ney 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