teeped in sage and
onion to the eyebrows! But now the plates being changed
by Miss Belinda, Mrs. Cratchit left the room alone--too
nervous to bear witnesses--to take the pudding up, and
bring it in. 30

Suppose it should not be done enough! Suppose it
should break in turning out! Suppose somebody should
have got over the wall of the back yard and stolen it, while
they were merry with the goose--a supposition at which
the two young Cratchits became livid! All sorts of horrors
were supposed.

Halloo! A great deal of steam! The pudding was out 5
of the copper. A smell like a washing day! That was the
cloth. A smell like an eating house and a pastry cook's
next door to each other, with a laundress's next door to
that! That was the pudding! In half a minute Mrs.
Cratchit entered--flushed, but smiling proudly--with 10
the pudding, like a speckled cannon ball, so hard and
firm, blazing in half of half a quartern of ignited brandy
and bedight with Christmas holly stuck into the top.

Oh, a wonderful pudding! Bob Cratchit said, and
calmly too, that he regarded it as the greatest success 15
achieved by Mrs. Cratchit since their marriage. Mrs.
Cratchit said that now the weight was off her mind, she
would confess she had had her doubts about the quantity
of flour. Everybody had something to say about it, but
nobody said or thought it was at all a small pudding for 20
a large family. It would have been flat heresy to do so.
Any Cratchit would have blushed to hint at such a thing.

At last the dinner was all done, the cloth was cleared, the
hearth swept, and the fire made up. The compound in the
jug being tasted and considered perfect, apples and oranges 25
were put upon the table and a shovelful of chestnuts on the
fire. Then all the Cratchit family drew round the hearth
in what Bob Cratchit called a circle, meaning half a one;
and at Bob Cratchit's elbow stood the family display of
glass--two tumblers and a custard cup without a handle. 30

These held the hot stuff from the jug, however, as well as
golden goblets would have done; and Bob served it out
with beaming looks, while the chestnuts on the fire sputtered
and cracked noisily. Then Bob proposed:

"A Merry Christmas to us all, my dears. God bless us!"

W