apple-sauce; Martha dusted the hot plates; Bob took Tiny Tim
beside him in a tiny corner at the table; the two young Cratchits
set chairs for every body, not forgetting themselves, and,
mounting guard upon their posts, crammed spoons into their mouths,
lest they should shriek for goose before their turn came to be
helped. At last the dishes were set on, and grace was said. It was
succeeded by a breathless pause, as Mrs. Cratchit, looking slowly
all along the carving-knife, prepared to plunge it in the breast;
but when she did, and when the long expected gush of stuffing
issued forth, one murmur of delight arose all round the board, and
even Tiny Tim, excited by the two young Cratchits, beat on the
table with the handle of his knife, and feebly cried Hurrah!

'There never was such a goose. Bob said he didn't believe there
ever was such a goose cooked. Its tenderness and flavor, size and
cheapness, were the themes of universal admiration. Eked out by
the apple-sauce and mashed potatoes, it was a sufficient dinner
for the whole family; indeed, as Mrs. Cratchit said with great
delight (surveying one small atom of a bone upon the dish,) they
hadn't ate it all at last! Yet every one had had enough, and the
youngest Cratchits in particular, were steeped 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.

'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.

'Hallo! A great deal of steam! The pudding was out 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
the pudding, like a speckled cannon-ball, so hard and firm,
blazing in 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