"'2072. One pound and a half of raisins; half a pound of currants; three
quarters of a pound of breadcrumbs; half a pound of flour;
three-quarters of a pound of beef suet; nine eggs; one wine glassful of
brandy; half a pound of citron and orange peel; half a nutmeg; and a
little ground ginger.' I wonder _how_ little ground ginger."
"A teacupful would be enough, I think," Alice said; "we must not be
extravagant."
"We haven't got anything yet to be extravagant _with_," said Oswald, who
had toothache that day. "What would you do with the things if you'd got
them?"
"You'd 'chop the suet as fine as possible'--I wonder how fine that is?"
replied Dora and the book together--"'and mix it with the breadcrumbs
and flour; add the currants washed and dried.'"
"Not starched, then," said Alice.
"'The citron and orange peel cut into thin slices'--I wonder what they
call thin? Matilda's thin bread-and-butter is quite different from what
I mean by it--'and the raisins stoned and divided.' How many heaps would
you divide them into?"
"Seven, I suppose," said Alice; "one for each person and one for the
pot--I mean pudding."
"'Mix it all well together with the grated nutmeg and ginger. Then stir
in nine eggs well beaten, and the brandy'--we'll leave that out, I
think--'and again mix it thoroughly together that every ingredient may
be moistened; put it into a buttered mould, tie over tightly, and boil
for six hours. Serve it ornamented with holly and brandy poured over
it.'"
"I should think holly and brandy poured over it would be simply
beastly," said Dicky.
"I expect the book knows. I daresay holly and water would do as well
though. 'This pudding may be made a month before'--it's no use reading
about that though, because we've only got four days to Christmas."
"It's no use reading about any of it," said Oswald, with thoughtful
repeatedness, "because we haven't got the things, and we haven't got the
coin to get them."
"We might get the tin somehow," said Dicky.
"There must be lots of kind people who would subscribe to a Christmas
pudding for poor children who hadn't any," Noel said.
"Well, I'm going skating at Penn's," said Oswald. "It's no use thinking
about puddings. We must put up with it plain."
So he went, and Dicky went with him.
When they returned to their home in the evening the fire had been
lighted again in the nursery, and the others were just having tea. We
toasted our bread-and-butter on the bare side, and it gets a little warm
among the butter. This is called French toast. "I like English better,
but it is more expensive," Alice said--
"Matilda is in a frightful rage about your putting those coals on the
kitchen fire, Oswald. She says we shan't have enough to last over
Christmas as it is. And Father gave her a talking to before he went
about them--asked her if she ate them, she says--but I don't believe he
did. Anyway, she's locked the coal-cellar door, and she's got the key in
her pocket. I don't see how we can boil the pudding."
"What pudding?" said Oswald dreamily. He was thinking of a chap he had
seen at Penn's who had cut the date 1899 on the ice with four strokes.
"_The_ pudding," Alice said. "Oh, we've had such a time, Oswald! First
Dora and I went to the shops to find out exactly what the pudding would
cost--it's only two and elevenpence halfpenny, counting in the holly."
"It's no good," Oswald repeated; he is very patient and will say the
same thing any number of times. "It's no good. You know we've got no
tin."
"Ah," said Alice, "but Noel and I went out, and we called at some of the
houses in Granville Park and Dartmouth Hill--and we got a lot of
sixpences and shillings, besides pennies, and one old gentleman gave us
half-a-crown. He was so nice. Quite bald, with a knitted red and blue
waistcoat. We've got eight-and-sevenpence."
Oswald did not feel quite sure Father would like us to go asking for
shillings and sixpences, or even half-crowns from strangers, but he did
not say so. The money had been asked for and got, and it couldn't be
helped--and perhaps he wanted the pudding--I am not able to remember
exactly why he did not speak up and say, "This is wrong," but anyway he
didn't.
Alice and Dora went out and bought the things next morning. They bought
double quantities, so that it came to five shillings and elevenpence,
and was enough to make a noble pudding. There was a lot of holly left
over for decorations. We used very little for the sauce. The money that
was left we spent very anxiously in other things to eat, such as dates
and figs and toffee.
