"Because she hadn't got nothing to do with it. I collected it all. She
never went into one of the houses. She didn't want to."
"And then took all the credit of getting the money," said Dicky
savagely.
Oswald said, "Not much _credit_," in scornful tones.
"Oh, you are _beastly_, the whole lot of you, except Dora!" Alice said,
stamping her foot in rage and despair. "I tore my frock on a nail going
out, and I didn't want to go back, and I got H.O. to go to the houses
alone, and I waited for him outside. And I asked him not to say anything
because I didn't want Dora to know about the frock--it's my best. And I
don't know what he said inside. He never told me. But I'll bet anything
he didn't _mean_ to cheat."
"You _said_ lots of kind people would be ready to give money to get
pudding for poor children. So I asked them to."
Oswald, with his strong right hand, waved a wave of passing things over.
"We'll talk about that another time," he said; "just now we've got
weightier things to deal with."
He pointed to the pudding, which had grown cold during the conversation
to which I have alluded. H.O. stopped crying, but Alice went on with it.
Oswald now said--
"We're a base and outcast family. Until that pudding's out of the house
we shan't be able to look any one in the face. We must see that that
pudding goes to poor children--not grisling, grumpy, whiney-piney,
pretending poor children--but real poor ones, just as poor as they can
stick."
"And the figs too--and the dates," said Noel, with regretting tones.
"Every fig," said Dicky sternly. "Oswald is quite right."
This honourable resolution made us feel a bit better. We hastily put on
our best things, and washed ourselves a bit, and hurried out to find
some really poor people to give the pudding to. We cut it in slices
ready, and put it in a basket with the figs and dates and toffee. We
would not let H.O. come with us at first because he wanted to. And Alice
would not come because of him. So at last we had to let him. The
excitement of tearing into your best things heals the hurt that wounded
honour feels, as the poetry writer said--or at any rate it makes the
hurt feel better.
We went out into the streets. They were pretty quiet--nearly everybody
was eating its Christmas dessert. But presently we met a woman in an
apron. Oswald said very politely--
"Please, are you a poor person?" And she told us to get along with us.
The next we met was a shabby man with a hole in his left boot.
Again Oswald said, "Please, are you a poor person, and have you any poor
little children?"
The man told us not to come any of our games with him, or we should
laugh on the wrong side of our faces. We went on sadly. We had no heart
to stop and explain to him that we had no games to come.
The next was a young man near the Obelisk. Dora tried this time.
She said, "Oh, if you please we've got some Christmas pudding in this
basket, and if you're a poor person you can have some."
"Poor as Job," said the young man in a hoarse voice, and he had to come
up out of a red comforter to say it.
We gave him a slice of the pudding, and he bit into it without thanks or
delay. The next minute he had thrown the pudding slap in Dora's face,
and was clutching Dicky by the collar.
"Blime if I don't chuck ye in the river, the whole bloomin' lot of you!"
he exclaimed.
The girls screamed, the boys shouted, and though Oswald threw himself on
the insulter of his sister with all his manly vigour, yet but for a
friend of Oswald's, who is in the police, passing at that instant, the
author shudders to think what might have happened, for he was a strong
young man, and Oswald is not yet come to his full strength, and the
Quaggy runs all too near.
Our policeman led our assailant aside, and we waited anxiously, as he
told us to. After long uncertain moments the young man in the comforter
loafed off grumbling, and our policeman turned to us.
"Said you give him a dollop o' pudding, and it tasted of soap and
hair-oil."
I suppose the hair-oil must have been the Brown Windsoriness of the soap
coming out. We were sorry, but it was still our duty to get rid of the
pudding. The Quaggy was handy, it is true, but when you have collected
money to feed poor children and spent it on pudding it is not right to
throw that pudding in the river. People do not subscribe shillings and
sixpences and half-crowns to feed a hungry flood with Christmas pudding.
Yet we shrank from asking any more people whether they were poor
persons, or about their families, and still more from offering the
pudding to chance people who might bite into it and taste the soap
before we had time to get away.
It was Alice, the most paralysed with disgrace of all of us, who thought
of the best idea.
She said, "Let's take it to the workhouse. At any rate they're all poor
people there, and they mayn't go out without leave, so they can't run
after us to do anything to us after the pudding. No one would give them
leave to go out to pursue people who had brought them pudding, and wreck
vengeance on them, and at any rate we shall get rid of the
conscience-pudding--it's a sort of conscience-money, you know--only it
isn't money but pudding."
The workhouse is a good way, but we stuck to it, though very cold, and
hungrier than we thought possible when we started, for we had been so
agitated we had not even stayed to eat the plain pudding our good Father
had so kindly and thoughtfully ordered for our Christmas dinner.
The big bell at the workhouse made a man open the door to us, when we
rang it. Oswald said (and he spoke because he is next eldest to Dora,
and she had had jolly well enough of saying anything about pudding)--he
said--
"Please we've brought some pudding for the poor people."
He looked us up and down, and he looked at our basket, then he said:
"You'd better see the Matron."
We waited in a hall, feeling more and more uncomfy, and less and less
like Christmas. We were very cold indeed, especially our hands and our
noses. And we felt less and less able to face the Matron if she was
horrid, and one of us at least wished we had chosen the Quaggy for the
pudding's long home, and made it up to the robbed poor in some other way
afterwards.
Just as Alice was saying earnestly in the burning cold ear of Oswald,
"Let's put down the basket and make a bolt for it. Oh, Oswald, _let's_!"
a lady came along the passage. She was very upright, and she had eyes
that went through you like blue gimlets. I should not like to be obliged
to thwart that lady if she had any design, and mine was opposite. I am
glad this is not likely to occur.