Then he turned on his heel and walked back as he had come.
[THE FIRST PLUM PUDDING]
It was drawing near Christmas and we were gathered one night in the Forge, joking and laughing and smoking, and discussing various matters of no importance with Ned M'Grane, the jovial and kindly blacksmith of Balnagore. After a time the talk naturally turned on the great festival that was near at hand, and all the old and new observances that came with it as sure as sparks came when the smith's sledge hit the heated steel or iron on the anvil. And Ned, who was in his best form, was willing to talk in his own humorous fashion about everything connected with Christmas, from three-foot high candles to penny bugles, and from plum puddings to holly and ivy.
"I wonder who invented the sort of a Christmas we have nowadays?" said Ned, as he lighted his pipe and laid the sledge on the anvil. "I'm told that in the big towns an' the cities they start buyin' Christmas presents in the middle o' summer, so as to get them cheap, an' that some people go near losin' their mind tryin' to think o' what to give this person an' that an' strivin' to figure out what they're goin' to get themselves from their friends. Long ago the people thought it good enough to give an' get a Christmas greetin' at the fair or market or comin' home from Mass or goin' the road, but now you have to go to the town or send away to Dublin or London or somewhere for a bit of a card with a green robin redbreast on it, an' holly berries, an' about five feet o' snow, an' you must put it in a letter an' stamp it an' post it to the man or woman that lives next door to you, an' that you'll be talkin' to five minutes before an' after he gets it. An' he must do the same thing for you, an' if his card looks cheaper than yours, although you're after sendin' him a printed verse about good-will an' eternal friendship an' charity an' peace, you won't stop talkin' about his meanness for a month o' Sundays. I don't know what Christmas is comin' to at all."
"I wonder who thought o' the first plum puddin'," said Joe Clinton, as he looked meditatively into the big turf fire that Ned kept burning in a huge open grate for our special benefit. "Whoever he was, he didn't think he'd sicken so many people before the end o' the world. Some o' the things they call plum puddin's are a holy terror. An' the fun of it is that they never put as much as the skin of a plum in one o' them."
"Well, Joe," answered Ned, "I don't know who took out the plum puddin' patent first in the world, but I know who was the first who tried to make one in Balnagore, an' I know what happened to it, an' how often it was laughed over for many a long day after." And Ned chuckled softly as he coaxed mighty clouds of blue and white smoke from his veteran pipe. We saw at once that there was a story behind his remark, for Ned's brain was a storehouse for yarns, and our hearts thumped with excitement as we waited breathlessly for Joe Clinton to say the word that would set Ned's tongue working.
"Who was that, Ned—I never heard of it," said Joe at last.