n the kitchen, because of
the beetles. We were aroused by a horrible smell. It was the
pudding-cloth burning. All the water had secretly boiled itself away. We
filled it up at once with cold, and the saucepan cracked. So we cleaned
it and put it back on the shelf and took another and went to bed. You
see what a lot of trouble we had over the pudding. Every evening till
Christmas, which had now become only the day after to-morrow, we sneaked
down in the inky midnight and boiled that pudding for as long as it
would.

On Christmas morning we chopped the holly for the sauce, but we put hot
water (instead of brandy) and moist sugar. Some of them said it was not
so bad. Oswald was not one of these.

Then came the moment when the plain pudding Father had ordered smoked
upon the board. Matilda brought it in and went away at once. She had a
cousin out of Woolwich Arsenal to see her that day, I remember. Those
far-off days are quite distinct in memory's recollection still.

Then we got out our own pudding from its hiding-place and gave it one
last hurried boil--only seven minutes, because of the general impatience
which Oswald and Dora could not cope with.

We had found means to secrete a dish, and we now tried to dish the
pudding up, but it stuck to the basin, and had to be dislodged with the
chisel. The pudding was horribly pale. We poured the holly sauce over
it, and Dora took up the knife and was just cutting it when a few simple
words from H.O. turned us from happy and triumphing cookery artists to
persons in despair.

He said: "How pleased all those kind ladies and gentlemen would be if
they knew _we_ were the poor children they gave the shillings and
sixpences and things for!"

We all said, "_What?_" It was no moment for politeness.

"I say," H.O. said, "they'd be glad if they knew it was us was enjoying
the pudding, and not dirty little, really poor children."

"You should say 'you were,' not 'you was,'" said Dora, but it was as in
a dream and only from habit.

"Do you mean to say"--Oswald spoke firmly, yet not angrily--"that you
and Alice went and begged for money for poor children, and then _kept_
it?"

"We didn't keep it," said H.O., "we spent it."

"We've kept the _things_, you little duffer!" said Dicky, looking at the
pudding sitting alone and uncared for on its dish. "You begged for money
for poor children, and then _kept_ it. It's stealing, that's what it is.
I don't say so much about you--you're onl