 said Tom, »this is capital. It gives us a new, and quite an uncommon
interest in the dinner. We put into a lottery for a beef-steak pudding, and it
is impossible to say what we may get. We may make some wonderful discovery,
perhaps, and produce such a dish as never was known before.«
    »I shall not be at all surprised if we do, Tom,« returned his sister, still
laughing merrily, »or if it should prove to be such a dish as we shall not feel
very anxious to produce again; but the meat must come out of the saucepan at
last, somehow or other, you know. We can't cook it into nothing at all: that's a
great comfort. So if you like to venture, I will.«
    »I have not the least doubt,« rejoined Tom, »that it will come out an
excellent pudding; or at all events, I am sure that I shall think it so. There
is naturally something so handy and brisk about you, Ruth, that if you said you
could make a bowl of faultless turtle soup, I should believe you.«
    And Tom was right. She was precisely that sort of person. Nobody ought to
have been able to resist her coaxing manner; and nobody had any business to try.
Yet she never seemed to know it was her manner at all. That was the best of it.
    Well! she washed up the breakfast cups, chatting away the whole time, and
telling Tom all sorts of anecdotes about the brass-and-copper founder; put
everything in its place; made the room as neat as herself; - you must not
suppose its shape was half as neat as hers though, or anything like it - and
brushed Tom's old hat round and round and round again, until it was as sleek as
Mr. Pecksniff. Then she discovered, all in a moment, that Tom's shirt-collar was
frayed at the edge; and flying up stairs for a needle and thread, came flying
down again with her thimble on, and set it right with wonderful expertness;
never once sticking the needle into his face, although she was humming his pet
tune from first to last, and beating time with the fingers of her left hand upon
his neckcloth. She had no sooner done this, than off she was again; and there
she stood once more, as brisk and busy as a bee, tying that compact little chin
of hers into an equally compact little bonnet: intent on
