“Our parents often spoke of his late master as ‘old Reuben,’ but children are not easily disabused of a favourite fancy, and in Patty’s thoughts and in mine the old man was long gratefully remembered as Old Father Christmas.”

XX.  A CHRISTMAS CAROL

CHARLES DICKENS

Master Peter, and the two ubiquitous young Cratchits went to fetch the goose, with which they soon returned in high procession.

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 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.

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.