that! Yet everyone had
had enough, and the youngest Cratchits, in particular, were steeped in
sage and onions 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 up the pudding 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.

Halloo! 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 pastrycook's next door to each other, with a
laundress' 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 of
half-a-quartern of lighted brandy, and decorated 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 achieved by Mrs. Cratchit since
their marriage. Mrs. Cratchit said that, now the weight was off her
mind, she would confess she had her doubts about the quantity of flour.
Everybody had something to say about it, but nobody said or thought it
was a small pudding for a large family. It would have been really wicked
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 hot stuff in the jug being tasted, and
considered perfect, apples and oranges were put upon the table, and a
shovel full 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.

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!"

Which all the family re-echoed.

"God bless us everyone!" said Tiny Tim, the last of all.

Now I told you that Mr. Scrooge had some disagreeable and wonde