# A Christmas Carol (B1 edition)

*Charles Dickens*

## Stave One: Marley's Ghost

Marley was dead. There is no doubt about that. The clergyman, the clerk, the undertaker and the chief mourner all signed the record of his burial. Scrooge signed it too. And Scrooge's name was good on 'Change for anything he chose to put his hand to. Old Marley was as dead as a door-nail.

Mind! I don't mean that I know, from my own knowledge, what is so dead about a door-nail. I might have thought that a coffin-nail was the deadest piece of iron in the trade. But the old saying comes from the wisdom of our ancestors. My unholy hands will not change it, or the country is finished. So let me say it again, firmly: Marley was as dead as a door-nail.

Did Scrooge know he was dead? Of course he did. How could he not? Scrooge and he had been partners for I don't know how many years. Scrooge was the only person who carried out Marley's will and handled his property. He was Marley's only heir, his only friend and his only mourner. Even Scrooge was not so terribly upset by the sad event. On the very day of the funeral he was still an excellent man of business, and he marked the day with a very good bargain.

Talking about Marley's funeral brings me back to the point where I started. There is no doubt that Marley was dead. We must understand this clearly, or nothing wonderful can come from the story I am going to tell. Suppose we were not completely sure that Hamlet's Father died before the play began. Then it would be nothing special that he takes a walk at night, in an east wind, on the walls of his own castle. It would be no more special than any other middle-aged gentleman who foolishly goes out after dark in a windy place, Saint Paul's Churchyard for example, just to astonish his son's weak mind.

Scrooge never painted out Old Marley's name. Years later it still stood above the warehouse door: Scrooge and Marley. The firm was known as Scrooge and Marley. Sometimes people new to the business called Scrooge "Scrooge", and sometimes they called him "Marley". He answered to both names. It was all the same to him.

Oh, but he was a tight-fisted man in business, Scrooge! He squeezed, twisted, grabbed, scraped and clutched. He was a greedy old sinner! He was hard and sharp as flint, a stone that no steel had ever made give a generous spark. He was secret, shut in and lonely as an oyster. The cold inside him froze his old face. It nipped his pointed nose and made his cheeks shrivel and his walk stiff. It made his eyes red and his thin lips blue. It spoke sharply in his harsh voice. White frost covered his head, his eyebrows and his wiry chin. He always carried his own low temperature with him. He kept his office icy even in the hottest days of summer, and he did not warm it by one degree at Christmas.

Heat and cold outside had little effect on Scrooge. No warmth could warm him, and no winter weather could chill him. No wind was bitterer than he was. No falling snow was more set on its purpose. No pouring rain was less open to begging. Bad weather did not know how to get the better of him. The heaviest rain, snow, hail and sleet could be proud of only one advantage over him. They often "came down" handsomely, and Scrooge never did.

Nobody ever stopped him in the street to say, with a glad face, "My dear Scrooge, how are you? When will you come to see me?" No beggars begged him for a small coin. No children asked him what time it was. Not once in all his life did any man or woman ask Scrooge the way to some place. Even the dogs of blind men seemed to know him. When they saw him coming, they pulled their owners into doorways and up side-streets. Then they wagged their tails as if to say, "No eye at all is better than an evil eye, dark master!"

But what did Scrooge care? It was exactly what he liked. To push his way along the crowded paths of life, warning all human sympathy to keep away, was pure pleasure to Scrooge.

Once upon a time, on Christmas Eve, of all the good days of the year, old Scrooge sat busy in his counting-house. The weather was cold, bleak and biting, and foggy too. He could hear the people in the court outside. They went up and down, wheezing, beating their hands against their chests and stamping their feet on the stones to warm them. The city clocks had only just struck three, but it was already quite dark. It had not been light all day. Candles were burning in the windows of the nearby offices, like red smears on the thick brown air. The fog poured in at every crack and keyhole. It was so thick outside that the houses across the court looked like ghosts, even though the court was very narrow. The dirty cloud came drooping down and hid everything. Watching it, one might have thought that Nature lived close by and was making beer in huge amounts.

The door of Scrooge's counting-house stood open so that he could keep his eye on his clerk. The clerk sat in a dismal little cell beyond, a kind of tank, copying letters. Scrooge had a very small fire. But the clerk's fire was so much smaller that it looked like one coal. The clerk could not add more coal, because Scrooge kept the coal-box in his own room. Whenever the clerk came in with the shovel, his master warned him that they would have to part. So the clerk put on his white comforter and tried to warm himself at the candle. He was not a man with a strong imagination, and he failed.

"A merry Christmas, uncle! God save you!" cried a cheerful voice. It was the voice of Scrooge's nephew. He came so quickly that this was the first sign Scrooge had of his coming.

"Bah!" said Scrooge. "Humbug!"

The nephew had heated himself so much by walking fast in the fog and frost that he was all aglow. His face was red and handsome, his eyes sparkled, and his breath made smoke in the air.

"Christmas a humbug, uncle!" said Scrooge's nephew. "You don't mean that, I am sure."

"I do," said Scrooge. "Merry Christmas! What right have you to be merry? What reason have you to be merry? You're poor enough."

"Come, then," the nephew answered gaily. "What right have you to be dismal? What reason have you to be gloomy? You're rich enough."

Scrooge had no better answer ready at that moment. So he said "Bah!" again, and then added "Humbug."

"Don't be cross, uncle!" said the nephew.

"What else can I be," replied the uncle, "when I live in such a world of fools as this? Merry Christmas! Away with merry Christmas! What is Christmas time to you? It is a time for paying bills when you have no money. It is a time for finding yourself a year older, but not an hour richer. It is a time for balancing your books and finding every item in them, for a whole twelve months, set against you. If I could have my way," said Scrooge angrily, "every idiot who goes about with 'Merry Christmas' on his lips would be boiled in his own pudding. He would be buried with a stake of holly through his heart. He should!"

"Uncle!" pleaded the nephew.

"Nephew!" the uncle answered sternly. "Keep Christmas in your own way, and let me keep it in mine."

"Keep it!" repeated Scrooge's nephew. "But you don't keep it."

"Then let me leave it alone," said Scrooge. "Much good may it do you! Much good it has ever done you!"

