Ruth laughed, and all that, but she made no objection; so it was
an engagement.
'If I had known it a little sooner,' said John, 'I would have tried
another pudding. Not in rivalry; but merely to exalt that famous one. I
wouldn't on any account have had it made with suet.'
'Why not?' asked Tom.
'Because that cookery-book advises suet,' said John Westlock; 'and ours
was made with flour and eggs.'
'Oh good gracious!' cried Tom. 'Ours was made with flour and eggs,
was it? Ha, ha, ha! A beefsteak pudding made with flour and eggs! Why
anybody knows better than that. I know better than that! Ha, ha, ha!'
It is unnecessary to say that Tom had been present at the making of the
pudding, and had been a devoted believer in it all through. But he was
so delighted to have this joke against his busy little sister and was
tickled to that degree at having found her out, that he stopped
in Temple Bar to laugh; and it was no more to Tom, that he was
anathematized and knocked about by the surly passengers, than it would
have been to a post; for he continued to exclaim with unabated good
humour, 'flour and eggs! A beefsteak pudding made with flour and eggs!'
until John Westlock and his sister fairly ran away from him, and left
him to have his laugh out by himself; which he had, and then came
dodging across the crowded street to them, with such sweet temper and
tenderness (it was quite a tender joke of Tom's) beaming in his face,
God bless it, that it might have purified the air, though Temple Bar had
been, as in the golden days gone by, embellished with a row of rotting
human heads.
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