Halloa!  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, smoking hot, 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 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 so large a 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 shovelful 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 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 cracked noisily.  Then Bob proposed:  “A Merry Christmas to us all, my dears.  God bless us!”

Which all the family re[:e]choed.

“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.

Charles Dickens.

[Illustration:  Portrait of Dickens.]

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DECLENSION, a falling downward.

COPPER, a boiler made of copper.

RALLIED, indulged in pleasant humor.

UBIQUITOUS (u b[)i]k’ w[)i] t[)u]s), appearing to be everywhere at the same time.

EKED OUT, added to; increased.

BEDIGHT, bedecked; adorned.

RE[:E]CHOED (reechoed):  What is the mark placed over the second e called, and what does it denote?

NOTE.—­“A Christmas Carol,” from which the selection is taken, is considered the best short story that Dickens wrote, and one of the best Christmas stories ever written.  The Cratchits were very poor as to the goods of this world, but very rich in love, kindness, and contentment.

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