We did not tell Matilda about it. She was a red-haired girl, and apt to
turn shirty at the least thing.
Concealed under our jackets and overcoats we carried the parcels up to
the nursery, and hid them in the treasure-chest we had there. It was the
bureau drawer. It was locked up afterwards because the treacle got all
over the green baize and the little drawers inside it while we were
waiting to begin to make the pudding. It was the grocer told us we ought
to put treacle in the pudding, and also about not so much ginger as a
teacupful.
When Matilda had begun to pretend to scrub the floor (she pretended this
three times a week so as to have an excuse not to let us in the kitchen,
but I know she used to read novelettes most of the time, because Alice
and I had a squint through the window more than once), we barricaded the
nursery door and set to work. We were very careful to be quite clean. We
washed our hands as well as the currants. I have sometimes thought we
did not get all the soap off the currants. The pudding smelt like a
washing-day when the time came to cut it open. And we washed a corner of
the table to chop the suet on. Chopping suet looks easy till you try.
Father's machine he weighs letters with did to weigh out the things. We
did this very carefully, in case the grocer had not done so. Everything
was right except the raisins. H.O. had carried them home. He was very
young then, and there was a hole in the corner of the paper bag and his
mouth was sticky.
Lots of people have been hanged to a gibbet in chains on evidence no
worse than that, and we told H.O. so till he cried. This was good for
him. It was not unkindness to H.O., but part of our duty.
Chopping suet as fine as possible is much harder than any one would
think, as I said before. So is crumbling bread--especially if your loaf
is new, like ours was. When we had done them the breadcrumbs and the
suet were both very large and lumpy, and of a dingy gray colour,
something like pale slate pencil.
They looked a better colour when we had mixed them with the flour. The
girls had washed the currants with Brown Windsor soap and the sponge.
Some of the currants got inside the sponge and kept coming out in the
bath for days afterwards. I see now that this was not quite nice. We cut
the candied peel as thin as we wish people would cut our
bread-and-butter. We tried to take the stones out of the raisins, but
they were too sticky, so we just divided them up in seven lots. Then we
mixed the other things in the wash-hand basin from the spare bedroom
that was always spare. We each put in our own lot of raisins and turned
it all into a pudding-basin, and tied it up in one of Alice's pinafores,
which was the nearest thing to a proper pudding-cloth we could find--at
any rate clean. What was left sticking to the wash-hand basin did not
taste so bad.
"It's a little bit soapy," Alice said, "but perhaps that will boil out;
like stains in table-cloths."
It was a difficult question how to boil the pudding. Matilda proved
furious when asked to let us, just because some one had happened to
knock her hat off the scullery door and Pincher had got it and done for
it. However, part of the embassy nicked a saucepan while the others were
being told what Matilda thought about the hat, and we got hot water out
of the bath-room and made it boil over our nursery fire. We put the
pudding in--it was now getting on towards the hour of tea--and let it
boil. With some exceptions--owing to the fire going down, and Matilda
not hurrying up with coals--it boiled for an hour and a quarter. Then
Matilda came suddenly in and said, "I'm not going to have you messing
about in here with my saucepans"; and she tried to take it off the fire.
You will see that we couldn't stand this; it was not likely. I do not
remember who it was that told her to mind her own business, and I think
I have forgotten who caught hold of her first to make her chuck it. I am
sure no needless violence was used. Anyway, while the struggle
progressed, Alice and Dora took the saucepan away and put it in the
boot-cupboard under the stairs and put the key in their pocket.
This sharp encounter made every one very hot and cross. We got over it
before Matilda did, but we brought her round before bedtime. Quarrels
should always be made up before bedtime. It says so in the Bible. If
this simple rule was followed there would not be so many wars and
martyrs and law suits and inquisitions and bloody deaths at the stake.
All the house was still. The gas was out all over the house except on
the first landing, when several darkly-shrouded figures might have been
observed creeping downstairs to the kitchen.
On the way, with superior precaution, we got out our saucepan. The
kitchen fire was red, but low; the coal-cellar was locked, and there was
nothing in the scuttle but a little coal-dust and the piece of brown
paper that is put in to keep the coals from tumbling out through the
bottom where the hole is. We put the saucepan on the fire and plied it
with fuel--two _Chronicles_, a _Telegraph_, and two _Family Herald_
novelettes were burned in vain. I am almost sure the pudding did not
boil at all that night.
