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 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-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 own 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."
"I'll drink his health for your sake and the Day's," said Mrs. Cratchit, "not for his. Long life to him!A merry Christmas and a happy new year!He'll be very merry and very happy, I have no doubt!"
The children drank the toast after her.It was the first of their proceedings which had no heartiness.Tiny Tim drank it last of all,but he didn't care twopence for it.Scrooge was the Ogre of the family.The mention of his name cast a dark shadow on the party,which was not dispelled for full five minutes.
After it had passed away,they were ten times merrier than before,from the mere relief of Scrooge the Baleful being done with.Bob Cratchit told them how he had a situation in his eye for Master Peter,which would bring in, if obtained,full five-and-sixpence weekly.The two young Cratchits laughed tremendously at the idea of Peter's being a man of business; and Peter himself looked thoughtfully at the fire from between his collars, as if he were deliberating what particular investments he should favour when he came into the receipt of that bewildering income. Martha, who was a poor apprentice at a milliner's, then told them what kind of work she had to do, and how many hours she worked at a stretch, and how she meant to lie abed to-morrow morning for a good long rest; to-morrow being a holiday she passed at home. Also how she had seen a countess and a lord some days before, and how the lord "was much about as tall as Peter;" at which Peter pulled up his collars so high that you couldn't have seen his head if you had been there. All this time the chestnuts and the jug went round and round; and by-and-bye they had a song, about a lost child travelling in the snow, from Tiny Tim, who had a plaintive little voice, and sang it very well indeed.