I fully expected to find a Constable in the kitchen, waiting to take me
up. But not only was there no Constable there, but no discovery had yet
been made of the robbery. Mrs. Joe was prodigiously busy in getting the
house ready for the festivities of the day, and Joe had been put upon
the kitchen doorstep to keep him out of the dust-pan,--an article into
which his destiny always led him, sooner or later, when my sister was
vigorously reaping the floors of her establishment.

"And where the deuce ha' you been?" was Mrs. Joe's Christmas salutation,
when I and my conscience showed ourselves.

I said I had been down to hear the Carols. "Ah! well!" observed Mrs.
Joe. "You might ha' done worse." Not a doubt of that I thought.

"Perhaps if I warn't a blacksmith's wife, and (what's the same thing) a
slave with her apron never off, I should have been to hear the Carols,"
said Mrs. Joe. "I'm rather partial to Carols, myself, and that's the
best of reasons for my never hearing any."

Joe, who had ventured into the kitchen after me as the dustpan had
retired before us, drew the back of his hand across his nose with a
conciliatory air, when Mrs. Joe darted a look at him, and, when her eyes
were withdrawn, secretly crossed his two forefingers, and exhibited them
to me, as our token that Mrs. Joe was in a cross temper. This was so
much her normal state, that Joe and I would often, for weeks together,
be, as to our fingers, like monumental Crusaders as to their legs.