Cratchit said with great delight (surveying one small atom of a
bone upon the dish), they hadn't ate 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 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.
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