Such a bustle ensued that you might have
thought a goose the rarest of all birds; a feathered
phenomenon, to which a black swan was a matter of
course; and in truth it was something very like it in
that house. Mrs Cratchit made the gravy (ready
beforehand in a little saucepan) hissing hot; Master
Peter mashed the potatoes with incredible vigour;
Miss Belinda sweetened up the apple-sauce; Martha
dusted the hot plates; Bob took Tiny Tim beside him
in a tiny corner at the table; the two young
Cratchits set chairs for everybody, not forgetting
themselves, and mounting guard 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!
There never was such a goose. Bob said he didn't
believe there ever was such a goose cooked. Its
tenderness and flavour, 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 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
pastrycook'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.
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 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. It would have been flat heresy to do so. 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 shovel-full of chesnuts on the
fire. Then all the Cratchit family drew round the
hearth, in what Bob Cratchit called a circle, meaning
half a one; 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 chesnuts
on the fire sputtered and cracked 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 he loved the child, and wished to keep him by his
side, and dreaded that he might be taken from him.
"Spirit," said Scrooge, with an interest he had never felt before, "tell me if Tiny Tim will live."
"I see a vacant seat," replied the Ghost, "in the
poor chimney-corner, and a crutch without an
owner, carefully preserved. If these shadows remain
unaltered by the Future, the child will die."
"No, no," said Scrooge. "Oh, no, kind Spirit! say
he will be spared."
"If these shadows remain unaltered by the
Future, none other of my race," returned the Ghost,
"will find him here. What then? If he be like to die,
he had better do it, and decrease the surplus
population."
Scrooge hung his head to hear his wn words
quoted by the Spirit, and was overcome with
penitence and grief.
"Man," said the Ghost, "if man you be in heart,
not adamant, forbear that wicked cant until you
have discovered What the surplus is, and Where it
is. Will you decide what men shall live, what men
shall die? It may be, that in the sight of Heaven,
you are more worthless and less fit to live than
millions like this poor man's child. Oh God! to hear
the Insect on the leaf pronouncing on the too much
life among his hungry brothers in the dust!"
Scrooge bent before the Ghost's rebuke, and
trembling cast his eyes upon the ground. But he
raised them speedily, on hearing his own name.
"Mr Scrooge!" said Bob; "I'll give you Mr Scrooge,
the Founder of the Feast!"
"The Founder of the Feast indeed!" cried Mrs
Cratchit, reddening. "I wish I had him here. I'd give
him a piece of my mind to feast upon, and I hope
he'd have a good appetite for it."
"My dear," said Bob, "the children; Christmas
Day."
"It should be Christmas Day, I am sure," said she,
"on which one drinks the health of such an odious,
stingy, hard, unfeeling man as Mr Scrooge. You
know he is, Robert! Nobody knows it better than you
do, poor fellow!"
"My dear," was Bob's mild answer, "Christmas
Day."