To this James added the terror of their failing to see next day the great plum-pudding suddenly burst into flame in his hands.

At this, he threw up both hands and opened them so wide that the little ones had to look first at one of his hands and then at the other to make sure that he was not actually holding the dancing flames now.
When they had promised faithfully and with deep awe, crossing their little hearts with smudgy fingers, the butler entrusted them to some one to see to the due performance of their good intention, and he himself sought the cook, who, next to himself, was Livingstone's oldest servant.
She was at the moment, with plump arms akimbo on her stout waist, laying down the law of marriage to a group of merry servants as they sorted Christmas wreaths.
"Wait till you've known a man twenty years before you marry him, and then you'll never marry him," she said.

The point of her advice being that she was past forty and had never married.
The butler beckoned her out and confided to her his anxiety.
"He is not well," he said gloomily.

"I have not see him this a-way in ten years.

He is not well." The cook's cheery countenance changed.
"But you say he have had no dinner." Her excessive grammar was a reassurance.