nions, these young Crachits
danced about the table, and exalted Master Peter Crachit to the skies,
while he (not proud, although his collar almost choked him) blew the fire,
until the slow potatoes, bubbling up, knocked loudly at the saucepan-lid
to be let out and peeled.

"What has ever got your precious father, then?" said Mrs. Crachit. "And
your brother, Tiny Tim! And Martha warn't as late last Christmas Day by
half an hour!"

"Here's Martha, mother!" cried the two young Crachits. "_Hurrah_! there's
_such_ a goose, Martha!"

"Why, bless your heart alive, dear, how late you are!" said Mrs. Crachit,
kissing the daughter, who lived away from home, a dozen times. "Well,
never mind as long as you are come!"

"There's father coming!" cried the two young Crachits, who were everywhere
at once. "_Hide_, Martha, _hide_!"

So Martha hid herself, and in came little Bob, the father, with at least
three feet of comforter hanging down before him, and his threadbare
clothes darned up and brushed to look seasonable; and Tiny Tim upon his
shoulder. Why was the child thus carried? Alas for Tiny Tim, he bore a
little crutch and had his limbs supported by an iron frame! Patient little
Tim,--never was he heard to utter a fretful or complaining word. No wonder
they cherished him so tenderly!

"Why, where's our Martha?" cried Bob Crachit looking round.

"Not coming!" said Mrs. Crachit.

"Not coming?" said Bob, with a sudden declension in his high spirits; for
he had been Tim's blood horse all the way from church, and had come home
rampant.

"Not coming upon Christmas Day!"

Martha didn't like to see him disappointed, if it were only in joke; so
she ran out from behind the closet door, and ran into his arms, while the
two young Crachits hustled Tiny Tim, and bore him off into the wash-house,
that he might hear the pudding singing in the copper.

"And how did little Tim behave?" asked Mrs. Crachit; when she had rallied
Bob on his credulity, and Bob had hugged his daughter to his heart's
content.

"As good as gold," said Bob, "and better. Somehow he gets thoughtful,
sitting by himself so much, and thinks the strangest things you ever
heard. He told me, coming home, that 'he hoped the people saw him in the
church, because he was a cripple, and it might be pleasant to them to
remember upon Christmas Day, Who made lame beggars walk and blind men
see.'"

Bob's voice was tremulous when he told them this, and it trembled more
when