"There are many things that could have done me good, and I have not profited from them, I dare say," the nephew answered. "Christmas is one of them. But I have always thought of Christmas time, when it comes round, as a good time. I do not only mean the respect we owe to its holy name and origin, if anything about Christmas can be separate from that. I mean that it is a kind, forgiving, charitable, pleasant time. It is the only time I know in the long year when men and women seem to agree to open their shut-up hearts freely. They think of people below them as if they were really fellow-passengers to the grave, and not another race of creatures on other journeys. And so, uncle, it has never put a scrap of gold or silver in my pocket. But I believe that it *has* done me good, and *will* do me good. And I say, God bless it!"

The clerk in the Tank clapped his hands before he could stop himself. He saw at once that he should not have done it. He poked the fire and put out the last weak spark for ever.

"Let me hear another sound from *you*," said Scrooge, "and you'll keep your Christmas by losing your job! You're quite a powerful speaker, sir," he added, turning to his nephew. "I wonder you don't go into Parliament."

"Don't be angry, uncle. Come! Dine with us tomorrow."

Scrooge said that he would see him—yes, indeed he did. He went right to the end of the expression. He said that he would see his nephew in a terrible place before that happened.

"But why?" cried Scrooge's nephew. "Why?"

"Why did you get married?" said Scrooge.

"Because I fell in love."

"Because you fell in love!" growled Scrooge, as if that were the one thing in the world more ridiculous than a merry Christmas. "Good afternoon!"

"No, uncle, but you never came to see me before that happened. Why give it as a reason for not coming now?"

"Good afternoon," said Scrooge.

"I want nothing from you. I ask nothing of you. Why can we not be friends?"

"Good afternoon," said Scrooge.

"I am sorry, with all my heart, that you are so stubborn. We have never had any quarrel that I took part in. But I have made this try in honour of Christmas, and I will keep my Christmas mood to the last. So a Merry Christmas, uncle!"

"Good afternoon!" said Scrooge.

"And a Happy New Year!"

"Good afternoon!" said Scrooge.

His nephew left the room without an angry word, all the same. He stopped at the outer door to wish the clerk the greetings of the season. The clerk was cold, but he was warmer than Scrooge, and he returned the greetings warmly.

"There's another fellow," muttered Scrooge, who had overheard him. "My clerk, with fifteen shillings a week, and a wife and family, talking about a merry Christmas. I'll go off to Bedlam."

This madman, in letting Scrooge's nephew out, had let two other people in. They were portly gentlemen, pleasant to look at. Now they stood in Scrooge's office with their hats off. They had books and papers in their hands, and they bowed to him.

"Scrooge and Marley's, I believe," said one of the gentlemen, looking at his list. "Do I have the pleasure of speaking to Mr. Scrooge, or Mr. Marley?"

"Mr. Marley has been dead these seven years," Scrooge replied. "He died seven years ago, this very night."

"We have no doubt that his generosity is well shown by his surviving partner," said the gentleman, handing over his papers.

It certainly was, for the two men had been two of a kind. At the ominous word "generosity", Scrooge frowned, shook his head and handed the papers back.

"At this festive season of the year, Mr. Scrooge," said the gentleman, picking up a pen, "we should do something more than usual for the Poor, who have nothing. They suffer greatly at this time. Many thousands do not have the common necessaries of life. Hundreds of thousands do not have simple comforts, sir."

"Are there no prisons?" asked Scrooge.

"Plenty of prisons," said the gentleman, putting down the pen again.

"And the Union workhouses?" demanded Scrooge. "Are they still working?"

"They are. Still," the gentleman answered, "I wish I could say they were not."

"The Treadmill and the Poor Law are in full force, then?" said Scrooge.

"Both very busy, sir."

"Oh! I was afraid, from what you said at first, that something had happened to stop them in their useful work," said Scrooge. "I'm very glad to hear it."

"We think that they hardly give Christian cheer of mind or body to the great crowd of the poor," the gentleman went on. "So a few of us are trying to raise a fund. We want to buy the Poor some meat and drink, and some means of warmth. We choose this time because it is the time, more than any other, when Want is keenly felt and Abundance rejoices. What shall I put you down for?"

"Nothing!" Scrooge replied.

"You wish to be anonymous?"

"I wish to be left alone," said Scrooge. "Since you ask me what I wish, gentlemen, that is my answer. I don't make merry at Christmas myself, and I can't afford to make idle people merry. I help to pay for the places I have mentioned. They cost enough. Those who are badly off must go there."

"Many can't go there. And many would rather die."

"If they would rather die," said Scrooge, "they had better do it, and decrease the surplus population. Besides—excuse me—I don't know that."

"But you might know it," said the gentleman.

"It's not my business," Scrooge returned. "It's enough for a man to understand his own business, and not to interfere with other people's. Mine keeps me busy all the time. Good afternoon, gentlemen!"

Seeing clearly that it was useless to push their point, the gentlemen went away. Scrooge went back to his work with a better opinion of himself. He was in a more joking mood than usual.

Meanwhile the fog and darkness grew so thick that people ran about with flaming torches. They offered to walk in front of the horses of carriages and lead them on their way. The ancient tower of a church became invisible. Its gruff old bell always peeped slyly down at Scrooge from a window in the wall. Now it struck the hours and quarters up in the clouds. A trembling sound followed each time, as if its teeth were chattering in its frozen head up there. The cold became intense. In the main street, at the corner of the court, some labourers were repairing the gas-pipes. They had lit a great fire in a brazier. A group of ragged men and boys stood around it, warming their hands and blinking happily at the blaze. The water-plug was left alone, and its overflowing water froze sullenly into bitter, unfriendly ice. The shops were bright. Holly sprigs and berries crackled in the heat of the lamps in the windows, and their light made pale faces red as people passed. The poulterers' and grocers' shops became a splendid joke, a glorious show. It was almost impossible to believe that dull things like buying and selling had anything to do with it. The Lord Mayor, in the mighty Mansion House, gave orders to his fifty cooks and butlers to keep Christmas as a Lord Mayor's household should. And even the little tailor stirred tomorrow's pudding in his attic. The Lord Mayor had fined him five shillings on the Monday before, for being drunk and violent in the streets. His thin wife and the baby went out to buy the beef.

Foggier yet, and colder. Piercing, searching, biting cold. If the good Saint Dunstan had only nipped the Evil Spirit's nose with a touch of such weather, instead of using his usual tools, then the Devil would really have roared. The owner of one small young nose, which the hungry cold was gnawing like a dog gnaws a bone, bent down at Scrooge's keyhole. He wanted to give Scrooge a Christmas carol, and he began to sing:

"God bless you, merry gentleman! May nothing you dismay!"

