triding into the old kitchen, powdering the red brick floor
with snow from their barbaric bedizenments; and stamping, and crossing,
and declaiming, till all was whirl and riot and shout. Harold was
frankly afraid: unabashed, he buried himself in the cook's ample bosom.
Edward feigned a manly superiority to illusion, and greeted these awful
apparitions familiarly, as Dick and Harry and Joe. As for me, I was too
big to run, too rapt to resist the magic and surprise. Whence came these
outlanders, breaking in on us with song and ordered masque and a
terrible clashing of wooden swords? And after these, what strange
visitants might we not look for any quiet night, when the chestnuts
popped in the ashes, and the old ghost stories drew the awe-stricken
circle close? Old Merlin, perhaps, 'all furred in black sheep-skins, and
a russet gown, with a bow and arrows, and bearing wild geese in his
hand!' Or stately Ogier the Dane, recalled from Faery, asking his way to
the land that once had need of him! Or even, on some white night, the
Snow-Queen herself, with a chime of sleigh-bells and the patter of
reindeer's feet, halting of a sudden at the door flung wide, while aloft
the Northern Lights went shaking attendant spears among the quiet stars!

[Illustration: '_But yester-eve and the mummers were here!_']

This morning, house-bound by the relentless indefatigable snow, I was
feeling the reaction. Edward, on the contrary, being violently
stage-struck on this his first introduction to the real Drama, was
striding up and down the floor, proclaiming 'Here be I, King Gearge the
Third,' in a strong Berkshire accent. Harold, accustomed, as the
youngest, to lonely antics and to sports that asked no sympathy, was
absorbed in 'clubmen': a performance consisting in a measured
progress round the room arm-in-arm with an imaginary companion of
reverend years, with occasional halts at imaginary clubs,
where--imaginary steps being leisurely ascended--imaginary papers were
glanced at, imaginary scandal was discussed with elderly shakings of the
head, and--regrettable to say--imaginary glasses were lifted lipwards.
Heaven only knows how the germ of this dreary pastime first found way
into his small-boyish being. It was his own invention, and he was
proportionately proud of it. Meanwhile Charlotte and I, crouched in the
window-seat, watched, spell-stricken, the whirl and eddy and drive of
the innumerable snow-flakes, wrapping our cheery little world