There was a roast goose just up, and cissing away in the big pewter dish all amongst the gravy, with the stuffing a smelling that rich, it was enough to drive you mad.
Just as I slipped into the door, the waiter—red-nosed chap—with a dirty white wisp of a handkercher round his neck, looking like a seedy undertaker—the waiter says: “Two goose—apple sauce—and taters;” and the master sticks his fork into the buzzum, and makes a cut as sent the stuffing all out of a gush.
“Hold hard,” I says, “that’s mine;” and ketching hold of one leg, before he knew what I was up to, it was on my dish. “Now then, ladle on that gravy,” I says, “and let’s have the setrers;” and saying that, I dabs a sovrin down on the edge of the pewter.
I think they were going to send out for a policeman, but the sight of that little bit of metal settled it, and five minutes after I was carrying the change—not much of it neither—the goose under a cover, and the waiter following behind with a tray, with vegetables, sauce, and aside the great wedge of pudding, a pot of half-and-half.
When the waiter had gone out of the room, and the little ones were hooraying and tapping with their knives, I got to the top of the table, the wife went to the bottom, and I began to say grace, when our eyes met, she ran to me, and then for a good ten minutes she was a sobbing in my arms; while I—there; that’s private, and I think I’ve confessed enough.
There; I don’t care whose it was, or where it was, all I know is this, that there wasn’t such a dinner eaten or enjoyed anywhere that day throughout the length and breadth of our old country; and though sometimes it was hard to see where I stuck the fork, or cut with the knife, I was smiling all the time. As for the wife, she would keep breaking down till I shouted at her, when she went at it and helped me keep the young ones going; and at last of all I’d have taken a shilling for what was left of the goose, and whoever bought it wouldn’t have been the best off in the bargain.
The very next week I was took on the London, Highshare, and Ploughshare railway, and that through the gent who got me discharged from the Great Central, which happened this way.
The Christmas-Eve afore what I’ve told you was one of those yaller, smoky, foggy times, when trains are all later than they should be, even worse than might be expected at Christmas-time. The lamps were burning in the booking offices all day, while the steam hung like a cloud in the roof of the terminus. I was sitting in the engine-shed on our horse—steam-horse you know—waiting to run the mail down to the north, when Ben Davis, my stoker, says:
“There they goes again, ‘bang, bang,’ I wonder what it’s cost the company to-day in fog signals;” and then as I didn’t say nothing, he says, “Ah! this is just such a night as it was four years agone, when poor Tom Harris was cut up the night afore the pitch in,”—smash you know. “Poor Tom; he knowed it was a-comin’ to that, and he told me all about it; for I stoked him.”
Just then time was up, and all hot and hissing, I runs out to the switches, and comes back on to the down line, where we were coupled on to the train, when Ben goes on: “Poor chap; he’d been outer sorts for some time, and I do think he took more than he should; but one way and another, he was horribly low-spirited, and would quite upset you with the way he’d talk. The last night as I stoked him, he got telling me his reg’lar tale, about a run down he had, and one as he had never forgotten about, being on full swing in a terribly dark foggy night, he heard a whistle, and looking back he could see a train coming on at an awful rate just behind him, when of course he put on more steam. But that didn’t seem no good; for coming round the curve, he could see the train closing up fast; and at last, when half mad with fear, and ready to jump off, he saw that the train was on the up line, and the next minute it was alongside his; and there they two were racing abreast of each other; when he slackened, the other slackened; and when he did t’other, they did t’other. Same length train; same size engine; same lights; and fire door open like his; so that he could see the driver’s face; and he says, says he, ‘I nearly dropped; for it was me as was driving that ’tother train.’ On they goes together into the tunnel, and out they goes together. When he looked back, there was all the carriages lit up, and all just as if it was his own train; but whistling at the short stations when he did, and keeping an exactly same pace. It was like being in a cloud, the fog was so heavy; while the steam from both funnels mixed together.