But at the first sound of those words, Scrooge seized the ruler with such force that the singer ran away in terror. He left the keyhole to the fog and to an even friendlier frost.

At last the hour for closing the counting-house arrived. Scrooge got down from his stool unwillingly, and so silently told the waiting clerk in the Tank that work was over. The clerk at once put out his candle and put on his hat.

"You'll want all day tomorrow, I suppose?" said Scrooge.

"If quite convenient, sir."

"It's not convenient," said Scrooge, "and it's not fair. If I took half-a-crown from your pay for it, you would think yourself badly treated, I'm sure."

The clerk smiled faintly.

"And yet," said Scrooge, "you don't think *I* am badly treated, when I pay a day's wages for no work."

The clerk said that it was only once a year.

"A poor excuse for picking a man's pocket every twenty-fifth of December!" said Scrooge, buttoning his great-coat up to his chin. "But I suppose you must have the whole day. Be here all the earlier next morning."

The clerk promised that he would. Scrooge walked out with a growl. The office was closed in a moment. The clerk had the long ends of his white comforter hanging below his waist, for he had no great-coat. He went down a slide on Cornhill twenty times, at the end of a line of boys, because it was Christmas Eve. Then he ran home to Camden Town as fast as he could, to play blindman's-buff.

Scrooge ate his gloomy dinner at his usual gloomy tavern. He read all the newspapers and passed the rest of the evening with his banker's-book. Then he went home to bed. He lived in rooms which had once belonged to his dead partner. They were a gloomy set of rooms in a dark pile of building at the back of a yard. The building had so little business to be there that one could not help imagining something. It must have run there when it was a young house, playing hide-and-seek with other houses, and then forgotten the way out. It was old enough and dreary enough now. Nobody lived in it but Scrooge, and the other rooms were all let as offices. The yard was so dark that even Scrooge, who knew every stone of it, had to feel his way with his hands. The fog and frost hung so thickly about the old black gateway of the house that it seemed as if the weather's own spirit sat on the doorstep in sad thought.

Now, it is a fact that there was nothing special about the knocker on the door, except that it was very large. It is also a fact that Scrooge had seen it every night and morning during all the time he lived there. It is also a fact that Scrooge had as little imagination as any man in the city of London. That included, and this is a bold thing to say, the city council, the aldermen and the members of the trade guilds. Remember too that Scrooge had not given one thought to Marley since that afternoon, when he spoke of his partner, dead seven years. And now let any man explain to me, if he can, how it happened that Scrooge had his key in the lock of the door. He saw in the knocker, without any change happening between, not a knocker, but Marley's face.

Marley's face. It was not hidden in deep shadow like the other things in the yard. A dismal light shone around it, like the light from a bad lobster in a dark cellar. It was not angry or fierce. It looked at Scrooge as Marley used to look, with ghostly glasses pushed up on its ghostly forehead. The hair was strangely stirred, as if by breath or hot air. The eyes were wide open, but they did not move at all. This and its pale, bluish colour made the face horrible. But the horror seemed to come in spite of the face, beyond its control. It did not seem to be part of the face's own expression.

As Scrooge stared at this strange sight, it was a knocker again.

It would be untrue to say that he was not startled. It would be untrue to say that his blood did not feel a terrible feeling. He had not known that feeling since he was a baby. But he put his hand on the key he had let go of, turned it firmly, walked in and lit his candle.

He did stop for a moment, unsure, before he shut the door. And he did look carefully behind it first. He half expected to be terrified by the sight of Marley's pigtail sticking out into the hall. But there was nothing on the back of the door except the screws and nuts that held the knocker on. So he said, "Pooh, pooh!" and shut the door with a bang.

The sound went through the house like thunder. Every room above, and every barrel in the wine-merchant's cellars below, seemed to have its own separate peal of echoes. Scrooge was not a man to be frightened by echoes. He fastened the door, walked across the hall and went up the stairs. He went slowly, trimming his candle as he went.

You may talk loosely about driving a coach with six horses up a fine old staircase, or through a badly written new law. But I mean to say that you could have got a hearse up that staircase. You could have turned it sideways, with its front end toward the wall and its door toward the banisters. And you could have done it easily. There was plenty of width for that, and room to spare. Perhaps this is why Scrooge thought he saw a hearse moving on ahead of him in the gloom. Half a dozen street gas-lamps would not have lit the entry very well. So you can guess that it was pretty dark with Scrooge's one small candle.

Up Scrooge went, not caring at all about that. Darkness is cheap, and Scrooge liked it. But before he shut his heavy door, he walked through his rooms to check that all was right. He remembered the face just enough to want to do that.

Sitting-room, bedroom, store-room. All as they should be. Nobody under the table, nobody under the sofa. A small fire in the fireplace. Spoon and basin ready. And the little saucepan of gruel on the hob, because Scrooge had a cold in his head. Nobody under the bed. Nobody in the cupboard. Nobody in his dressing-gown, which was hanging against the wall in a suspicious attitude. The store-room was as usual: an old fire-guard, old shoes, two fish-baskets, a washing-stand with three legs, and a poker.

Quite satisfied, he closed his door and locked himself in. He double-locked himself in, which was not his habit. Safe against surprise, he took off his neckcloth. He put on his dressing-gown, his slippers and his nightcap. Then he sat down before the fire to eat his gruel.

It was a very low fire indeed, nothing on such a bitter night. He had to sit close to it and brood over it. Only then could he get the smallest feeling of warmth from such a handful of fuel. The fireplace was an old one, built long ago by some Dutch merchant. It was covered all round with quaint Dutch tiles, painted with pictures from the Bible. There were Cains and Abels, and Pharaoh's daughters. There were Queens of Sheba, and angels coming down through the air on clouds like feather-beds. There were Abrahams and Belshazzars, and Apostles putting out to sea in butter-boats. There were hundreds of figures to catch his thoughts. And yet that face of Marley, seven years dead, came like the ancient Prophet's rod and swallowed them all. Suppose each smooth tile had been blank at first. Suppose it could make a picture from the broken pieces of his thoughts. Then there would have been a copy of old Marley's head on every one.

"Humbug!" said Scrooge, and walked across the room.

