Extremist!
She was now stirring the pudding with her left hand. The ingredients
had already been mingled indistinguishably in that rich, undulating
mass of tawniness which proclaims perfection. But Emily was determined
to give her left hand, not less than her right, what she called "a
doing." Emily was like that.
At mid-day, when her brother came home from the Works, she was still
at it.
"Brought those scruts with you?" she asked, without looking up.
"That's a fact," he said, dipping his hand into the sagging pocket of
his coat.
It is perhaps necessary to explain what scruts are. In the daily
output of every potbank there are a certain proportion of flawed
vessels. These are cast aside by the foreman, with a lordly gesture,
and in due course are hammered into fragments. These fragments, which
are put to various uses, are called scruts; and one of the uses they
are put to is a sentimental one. The dainty and luxurious Southerner
looks to find in his Christmas pudding a wedding-ring, a gold thimble,
a threepenny-bit, or the like. To such fal-lals the Five Towns would
say fie. A Christmas pudding in the Five Towns contains nothing but
suet, flour, lemon-peel, cinnamon, brandy, almonds, raisins--and
two or three scruts. There is a world of poetry, beauty, romance, in
scruts--though you have to have been brought up on them to appreciate
it.
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