ce-pies had originally graced the dish, but
before dinner one had been conveyed away to some up stairs receptacle
for such spoils. The pudding also was small, nor was it black and
rich, and laden with good things as a Christmas pudding should be
laden. Let us hope that what the guests so lost was made up to them
on the following day, by an absence of those ill effects which
sometimes attend upon the consumption of rich viands.

"And now, my dear, we'll have a bit of bread and cheese and a glass
of beer," Mr. Green said when he arrived at his own cottage. And so
it was that Christmas-day was passed at Groby Park.

CHAPTER XXIV

CHRISTMAS IN GREAT ST. HELENS

We will now look in for a moment at the Christmas doings of our fat
friend, Mr. Moulder. Mr. Moulder was a married man living in lodgings
over a wine-merchant's vaults in Great St. Helens. He was blessed--or
troubled, with no children, and prided himself greatly on the
material comfort with which his humble home was surrounded. "His
wife," he often boasted, "never wanted for plenty of the best of
eating; and for linen and silks and such-like, she could show her
drawers and her wardrobes with many a great lady from Russell Square,
and not be ashamed, neither!" And then, as for drink,--"tipple," as
Mr. Moulder sportively was accustomed to name it among his friends,
he opined that he was not altogether behind the mark in that respect.
"He had got some brandy--he didn't care what anybody might say about
Cognac and eau de vie; but the brandy which he had got from Betts'
private establishment seventeen years ago, for richness of flavour
and fullness of strength, would beat any French article that anybody
in the city could show. That at least was his idea. If anybody didn't
like it, they needn't take it. There was whisky that would make your
hair stand on end." So said Mr. Moulder, and I can believe him; for
it has made my hair stand on end merely to see other people drinking
it.

And if comforts of apparel, comforts of eating and drinking, and
comforts of the feather-bed and easy-chair kind can make a woman
happy, Mrs. Moulder was no doubt a happy woman. She had quite fallen
in to the mode of life laid out for her. She had a little bit of hot
kidney for breakfast at about ten; she dined at three, having seen
herself to the accurate cooking of her roast fowl, or her bit of
sweetbread, and always had her pint of Scotch ale. She turned over
all her clothes almost