“How should the poor things lay, shut up in a small coop? But as for the brandy, I will furnish that, and also some nice layer raisins. Currants, lemon-peel and citron we must do without, but ten eggs are a necessity, and the other things you have.”
“We has jes’ got ’leben eggs, an’ ef yo’ takes ten from ’leben, dar ain’t but bery few lef’. Where we gwine to get moah?”
“I neither know nor care,—we shall reach Vera Cruz sometime I devoutly hope,—but ten eggs go into this pudding. The question is, can you make it?”
“Can I make it?” repeated the cook, as if someone had asked him whether he could breathe. “Waal, sah, dere ain’t no dish knowed to man or debil dat dis chile can’t make, Mistah Warmer. Must I bile de sass seben hour too?”
“Certainly not. The sauce must not be made until to-morrow morning just before dinner, and is only to be boiled a few minutes. Can’t you read?”
“Me read? Well, I hope not, boss. I’s got all my receipts in my head. None o’ yo’ new-fangled notions fur dis niggah.”
I had to laugh, poor Warriner looked so disgusted. He just all gave up for a minute and thought the pudding was done for. Then he stamped his foot and said:
“I am not to be thwarted by trifles, and will weigh out everything myself. Then you can mix the articles together.”
Warriner fetched the raisins and brandy—if he’d been smart he wouldn’t have brought the brandy till the last minute—and between ’em they managed to mix up all the truck and get it in the mould. It was about the middle of the afternoon when they got it on to boil.
Next day was fine, and Warriner was up before we finished washing down the decks. Pratt and me were curious about the plum-pudding, for we’d never seen one, and wanted to know what sort of idees the passenger had about cookery. He kept telling all the morning what fine ones his wife used to make, and said he’d show us a thing or two. We sat down to dinner—our Thanksgiving dinner. The Honorable looked more self-satisfied and important than usual, I thought; Cap’n Pratt was real good-natured and told a lot of lies that Warriner swallowed like an albacore does a flying-fish; I had scraped my face with an old hoe of a razor and put on a necktie; and Cornwallis stood in the pantry door behind Pratt with a white cap over his wool, and looking as solemn as a judge. He did well that day, and we had a first rate dinner. There was vegetable soup; chicken, rice and curry with Ceylon chutney; potatoes; boiled onions; lime-juice; and each a cold whiskey punch. At last it was time for the dessert. Cornwallis took away the things, while Warriner told us how much we had to be thankful for, and how he and the cook had worked to make the pudding a success.