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<h2> XX. A CHRISTMAS CAROL </h2>
<h3> CHARLES DICKENS </h3>
<p>Master Peter, and the two ubiquitous young Cratchits went to fetch the
goose, with which they soon returned in high procession.</p>
<p>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!</p>
<p>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 the 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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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
chestnuts 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 glasses. Two tumblers, and a
custard-cup without a handle.</p>
<p>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 cracked noisily. Then Bob proposed:</p>
<p>"A Merry Christmas to us all, my dears. God bless us!"</p>
<p>Which all the family re-echoed.</p>
<p>"God bless us every one!" said Tiny Tim, the last of all.</p>
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