After several turns, he sat down again. He threw his head back in the chair, and his glance happened to fall on a bell. It was a disused bell, hanging in the room. For some purpose now forgotten, it was joined to a room on the top floor of the building. Scrooge looked at it with great astonishment and a strange dread that he could not explain. He saw the bell begin to swing. It swung so softly at first that it hardly made a sound. But soon it rang out loudly, and so did every bell in the house.

This might have lasted half a minute or a minute, but it seemed an hour. The bells stopped as they had begun, all together. A clanking noise followed, deep down below. It sounded as if someone were dragging a heavy chain over the barrels in the wine-merchant's cellar. Then Scrooge remembered that ghosts in haunted houses were said to drag chains.

The cellar-door flew open with a booming sound. Then he heard the noise much louder, on the floors below. Then it came up the stairs. Then it came straight towards his door.

"It's humbug still!" said Scrooge. "I won't believe it."

His colour changed, though. Without a pause, the thing came on through the heavy door and entered the room before his eyes. As it came in, the dying flame leaped up, as though it cried, "I know him! It is Marley's Ghost!" and then it fell again.

The same face: the very same. Marley was in his pigtail, his usual waistcoat, his tights and his boots. The tassels on the boots were bristling, like his pigtail, his coat-skirts and the hair on his head. The chain he dragged was fastened around his middle. It was long, and it wound about him like a tail. Scrooge looked at it closely. It was made of cash-boxes, keys, padlocks, account books, papers about land and houses, and heavy purses made of steel. The ghost's body was transparent. Scrooge looked at him through his waistcoat and could see the two buttons on the back of his coat.

Scrooge had often heard it said that Marley had no bowels, but he had never believed it until now.

No, nor did he believe it even now. He looked right through the phantom and saw it standing before him. He felt the chilling power of its death-cold eyes. He saw the very cloth of the folded kerchief tied around its head and chin, which he had not noticed before. Still he doubted, and he fought against his senses.

"Well, now!" said Scrooge, as sharp and cold as ever. "What do you want with me?"

"Much!" It was Marley's voice, no doubt about it.

"Who are you?"

"Ask me who I *was*."

"Who *were* you, then?" said Scrooge, raising his voice. "You're particular, for a shade." He was going to say "to a shade", but he used this instead, as more suitable.

"In life I was your partner, Jacob Marley."

"Can you—can you sit down?" asked Scrooge, looking at him doubtfully.

"I can."

"Do it, then."

Scrooge asked the question because he did not know whether a ghost so transparent could take a chair. He felt that if it could not, he might have to give an embarrassing explanation. But the ghost sat down on the opposite side of the fireplace, as if he were quite used to it.

"You don't believe in me," observed the Ghost.

"I don't," said Scrooge.

"What proof of my reality would you want, besides what your senses tell you?"

"I don't know," said Scrooge.

"Why do you doubt your senses?"

"Because," said Scrooge, "a little thing affects them. A slight upset of the stomach makes them cheats. You may be an undigested bit of beef, a blot of mustard, a crumb of cheese, or a piece of underdone potato. There's more of gravy than of grave about you, whatever you are!"

Scrooge did not often make jokes, and he did not feel funny in his heart then. The truth is that he tried to be clever. He wanted to take his own mind off the ghost and keep down his terror. The spectre's voice went right through him, to the middle of his bones.

Scrooge felt that it would be terrible to sit in silence, even for a moment, and stare at those fixed, glassy eyes. There was also something very awful in the fact that the spectre had its own hellish air around it. Scrooge could not feel it himself, but it was clearly so. The Ghost sat perfectly still. Yet its hair, its skirts and its tassels still moved, as if by the hot steam from an oven.

"You see this toothpick?" said Scrooge, quickly returning to the attack, for the reason just given. He wished, even for a second, to turn the vision's stony gaze away from himself.

"I do," replied the Ghost.

"You are not looking at it," said Scrooge.

"But I see it," said the Ghost, "all the same."

"Well!" returned Scrooge. "I have only to swallow this, and for the rest of my days I will be tormented by a crowd of goblins, all made by me. Humbug, I tell you! Humbug!"

At this the spirit let out a frightful cry. It shook its chain with such a dismal, terrible noise that Scrooge held tight to his chair to stop himself from fainting. But his horror was much greater when the phantom took off the bandage around its head, as if it were too warm to wear indoors. Its lower jaw dropped down onto its chest!

Scrooge fell on his knees and clasped his hands before his face.

"Mercy!" he said. "Dreadful apparition, why do you trouble me?"

"Man of the worldly mind!" replied the Ghost. "Do you believe in me or not?"

"I do," said Scrooge. "I must. But why do spirits walk the earth, and why do they come to me?"

"It is required of every man," the Ghost answered, "that the spirit within him should walk among other people and travel far and wide. If that spirit does not go out in life, it is condemned to do so after death. It is doomed to wander through the world—oh, woe is me!—and to witness what it cannot share. It might have shared it on earth and turned it to happiness!"

Again the spectre cried out, shook its chain and wrung its shadowy hands.

"You are chained," said Scrooge, trembling. "Tell me why."

"I wear the chain I made in life," replied the Ghost. "I made it link by link and yard by yard. I put it on of my own free will, and of my own free will I wore it. Is its pattern strange to *you*?"

Scrooge trembled more and more.

"Or would you like to know," the Ghost went on, "the weight and length of the strong coil you carry yourself? It was just as heavy and as long as this one, seven Christmas Eves ago. You have worked on it since. It is a heavy chain!"

Scrooge glanced about him on the floor. He expected to find himself surrounded by fifty or sixty fathoms of iron cable. But he could see nothing.

"Jacob," he said, begging. "Old Jacob Marley, tell me more. Speak comfort to me, Jacob!"

"I have none to give," the Ghost replied. "Comfort comes from other regions, Ebenezer Scrooge. Other messengers bring it, to other kinds of men. Nor can I tell you what I would like to. Only a very little more is allowed to me. I cannot rest, I cannot stay, I cannot linger anywhere. My spirit never walked beyond our counting-house—mark me!—in life my spirit never went beyond the narrow limits of our money-changing hole. And weary journeys lie before me!"

It was a habit with Scrooge, whenever he became thoughtful, to put his hands in his trouser pockets. He thought about what the Ghost had said, and he did so now. But he did not lift his eyes or get up from his knees.

"You must have been very slow about it, Jacob," Scrooge said, in a business-like way, though with humility and respect.

"Slow!" the Ghost repeated.

