o think
of anything but more brandy, while one or two were good enough to come
and favour me with their views on the pudding. We had laid in all the
necessaries at least a week before, and then I set to work to stone
raisins for the first, and I trust, the last time in my life. It is
laborious work. I 'd rather use a pick and shovel any day, but I knew it
ought to be done, I had heard my mother say so many a time; so I stuck
to it gallantly, and with sticky and aching fingers worked through that
pile of raisins. Everything comes to an end at length, and at last I
came to the end of those raisins, and poured them into the bucket,
where the flour and currants, and sugar and candied peel were already
reposing. To these I added a billy of water from the creek, and stirred
the lot together with a big stick. My wife informs me that a good plum
pudding can't be made without a certain proportion of suet, some spice,
and six or seven eggs, but I assure you that was a very excellent
pudding, and we never even thought of such things. I don't suppose we
could have got them if we had, so it was just as well. After I had
mixed my pudding I had one moment of deepest despair. There it lay, a
yellow-looking mass at the bottom of the bucket. So far all was
well, but how was that yellow mass to be turned into the orthodox
jolly-looking plum-pudding? I was cudgelling my brains over this enigma
as I lighted up the fire, when one of the admiring crowd round--I
suppose he must have, been a past-master in the art of cooking--solved
the difficulty for me.

"Ain't you got a pudden-cloth?" he asked.

"By Jingo!" I thought, "of course." But I am thankful to say I did not
betray my ignorance.

"A pudding-cloth," I said, as if I had known all about it all along.
"No, I haven't a pudding-cloth; I 'm going to use a shirt."

Thereupon I retired to the tent, and procured a red flannel shirt--one
of Dick's--which, with the top cut off, answered admirably.

"Don't ye, don't ye now tie it too tight, else it won't 'ave room
to swell," implored my self-constituted adviser, and I followed his
advice--was only too thankful for it, in fact--and by the time my mate
returned with the turkey, the pudding was bubbling away in the bucket
which did duty as saucepan as jolly as possible.

Our Christmas dinner was a decided success. The turkey was splendid, and
the pudding, bar a slight grittiness, occasioned by my not having washed
the currants, which I am told