His active little crutch was heard upon the floor, and back came Tiny Tim before another word was spoken, escorted by his brother and sister to his stool beside the fire; and while Bob, turning up his cuffs, -as if, poor fellow, they were capable of being made more shabby, compounded some hot mixture in a jug with gin and lemons, and stirred it round and round, and put it on the hob to simmer, 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 vigor; Miss Belinda sweetened up the applesauce; 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 at 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 into 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 flavor, 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 onions 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!

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 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 proudlywith 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 that she had her doubts about the quantity of the 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 a flat heresy. 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 around 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 all of us, my dears. God bless us!"

Which all the family reëchoed.

"God bless us every one!" said Tiny Tim, the last of all.

LITTLE CHARLEY

CHARLES DICKENS

WE found the house, to which we had been directed by

a friend of my guardian, and went up to the top room. I tapped at the door, and a little shrill voice inside said: “We are locked in; Mrs. Blinder's got the key.”

We had been prepared for this by Mrs. Blinder, the shopkeeper below, who had given us the key of the room.

I applied the key on hearing this, and opened the door. In a poor room, with a sloping ceiling, and containing very little furniture, was a mite of a boy, some

five or six years old, nursing and hushing a heavy child of eighteen months. There was no fire, though the weather was cold; both children were wrapped in some poor shawls and tippets as a substitute. Their clothing was not so warm, however, but that their noses looked red and pinched and their small figures shrunken, as the boy walked up and down, nursing and hushing the child, with its head on his shoulder.

"Who has locked you up here alone?" we naturally asked.

66

Charley," said the boy, standing still to gaze at us. "Is Charley your brother?"

"No. She's my sister Charlotte. Father called her Charley."

"Where is Charley now?"

"Out a-washing," said the boy, beginning to walk up and down again, and taking the baby's nankeen bonnet much too near the bedstead by trying to gaze at us at the same time.

We were looking at one another and at these two children, when there came into the room a very little girl, childish in figure, but shrewd and older looking in the face-pretty faced, too-wearing a womanly sort of a bonnet much too large for her and drying her bare arms on a womanly sort of apron.

Her fingers were white and wrinkled with washing, and the soapsuds were yet smoking which she wiped off her But for this she might have been a child playing at washing and imitating a poor working woman with a quick observation of the truth.

arms.

She had come running from some place in the neighbor