lding he said,
with a side glance at me: "That bird, sir, has nobbut had its hide
cooked, and all beneath it is frozen."

Even before Fielding, to verify this startling statement, had seized
the knife, and, laying open the skin, exposed to view the partly
frozen flesh, the whole miserable catastrophe was clear to my mind. I
recalled how I had borne down on Ovide soon after he had put the bird
for the first time into the blazing oven; how, in deference to my
fears, he had taken it out and stood it on the shelf--when its skin,
of course, could only have been scorched--where it had remained over
an hour while he was superintending the construction and cooking of
the pudding; and, finally, how the prevaricating fellow--whom I knew
understood little more about cooking than I did--must have concluded,
from the cinder-like appearance of the skin when he took it out of the
oven the second time, after another twenty minutes' scorching, that
it was cooked to the very marrow.

"Well!" ejaculated Fielding, letting his knife and fork fall noisily
on the table, and turning to our guilty-looking cook, "of all the
pure--"

But I am sure, the reader will agree with me that under such trying
circumstances, my friend should not now have recorded against him, in
cold print, every word he uttered on that occasion.

When Fielding had somewhat relieved his feelings and sat down again,
Ovide, in his ludicrous English, tried to throw the blame for what had
happened upon the stove, which, he explained, burned much more
zealously than he wanted it to; but his lame excuses were cut short by
Fielding telling him to take the thing away.

Ovide, however, was a difficult subject to silence, and said
apologetically, as he took up the platter: "It's vary much too bad,
sir, dat I'm forgot to mak her freeze out before I'm put her in de
oven. But de puddin', sir,"--with a sudden revival of his old
self-confidence--"no danger of de same trouble with her; I'm sure
she's cook vary well all de way over."

Somewhat mollified by the outlook of getting a little of something to
eat, Fielding replied somewhat less shortly, "Well, hurry up and bring
it along."

As we silently waited for him to return, we heard him noisily lift the
kettle containing the now doubly precious pudding off the stove; but
scarcely had he done so when he uttered an amazed cry, and a few
moments later hurried up to the table again, the big kettle in his
hand and his eyes fairly bul