So as I had got a nurse, and she was coming in shortly, and as my poor little dear pet must be weaned some time or other, I thought it would be better to get that troublesome job over before the new maid entered my service. For I do think it is a perfect cruelty to break a poor thing’s rest every night, for a week at least, with the care of a dear little infant, that of course she doesn’t care a fig about. Besides, I didn’t like to entrust the arduous duty of weaning to a stranger, and my own ever dear mother had made me promise that I would let her have the pleasure of weaning my little chicken. So I thought it would be better, under the circumstances, to make friends with her again, and just get her to take charge of my beautiful little ducks-o’-diamonds for a week or so, especially, too, as Easter Sunday was just coming round; and since I have always made it a religious duty to have a nice little quarter of lamb and a delicious gooseberry pudding with the wood in it, on that day, I felt convinced I should never forgive myself if I wasn’t able to touch a mouthful of the pudding, through Mr. Edward’s taking a mean advantage of my nursing, as I well knew he would only be too glad to do. Besides, to tell the truth, if there’s one thing that I’m more partial to than another, it is to gooseberries with the wood in them, for I do think that, with an egg beaten up in them, just to take the roughness off, you have such an exquisite flavour of the tree in the fruit, that really I should like any lady reader of mine who may be unacquainted with that delicacy of the season, just to try it, (though I can hardly bring myself to believe, that out of the thirty-nine thousand readers I have every month, there can be one among the number who has been wicked heathen enough to have allowed every Easter Sunday of her life to have gone by, without having so much as once partaken of a gooseberry pudding with the wood in it--if so, I blush for her.) Oh! with plenty of sugar, it is delicious; indeed, I may say, heavenly.