The Misfit Christmas Puddings Part 7

_Ninth Episode_

HERR BAUMGaRTNER'S ESTABLISHMENT CHRISTMAS DAY

Herr Baumgartner's first impulse, on finding out what had become of his Christmas puddings, was to send at once to the Widow M'Carty's and have them returned to him. Had it not been for the lateness of the hour, doubtless this is what would have happened.

But the night brings counsel, even in the matter of plum puddings, and by morning the baker had concluded that it was wiser to let the unlucky gifts remain in their misfit quarters. Perhaps Katrina's remark, that his customers would be wroth if they found they had eaten puddings that had been stored for a night, even, in so well-inhabited an abode, influenced his decision.

However that may be, the baker said to Katrina as he sat down to his breakfast:

"Vell, Katrina, if we haf given somedings away in the wrong place, we will not now take it back. But Katrina, dose beautiful puddings, and dose M'Cartys! ach! ach!" and he shook his head sorrowfully at the thought that these culinary triumphs should have fallen to those so incapable of appreciating a wonderful Baumgartner plum pudding.

In the eyes of the baker, to give twelve Christmas puddings to the M'Cartys was indeed to cast one's pearls before swine.

Herr Baumgartner could not remain out of sorts for any length of time, and when he found by his plate a gift from his beloved Katrina of a long meerschaum pipe from the Fatherland, he smiled and said:

"Ven I smokes dat pipe den I forget dose plum puddings."

The pipe, indeed, performed a placatory mission, for as the first rings of its smoke curled upward, it became a veritable pipe of peace.

Later the baker and Katrina attended church together, and at the close of the service Herr Baumgartner left his daughter and wended his way to the bakery.

He tarried in front of the window occupied by the Christmas tree, whose gaily trimmed branches recalled to him so vividly the years when his little Fritz had furnished the joy and merriment of the holiday season. How the wee baby had bounded,--almost out of his mother's arms,--at sight of his first tree! Now the baker had only Katrina to cheer him, while he, in turn, was devoted to his daughter. His present errand to the bakery was to get some of her favorite Marzipan for their Christmas dinner, it having slipped his mind the night before in the distraction of the pudding calamity.

As he unlocked the door and entered the store, almost the first object to claim his attention was the last Christmas pudding "left standing alone; all its nut-brown companions labelled and gone." None of his clerks had dared to risk his position by meddling with that package.

Herr Baumgartner picked up the package, saying with a sigh, as he unwrapped it:

"Oh, well, you might as well go in the window and make a good show.

Maybe I can sell you for New Year's day."

While the baker was busy arranging his wares to make room for the pudding, a man came sauntering slowly up the street, pausing as he came to the window. He was clad in a rough suit which here and there showed the want of a prudent feminine st.i.tch. The first glance showed him to be simply an honest Hibernian laborer. Further scrutiny disclosed the fact that he was a man who had pa.s.sed through unusual experiences, for his bronzed face told of hardship and exposure. At each footfall he looked up imploringly at the pa.s.ser-by, only to turn away with a sigh of disappointment. As he looked at the good things in the baker's window, he said to himself:

"Ah, my poor Bridget and the little ones are likely fasting, when they ought to be having the fill of the table. And myself looking every place for them till the feet of me is wore off entirely. The cottage is empty, and the priest is a new one, and can't tell me nothing.

Mebbe they've gone to the old country, or mebbe they're all--" and here he shuddered and shut his lips tightly, for he would not admit the worst.

"Be jabers," his thoughts taking on a new turn, as he caught sight of a pudding being placed in the window before him, "if I could just find them, wouldn't I make the mouths of them water with that pudding. Like enough Patsy and Maggie and Norah and Katy ain't had a bite to eat of anything decent these six months. Heaven bless the spalpeens, how they would fall on that pudding! And me darling Biddy, bedad, ain't tasted one since she was living with the Church of Ireland minister in Limerick. And here I be, with money enough to buy them everything good, and not one out of them left to be buying for. Oh, well, I've no mind in me to eat myself, but I might as well step in and buy them two buns," and thereupon he entered the store.

The new customer did not look especially promising; still, the baker had known far shabbier individuals to invest a dollar, even, on a holiday, so he advanced with a smile and said:

[Ill.u.s.tration: "HIS GLANCE FELL UPON SOMETHING WHITE THAT LAY ON THE COUNTER"]

"Vat can I do for you, my friend?"

Pointing to the large, well-sugared buns, the man began, "Give me two--" when his glance fell upon something white that lay on the counter,--that ubiquitous card that had wrought so much mischief; the card bearing the name and address of Mrs. Michael M'Carty.

"Vat's the matter mit you?" said the baker impatiently, anxious for him to complete his order.

"Oh, my G.o.d, what's this?" cried the man, s.n.a.t.c.hing up the card.

"Dot? Vy, dat is one card to go mit one cake to the Widow M'Carty."

"Widdy, widdy, is it?" cried the man, angrily. "Sure the man that calls her that will answer to me for it. Why would she be a widdy, and me working and saving as a respectable husband should for her?"

