There never was such a goose.  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 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. 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.  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 shovelful of chestnuts on the fire.

Then all the Cratchit family drew round the hearth, in what Bob Cratchit called a circle, 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 chestnuts on the fire sputtered and crackled 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.