THE LADIES’ WORLD.

Gisborne Times, Volume XXVII, Issue 2691, 22 December 1909, Page 3

THE LADIES’ WORLD.

THE CHRISTMAS PUDDING

It was always made according to the same recipe. New ones might come ami go, but mother kept to the old, and of course we thought, and think so still, though we may not always say it, that there was not another Christmas pudding like it. We always wanted; mother to tell the cookery people all about it, but mother was quite content with her audience. It was made quite a fortnight beforehand, and hung high up in a cool, dark place in the pantry. We had a look at it occasionally, to see it had not disappeared. We thought it looked dry, and hard, and c rink ley, and wondered hoiv it would come out round and . smooth and soft. We tliought Mary jhadi a special way of boiling it ..on Christmas Day, to put it into shape—-and no doubt she had. Of course, we dll had a hand in the stoning of the raisins, for stoned fruit was not purchasable fifteen, no twenty years ago. With sugary hands and sticky, fingers each of us tried to outnumber the other. A knife was the best way to open the plums, One- declared emphatically, the while ho struggled with the same, A good long thumbnail served the purpose equally well, said another. And while we' talked and argued, mother watched to see that too many, plums did not find their way down our throats instead of . into her basin.. The cutting of the citron pee] she attended to herself, dividing the candied sugar impartially. Spice and nutmeg, and flour and suet were of no interest to, us until the mixing process. And that was as big an event as the hanging of our stockings. We were all out of bed unpardonably early, in case we should- not arrive on the scene in time to : get a taste. A funny little hand we must have appeared, half clad, with eager, hungry little eyes. awaiting; for “a bit on spoon, mother,” or the privilege'of cleaning the basin. Tom was always sure he knew just exactly where the lucky sixpence would be, for he had watched its evolutions in the basin, and'’kept his eye on the spot when the mixture was finally shaped and turned into the cloth. . Kate, not quite so sure of herself; hoped she might get the thimble. She had certainly kept her eye on it, but somehow one part of the pudding looked astonishingly like the other when it was ready for the pot. Only when the spoons had all been thorofighlv cleaned, and not a vestige left in the. basin, did we feel we had done our duty. Not until we had had two helpings of the pudding, and the boys had hinted at a third, did we fee], assured it was really Christmas. It was passing strange how that old recipe of mother’s grew with the increasing vears. There alwavs seemed to be enough and to spare of the Christmas pudding, though a new and larger cloth was necessary occasionally. Then one pair of eager little eyes and ten sticky little fingers were missed in the preparations. Then another—and still another. There seemed to be loss room for two helpings. Mother left out a cunful of fliVur, and cut several inches off the oudding cloth. And now—now mother’s Christmas pudding is not as big as my two clenched hands. -The bovs have wandered into grown-up land. The girls—-well, they'are making Christmas puddings for a younger generation, who know not . the. pleasure of rosin-? s+oning. nor of puddings eaten raw. But mother keeps up the did, reqipe. Her Christmas nudding looks just ns big in the mixing lmsin, though it divides itself into smaller pudding-cloths, and finds its way on to •several lean Christmas tab’es, which, would he tho poorer for its absence.