"Seven years dead," said Scrooge thoughtfully. "And travelling all the time!"

"The whole time," said the Ghost. "No rest, no peace. The endless torture of remorse."

"You travel fast?" said Scrooge.

"On the wings of the wind," replied the Ghost.

"You might have covered a great deal of ground in seven years," said Scrooge.

Hearing this, the Ghost cried out again. It clanked its chain so horribly in the dead silence of the night that the Ward would have been right to charge it with making a nuisance.

"Oh! Prisoner, tied and doubly chained," cried the phantom, "not to know this! Immortal creatures must work for ages without rest before the earth's good is all brought out. Not to know that any Christian spirit working kindly in its little sphere will find its mortal life too short. Its chances to be useful are too great for one life. Not to know that no amount of regret can make up for one life's opportunity misused! Yet such was I! Oh, such was I!"

"But you were always a good man of business, Jacob," said Scrooge weakly. He was now beginning to think about himself.

"Business!" cried the Ghost, wringing its hands again. "Mankind was my business. The common welfare was my business. Charity, mercy, patience and kindness were all my business. The dealings of my trade were only a drop of water in the great ocean of my business!"

It held up its chain at arm's length, as if the chain were the cause of all its useless grief. Then it flung the chain heavily onto the ground again.

"At this time of the rolling year," the spectre said, "I suffer most. Why did I walk through crowds of other people with my eyes turned down? Why did I never raise them to that blessed Star which led the Wise Men to a poor home? Were there no poor homes to which its light would have led *me*!"

Scrooge was very dismayed to hear the spectre go on like this, and he began to shake badly.

"Hear me!" cried the Ghost. "My time is nearly gone."

"I will," said Scrooge. "But don't be hard on me! Don't use such flowery words, Jacob! Please!"

"How it is that I appear before you in a shape you can see, I may not tell. I have sat beside you, invisible, many and many a day."

It was not a pleasant idea. Scrooge shivered and wiped the sweat from his forehead.

"That is no small part of my penance," the Ghost went on. "I am here tonight to warn you. You still have a chance and hope of escaping my fate. It is a chance and hope that I have won for you, Ebenezer."

"You were always a good friend to me," said Scrooge. "Thank you!"

"You will be haunted," the Ghost went on, "by Three Spirits."

Scrooge's face fell almost as low as the Ghost's had done.

"Is that the chance and hope you mentioned, Jacob?" he asked, in a shaking voice.

"It is."

"I—I think I'd rather not," said Scrooge.

"Without their visits," said the Ghost, "you cannot hope to avoid the path I walk. Expect the first tomorrow, when the bell strikes One."

"Couldn't I take them all at once, and have it over, Jacob?" Scrooge suggested.

"Expect the second on the next night at the same hour. Expect the third on the next night, when the last stroke of Twelve has stopped sounding. Look to see me no more. And, for your own sake, remember what has passed between us!"

When it had said these words, the spectre took its wrapper from the table and bound it round its head, as before. Scrooge knew this by the sharp sound its teeth made when the bandage brought the jaws together. He dared to raise his eyes again. His supernatural visitor was standing upright in front of him, with its chain wound over and around its arm.

The apparition walked backward away from him. At every step it took, the window raised itself a little. When the spectre reached the window, it was wide open.

It beckoned Scrooge to come near, and he did. When they were two paces apart, Marley's Ghost held up its hand to warn him to come no nearer. Scrooge stopped.

He stopped not so much from obedience as from surprise and fear. As the hand rose, he became aware of confused noises in the air. They were broken sounds of sorrow and regret, wailings of terrible sadness and self-blame. The spectre listened for a moment and then joined in the mournful song. It floated out into the bleak, dark night.

Scrooge followed to the window, desperate with curiosity. He looked out.

The air was full of phantoms, wandering here and there in restless haste and moaning as they went. Every one of them wore chains like Marley's Ghost. A few were linked together (they might have been guilty governments). None were free. Many had been known personally to Scrooge in their lives. He had been quite familiar with one old ghost in a white waistcoat, with a monstrous iron safe fixed to its ankle. It cried pitifully because it could not help a wretched woman with a baby, whom it saw below on a door-step. The misery of them all was clear. They wanted to interfere, for good, in human matters, and they had lost the power for ever.

Whether these creatures faded into mist, or mist wrapped them up, he could not tell. But they and their spirit voices faded together. And the night became as it had been when he walked home.

Scrooge closed the window and examined the door by which the Ghost had entered. It was double-locked, as he had locked it with his own hands, and the bolts were untouched. He tried to say "Humbug!" but stopped at the first syllable. He was very tired. It might have been the strong feelings he had gone through, or the work of the day, or his glimpse of the Invisible World. It might have been the dull conversation of the Ghost, or the late hour. He needed rest. He went straight to bed without undressing and fell asleep at once.

### Glossary

- **'Change**: short for the Exchange, the place where merchants met to do business
- **door-nail**: a large nail in a door; "as dead as a door-nail" means completely dead
- **flint**: a very hard grey stone that makes sparks when you hit it with steel
- **"came down" handsomely**: fell heavily; also a joke, because "to come down" can mean to pay money generously
- **counting-house**: an old word for an office where accounts are kept and money is counted
- **comforter**: a long woollen scarf
- **brazier**: a metal basket that holds a fire, used for warmth outdoors
- **Bedlam**: a hospital for mad people; "I'll go off to Bedlam" means "I'll go mad"
- **portly**: fat in a pleasant, important way
- **Union workhouses**: places where very poor people lived and did hard work for food and a bed
- **Treadmill**: a prison machine that prisoners had to walk on as punishment
- **Saint Dunstan**: a saint in an old story who held the Devil's nose with hot tongs
- **gruel**: a thin, plain soup made from oats; poor people's food
- **hob**: the flat metal shelf beside a fire where a pot can be kept warm
- **hearse**: a long vehicle that carries a dead person to the grave
- **butter-boats**: small dishes for melted butter or sauce; here the Apostles' boats look tiny
- **the ancient Prophet's rod**: in the Bible, a prophet's rod swallowed up the other rods; here Marley's face swallows all the pictures
- **had no bowels**: had no pity or kindness; it is also a joke, because Marley's body is see-through
- **shade**: another word for a ghost
- **fathoms**: a fathom is a measure of length, about 1.8 metres
- **the Ward**: the local district of a city, with its own officials
- **penance**: suffering that you accept to show you are sorry for a wrong
- **guilty governments**: a joke: governments that had done wrong, now punished like Marley

## Stave Two: The First of the Three Spirits

When Scrooge woke up, it was so dark that he could hardly see the window. He could hardly tell it from the solid walls of his room. He looked out of bed and tried to see through the darkness with his sharp little eyes. Then the chimes of a church nearby rang the four quarters. So he listened for the hour.

