ard 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!

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 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 eaten 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 backyard 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.

Halloa! 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, smoking hot, 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 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 at all a small pudding for so large a family. It would have been
flat heresy to do so. Any Cratchit would have blushed to hint at such a