"Never mind," Alice said. "We can each nick a piece of coal every time
we go into the kitchen to-morrow."
This daring scheme was faithfully performed, and by night we had nearly
half a waste-paper basket of coal, coke, and cinders. And in the depth
of night once more we might have been observed, this time with our
collier-like waste-paper basket in our guarded hands.
There was more fire left in the grate that night, and we fed it with the
fuel we had collected. This time the fire blazed up, and the pudding
boiled like mad. This was the time it boiled two hours--at least I think
it was about that, but we dropped asleep on the kitchen tables and
dresser. You dare not be lowly in the night in the kitchen, because of
the beetles. We were aroused by a horrible smell. It was the
pudding-cloth burning. All the water had secretly boiled itself away. We
filled it up at once with cold, and the saucepan cracked. So we cleaned
it and put it back on the shelf and took another and went to bed. You
see what a lot of trouble we had over the pudding. Every evening till
Christmas, which had now become only the day after to-morrow, we sneaked
down in the inky midnight and boiled that pudding for as long as it
would.
On Christmas morning we chopped the holly for the sauce, but we put hot
water (instead of brandy) and moist sugar. Some of them said it was not
so bad. Oswald was not one of these.
Then came the moment when the plain pudding Father had ordered smoked
upon the board. Matilda brought it in and went away at once. She had a
cousin out of Woolwich Arsenal to see her that day, I remember. Those
far-off days are quite distinct in memory's recollection still.
Then we got out our own pudding from its hiding-place and gave it one
last hurried boil--only seven minutes, because of the general impatience
which Oswald and Dora could not cope with.
We had found means to secrete a dish, and we now tried to dish the
pudding up, but it stuck to the basin, and had to be dislodged with the
chisel. The pudding was horribly pale. We poured the holly sauce over
it, and Dora took up the knife and was just cutting it when a few simple
words from H.O. turned us from happy and triumphing cookery artists to
persons in despair.
He said: "How pleased all those kind ladies and gentlemen would be if
they knew _we_ were the poor children they gave the shillings and
sixpences and things for!"
We all said, "_What?_" It was no moment for politeness.
"I say," H.O. said, "they'd be glad if they knew it was us was enjoying
the pudding, and not dirty little, really poor children."
"You should say 'you were,' not 'you was,'" said Dora, but it was as in
a dream and only from habit.
"Do you mean to say"--Oswald spoke firmly, yet not angrily--"that you
and Alice went and begged for money for poor children, and then _kept_
it?"
"We didn't keep it," said H.O., "we spent it."
"We've kept the _things_, you little duffer!" said Dicky, looking at the
pudding sitting alone and uncared for on its dish. "You begged for money
for poor children, and then _kept_ it. It's stealing, that's what it is.
I don't say so much about you--you're only a silly kid--but Alice knew
better. Why did you do it?"
He turned to Alice, but she was now too deep in tears to get a word out.
H.O. looked a bit frightened, but he answered the question. We have
taught him this. He said--
"I thought they'd give us more if I said poor children than if I said
just us."
"_That's_ cheating," said Dicky--"downright beastly, mean, low
cheating."
"I'm not," said H.O.; "and you're another." Then he began to cry too. I
do not know how the others felt, but I understand from Oswald that he
felt that now the honour of the house of Bastable had been stamped on
in the dust, and it didn't matter what happened. He looked at the
beastly holly that had been left over from the sauce and was stuck up
over the pictures. It now appeared hollow and disgusting, though it had
got quite a lot of berries, and some of it was the varied kind--green
and white. The figs and dates and toffee were set out in the doll's
dinner service. The very sight of it all made Oswald blush sickly. He
owns he would have liked to cuff H.O., and, if he did for a moment wish
to shake Alice, the author, for one, can make allowances.
Now Alice choked and spluttered, and wiped her eyes fiercely, and said,
"It's no use ragging H.O. It's my fault. I'm older than he is."