To his great surprise, the heavy bell went on from six to seven, and from seven to eight. It went on, hour after hour, up to twelve. Then it stopped. Twelve! It was past two o'clock when he went to bed. The clock was wrong. An icicle must have got into the works. Twelve!

He pressed the spring of his repeater to correct this foolish clock. Its quick little beat struck twelve. Then it stopped.

"Why, it isn't possible," said Scrooge, "that I have slept through a whole day and far into another night. It isn't possible that something has happened to the sun, and this is twelve o'clock at noon!"

The idea was a frightening one. He scrambled out of bed and felt his way to the window. He had to rub the frost off the glass with the sleeve of his dressing-gown before he could see anything. Even then he could see very little. He could only make out that it was still very foggy and extremely cold. There was no noise of people running here and there and making a great fuss. There certainly would have been, if night had beaten the bright day and taken over the world. This was a great relief. Think of a paper that said "three days after you see this, pay to Mr. Ebenezer Scrooge or his order," and so on. It would be worth nothing at all if there were no days to count by.

Scrooge went back to bed. He thought, and thought, and thought it over and over and over, and he could make nothing of it. The more he thought, the more confused he was. The more he tried not to think, the more he thought.

Marley's Ghost bothered him very much. Every time he decided, after careful thought, that it was all a dream, his mind flew back. It flew back like a strong spring let go. It went to where it began, and it asked the same question again. "Was it a dream or not?"

Scrooge lay in this state until the chimes had rung three quarters more. Then he suddenly remembered that the Ghost had warned him about a visit when the bell struck one. He decided to lie awake until that hour had passed. He could no more go to sleep than go to Heaven. So this was perhaps the wisest decision he could make.

The quarter of an hour was so long. More than once he was sure he had fallen asleep without knowing it. He thought he had missed the clock. At last the sound came to his listening ear.

"Ding, dong!"

"A quarter past," said Scrooge, counting.

"Ding, dong!"

"Half-past!" said Scrooge.

"Ding, dong!"

"A quarter to it," said Scrooge.

"Ding, dong!"

"The hour itself," said Scrooge, proudly, "and nothing else!"

He spoke before the hour bell rang. It now rang, with a deep, dull, hollow, sad One. Light flashed up in the room at that moment, and the curtains of his bed were pulled open.

The curtains of his bed were pulled aside, I tell you, by a hand. They were not the curtains at his feet, or the curtains behind his back. They were the curtains in front of his face. The curtains of his bed were pulled aside. Scrooge sat up, half lying and half sitting. He found himself face to face with the unearthly visitor who had pulled them. It was as close to him as I am now to you. And I am standing beside you, in spirit, at your elbow.

It was a strange figure. It was like a child, but even more like an old man seen through some magic glass. The glass made him look far away and made him seem as small as a child. Its hair hung about its neck and down its back, and it was white, as if with age. Yet there was not a wrinkle in the face, and the skin had the softest bloom. The arms were very long and strong, and so were the hands, as if its grip had uncommon strength. Its legs and feet were beautifully formed, and they were bare, like its arms. It wore a tunic of the purest white. Round its waist was a shining belt, which was beautiful to see. In its hand it held a branch of fresh green holly. Strangely, its dress was trimmed with summer flowers, although holly is a winter sign. But the strangest thing about it was this. From the top of its head there sprang a bright, clear jet of light. By this light Scrooge could see all the rest. In its duller moments the Spirit used a great extinguisher for a cap, and this was no doubt the reason. It now held the cap under its arm.

Even this was not its strangest quality, Scrooge saw, when he looked at it more steadily. Its belt sparkled and glittered, now in one part and now in another. What was light one moment was dark the next. In the same way, the figure itself kept changing. Now it was a thing with one arm, now a thing with one leg, now a thing with twenty legs. Now it was a pair of legs without a head, and now a head without a body. The outlines of these parts melted away in the thick gloom, and none could be seen. And then, in the middle of this wonder, it would be itself again, as clear and distinct as ever.

"Are you the Spirit, sir, whose coming was announced to me?" asked Scrooge.

"I am!"

The voice was soft and gentle. It was strangely low, as if the Spirit were far away instead of close beside him.

"Who and what are you?" Scrooge demanded.

"I am the Ghost of Christmas Past."

"Long Past?" asked Scrooge. He had noticed how small the Spirit was.

"No. Your past."

Perhaps Scrooge could not have told anybody why, even if someone had asked him. But he had a special wish to see the Spirit wearing its cap. He begged it to cover its head.

"What!" cried the Ghost. "Would you so soon put out, with human hands, the light that I give? Is it not enough that you are one of those people whose passions made this cap? You force me to wear it low upon my forehead through whole long years!"

Scrooge respectfully said that he had never wished to offend the Spirit. He did not know that he had ever "bonneted" it on purpose, at any time in his life. Then he bravely asked what business had brought the Spirit there.

"Your welfare!" said the Ghost.

Scrooge said he was much obliged. But he could not help thinking that a night of unbroken rest would have been better for that. The Spirit must have heard him thinking, because it said at once:

"Your reclamation, then. Take care!"

As it spoke, it put out its strong hand and took him gently by the arm.

"Rise! And walk with me!"

It was no use for Scrooge to say that the weather was bad and the hour too late for walking. It was no use to say that his bed was warm and the thermometer was far below freezing. He was dressed only lightly, in his slippers, dressing-gown and nightcap, and he had a cold at that time. But the grip, although it was as gentle as a woman's hand, could not be resisted. He rose. Then he saw that the Spirit was going towards the window. He caught hold of its robe and begged it to stop.

"I am a mortal," Scrooge protested, "and I might fall."

"Bear just a touch of my hand there," said the Spirit, laying it upon his heart, "and you will be held up in far more than this!"

As the words were spoken, they passed through the wall. They stood on an open country road, with fields on both sides. The city had completely vanished. There was no sign of it to be seen. The darkness and the mist had vanished with it. It was a clear, cold winter day, with snow on the ground.