"Wait awhile,--tell me,--was you Mr. Widow M'Carty?"

"Who would I be then, but Michael M'Carty? It's some of them blathering Barneys that's after calling me Bridget a widdy. Their lying tongues are all the time wagging with some scandal on a woman that hasn't a good strong man to protect her and the childers. But tell me quick, where are they, and are they alive, all alive?"

"I hear my Katrina speak about dem. But vere haf you been this long time? I t'ought you was drownded, already."

"Sure, 'twas meself thought so too, the whole of the night, and I wished I'd never stepped me foot on that old tub of a _Go-Between_, for it was the devil's own. When we got in Lake Superior, a storm came after us sudden, and we all went down together. I was in a hole of a place I had to slape in,--sure a dog couldn't close his eye in that corner,--and in the middle of the night, down they came hustling every one of us out. 'Say yer prayers,' says they, 'for we're a-goin' to the bottom, and the Lord help us. There's not one of yez will see yer darlints again.' The water was terrible boisterous, and grabbed everythin' off the decks. Faith, it wouldn't have been so bad if we'd a place left for the sole of our foot, but she was gone entirely. A board hit me and I hung on to it, and Pat Sweeny came up from down in the water and hung on with me, and the noises of that night I'll never be getting out of me head. When it come daylight we see the pilot-house a-floating, and we got on that, and Pat Sweeny waved his red handkerchief, and I tried to push us along with the board, to the land we see a long way off. In the middle of the morning, we spied a little boat coming to us, and may the blessed Virgin spare them two men in it as long as they live. It was a bare enough place we come to, but 'twas the land, and may I be struck dead if ever I take me two feet off it, for it's not the likes of me will set foot on one of them traps of the devil again."

"Ach, Gott, das war wundervoll, wundervoll," said the baker, "but tell me vy you stayed so long away?"

"And what would the likes of me be doing with everything gone, but to be getting some money to come with? There were some copper mines there, and Pat and me went digging in the mines, and the engineer dying sudden-like with a fall down the shaft, it was me was there to be getting his job. I wrote Bridget as soon as ever I thought she would be looking for me coming home, and told her I wouldn't be there till I could earn some money to come by land, and what with the fine engineer wages I was getting, she needn't be expecting me till the end of the season. When I came home with me pile of money to give them all a grand Christmas, I found 'em lost on me, and I've looked every place these three days, and never a sound of them have I heard till now, and G.o.d bless ye for the good words you're giving me this day.--Troth, now that I'm after finding them, I ought to be buying that grand pudding in the windy," and diving into his pocket, he produced a roll of bills.

"Nein, nein," said the baker, waving the money away, "dat pudding was not made to sell, it was made to gif away. You takes dat pudding to Mrs. M'Carty mit the gompliments of Herr Baumgartner."

With a hearty Merry Christmas, Michael M'Carty hurried away with the pudding in one hand, and the card in the other. Herr Baumgartner, taking his Marzipan, went home to tell Katrina the news, laughing over his Christmas joke, and chuckling to himself:

"Dat is vere dat pudding seems to belong!"

_Tenth Episode_

WIDOW M'CARTY'S ABODE CHRISTMAS DAY

Mrs. M'Carty rose early on Christmas morning, her mind bewildered by the fantastic visions of the night.

"Sure, them puddings was all a dream," she said to herself, as she kindled her fire, "and what's the good of such dreams as that, but just to make a body discouraged with the truth of the daytimes? But, any how, I'll look at where I dreamed I put them, and then my mind will be easy for me work."

More skeptical than hopeful, she went to the place where she had hidden them, and lo! to her great joy there they were,--twelve luscious, fruity puddings.

"And they're just bursting with richness, and begging to be ate," she said. "It'll be a grand day for the childer, and they shall have their fill, for it's many a long, hungry day they'll be seeing before another Christmas."

Breakfast was never a protracted function in the M'Carty household, but to Mrs. M'Carty, who was anxious to begin the festive preparations which the puddings had made possible, the scanty meal seemed unusually prolonged. Nothing but action could keep her from syndicating her secret before the proper moment, so while the repast was in progress, she hurried about doing, undoing, and doing over again, various household tasks. Finally Granny M'Carty, who had noticed Bridget's restlessness, exclaimed:

"Are ye crazy, then, Bridget M'Carty? It's the third time this day ye've spread me bed, and ye'll not lave a whole fither in me pillow with yer senseless beatin's."

"Well," said Mrs. M'Carty, ceasing from her labor, "if you're done with your breakfast, listen to me. Praise to the good Saint Antony, I found a ten-cent piece yesterday, I'd been saving that long I forgot I had it entirely, and with the help of Grandad's two lucky pennies he was never intending to spend,--may the saints spare him long to us,--I've a stick of candy apiece for the whole of you."

[Ill.u.s.tration: "'A STICK OF CANDY APIECE'"]

"Hoorooh!" shouted all the little McCartys in chorus.