is, after all, no great boon.”

Christmas Eve came.

“I’m sure it’s quite Christmas enough, now,” said Robin. “We’ll have ‘The Peace Egg’ to-night.”

So, as the Captain and his wife sat sadly over their fire, the door opened, and Pax ran in, shaking his bells, and followed by the nursery mummers. The performance was most successful. It was by no means pathetic, and yet, as has been said, the Captain’s wife shed tears.

“What is the matter, mamma?” said St. George, abruptly dropping his sword and running up to her.

“Don’t tease mamma with questions,” said the Captain; “she is not very well, and rather sad. We must all be very kind and good to poor, dear mamma;” and the Captain raised his wife’s hand to his lips as he spoke. Robin seized the other hand and kissed it tenderly. He was very fond of his mother. At this moment Pax took a little run and jumped on to mamma’s lap, where, sitting facing the company, he opened his black mouth and yawned with a ludicrous inappropriateness worthy of any clown. It made everybody laugh.