"Good Heaven!" said Scrooge, clasping his hands together as he looked about him. "I grew up in this place. I was a boy here!"

The Spirit looked at him mildly. Its gentle touch had been light and quick, but the old man could still feel it. He was aware of a thousand smells floating in the air. Each one was joined to a thousand thoughts, and hopes, and joys, and cares, long, long forgotten!

"Your lip is trembling," said the Ghost. "And what is that on your cheek?"

Scrooge muttered, with an unusual catch in his voice, that it was a pimple. He begged the Ghost to lead him wherever it wished.

"You remember the way?" asked the Spirit.

"Remember it!" cried Scrooge with feeling. "I could walk it blindfold."

"Strange to have forgotten it for so many years!" said the Ghost. "Let us go on."

They walked along the road. Scrooge knew every gate, and post, and tree. At last a little market-town appeared in the distance, with its bridge, its church and its winding river. Some shaggy ponies came trotting towards them, with boys on their backs. The boys called to other boys in country carts, driven by farmers. All these boys were in high spirits. They shouted to each other. Soon the wide fields were so full of happy music that the crisp air seemed to laugh!

"These are only shadows of the things that have been," said the Ghost. "They do not know we are here."

The cheerful travellers came on. As they came, Scrooge knew every one of them and called them by name. Why was he so extremely glad to see them! Why did his cold eye shine, and why did his heart leap as they went past! Why was he filled with joy when he heard them say Merry Christmas to each other? They parted at cross-roads and side-roads, each going to his own home. What was merry Christmas to Scrooge? Away with merry Christmas! What good had it ever done him?

"The school is not quite empty," said the Ghost. "One lonely child, forgotten by his friends, is still left there."

Scrooge said he knew it. And he sobbed.

They left the main road by a lane that he remembered well. Soon they came to a house of dull red brick. It had a little tower on the roof with a weathercock on top, and a bell hung inside it. It was a large house, but one that had seen better days. The big outbuildings were hardly used. Their walls were damp and mossy, their windows were broken, and their gates were falling apart. Hens clucked and strutted in the stables. Grass had grown over the coach-houses and sheds. The inside was no better than the outside. They entered the dreary hall and looked through the open doors of many rooms. They found them poorly furnished, cold and huge. There was an earthy smell in the air and a chilly bareness in the place. Somehow it reminded Scrooge of getting up too often by candle-light, and of not having too much to eat.

The Ghost and Scrooge went across the hall to a door at the back of the house. It opened before them. They saw a long, bare, sad room, which looked even barer because of the lines of plain wooden benches and desks. At one of these a lonely boy was reading near a weak fire. Scrooge sat down on a bench and wept to see his poor, forgotten self as he used to be.

Every small sound in the house reached Scrooge's heart and softened it. There was the echo, and the squeak and scuffle of the mice behind the wall panels. There was the drip from the half-thawed water-spout in the dull yard behind. There was a sigh among the leafless branches of one sad poplar tree. There was the idle swinging of an empty storehouse door. There was even a click in the fire. Every sound made his tears flow more freely.

The Spirit touched him on the arm and pointed to his younger self, who was deep in his reading. Suddenly a man in foreign clothes stood outside the window. He looked wonderfully real and clear. He had an axe stuck in his belt, and he was leading by the bridle a donkey loaded with wood.

"Why, it's Ali Baba!" Scrooge cried in delight. "It's dear old honest Ali Baba! Yes, yes, I know! One Christmas time, when that lonely child over there was left here all alone, he did come, for the first time, just like that. Poor boy! And Valentine," said Scrooge, "and his wild brother, Orson. There they go! And what's-his-name, who was left asleep in his underclothes at the Gate of Damascus. Don't you see him! And the Sultan's Groom, turned upside down by the Genii. There he is, standing on his head! Serve him right. I'm glad of it. What business had he to marry the Princess!"

It would have been a great surprise to his business friends in the city to hear this. Scrooge was putting all the seriousness of his nature into such stories. His voice was very strange, between laughing and crying. His face was bright and excited.

"There's the Parrot!" cried Scrooge. "Green body and yellow tail, with a thing like a lettuce growing out of the top of his head. There he is! Poor Robin Crusoe, he called him, when he came home again after sailing round the island. 'Poor Robin Crusoe, where have you been, Robin Crusoe?' The man thought he was dreaming, but he wasn't. It was the Parrot, you know. There goes Friday, running for his life to the little creek! Halloa! Hoop! Halloo!"

Then he changed quickly, which was not at all like him. He felt pity for his former self. "Poor boy!" he said, and he cried again.

"I wish," Scrooge muttered, putting his hand in his pocket and looking about him, after drying his eyes with his cuff, "but it's too late now."

"What is the matter?" asked the Spirit.

"Nothing," said Scrooge. "Nothing. There was a boy singing a Christmas carol at my door last night. I should like to have given him something. That's all."

The Ghost smiled thoughtfully and waved its hand. "Let us see another Christmas!" it said.

At these words Scrooge's former self grew larger, and the room became a little darker and dirtier. The wall panels shrank and the windows cracked. Pieces of plaster fell out of the ceiling, and the bare wooden strips showed instead. Scrooge knew no more than you do how all this happened. He only knew that it was quite correct and that everything had happened this way. There he was, alone again, when all the other boys had gone home for the happy holidays.

He was not reading now. He was walking up and down in despair. Scrooge looked at the Ghost. Sadly shaking his head, he glanced anxiously towards the door.

It opened. A little girl, much younger than the boy, came darting in. She put her arms round his neck and kissed him many times. She called him her "Dear, dear brother."

"I have come to bring you home, dear brother!" said the child, clapping her tiny hands and bending down to laugh. "To bring you home, home, home!"

"Home, little Fan?" said the boy.

"Yes!" said the child, full of joy. "Home, for good and all. Home, for ever and ever. Father is so much kinder than he used to be, that home is like Heaven! He spoke so gently to me one dear night when I was going to bed. So I was not afraid to ask him once more if you might come home. And he said Yes, you should, and he sent me in a coach to bring you. And you're going to be a man!" said the child, opening her eyes wide. "You are never to come back here. But first we're going to be together all the Christmas long, and have the merriest time in all the world."

"You are quite a woman, little Fan!" cried the boy.

She clapped her hands and laughed. She tried to touch his head, but she was too little. So she laughed again. She stood on tiptoe to hug him. Then, in her childish eagerness, she began to drag him towards the door. He was very glad to go, and he went with her.

