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 of half a quartern of
ignited brandy, and bedight with Christmas holly stuck into the top.

O, 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 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 a large family. 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 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, 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 crackled noisily. Then Bob
proposed:--

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

Which all the family re-echoed.

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

He sat very close to his father's side, upon his little stool. Bob held
his withered little hand in his, as if h