A terrible voice in the hall cried, "Bring down Master Scrooge's box, there!" The schoolmaster himself appeared in the hall. He glared at Master Scrooge in a fierce, proud way, as if he were doing the boy a great favour. Then he shook hands with him, and that threw the boy into a dreadful state of mind. The schoolmaster took him and his sister into the coldest, most shivering best room you ever saw. The maps on the wall were waxy with cold. So were the globes of the sky and the earth in the windows. Here the schoolmaster brought out a bottle of strangely thin wine and a block of strangely heavy cake. He gave small portions of these treats to the young people. At the same time he sent a thin servant to offer a glass of "something" to the postboy. The postboy answered that he thanked the gentleman. But if it was from the same barrel as before, he would rather not. By this time Master Scrooge's trunk was tied on top of the carriage. The children said goodbye to the schoolmaster very willingly. They got into the carriage and drove gaily down the curve of the garden drive. The quick wheels threw the frost and snow off the dark leaves of the evergreen trees, like spray.

"Always a delicate creature, whom a breath might have withered," said the Ghost. "But she had a large heart!"

"So she had," cried Scrooge. "You're right. I will not say you are wrong, Spirit. God forbid!"

"She died a woman," said the Ghost, "and she had, I think, children."

"One child," Scrooge answered.

"True," said the Ghost. "Your nephew!"

Scrooge seemed uneasy in his mind. He answered briefly, "Yes."

They had only that moment left the school behind them. Yet now they were in the busy streets of a city. Shadowy people passed by and passed again. Shadowy carts and coaches fought for room on the road. All the noise and struggle of a real city were there. The decorations in the shops made it plain enough that here too it was Christmas time again. But it was evening, and the streets were lit up.

The Ghost stopped at a certain warehouse door. It asked Scrooge if he knew it.

"Know it!" said Scrooge. "I was apprenticed here!"

They went in. An old gentleman in a Welsh wig sat behind a very high desk. If he had been two inches taller, he would have hit his head on the ceiling. When Scrooge saw him, he cried out in great excitement.

"Why, it's old Fezziwig! Bless his heart, it's Fezziwig alive again!"

Old Fezziwig put down his pen and looked up at the clock. It said seven. He rubbed his hands and adjusted his wide waistcoat. He laughed all over himself, from his shoes to the kind part of his head. Then he called out in a rich, oily, jolly voice, full of comfort.

"Yo ho, there! Ebenezer! Dick!"

Scrooge's former self, now a young man, came briskly in. His fellow-apprentice came with him.

"Dick Wilkins, to be sure!" said Scrooge to the Ghost. "Bless me, yes. There he is. He was very fond of me, was Dick. Poor Dick! Dear, dear!"

"Yo ho, my boys!" said Fezziwig. "No more work to-night. It's Christmas Eve, Dick. It's Christmas, Ebenezer! Let's have the shutters up," cried old Fezziwig, with a sharp clap of his hands, "before a man can say Jack Robinson!"

You wouldn't believe how those two fellows went at it! They ran into the street with the shutters. One, two, three, and they had them up in their places. Four, five, six, and they had barred them and pinned them. Seven, eight, nine, and they were back before you could have counted to twelve. They were panting like race-horses.

"Hilli-ho!" cried old Fezziwig, skipping down from the high desk with wonderful quickness. "Clear away, my lads, and let's have lots of room here! Hilli-ho, Dick! Chirrup, Ebenezer!"

Clear away! There was nothing they would not have cleared away, with old Fezziwig looking on. It was done in a minute. Every movable thing was packed off, as if it were sent away from public life for ever. The floor was swept and watered. The lamps were trimmed, and more fuel was heaped on the fire. The warehouse became a snug, warm, dry and bright ball-room. You could not wish to see a better one on a winter night.

In came a fiddler with a music-book. He went up to the high desk and made an orchestra of it. He tuned his fiddle with a noise like fifty stomach-aches. In came Mrs. Fezziwig, one vast, solid smile. In came the three Miss Fezziwigs, beaming and lovable. In came the six young followers whose hearts they broke. In came all the young men and women who worked in the business. In came the housemaid with her cousin, the baker. In came the cook with her brother's special friend, the milkman. In came the boy from over the way. People suspected that his master did not feed him enough. He tried to hide behind the girl from next door but one. She was known to have had her ears pulled by her mistress. In they all came, one after another. Some came shyly and some boldly. Some came gracefully and some awkwardly. Some pushed and some pulled. In they all came, anyhow and every how.

Away they all went, twenty couples at once. They went with hands half round and back again the other way. They went down the middle and up again. They went round and round in various kinds of friendly groups. The old top couple always turned up in the wrong place. The new top couple started off again as soon as they got there. At last all were top couples, and there was not a bottom couple to help them! When this happened, old Fezziwig clapped his hands to stop the dance. He cried out, "Well done!" The fiddler plunged his hot face into a pot of porter, which was kept ready for that purpose. But he scorned any rest. As soon as he came up again, he began to play, though there were no dancers yet. It was as if the other fiddler had been carried home, worn out, on a shutter. He seemed a brand-new man, who was determined to beat him or die.

There were more dances, and there were forfeits, and more dances. There was cake, and there was negus. There was a great piece of Cold Roast, and there was a great piece of Cold Boiled. There were mince-pies, and plenty of beer. But the best part of the evening came after the Roast and Boiled. Then the fiddler struck up "Sir Roger de Coverley". (He was a sly old dog, mind! He knew his business better than you or I could have told him.) Old Fezziwig stood out to dance with Mrs. Fezziwig. They were the top couple, too, and they had hard work ahead of them. There were three or four and twenty pairs of partners. These were people who were not to be trifled with. They would dance, and they had no idea of just walking.

But suppose there had been twice as many. Suppose there had been four times as many. Old Fezziwig would have been a match for them. So would Mrs. Fezziwig. As for her, she was worthy to be his partner in every sense of the word. If that is not high praise, tell me higher, and I will use it. A real light seemed to shine from Fezziwig's calves. They shone in every part of the dance like moons. You could not have guessed, at any moment, what they would do next. Old Fezziwig and Mrs. Fezziwig went all through the dance. They went forward and back, and gave both hands to the partner. They bowed and curtseyed. They did the corkscrew and the thread-the-needle, and then they went back to their places. Then Fezziwig "cut". He cut so cleverly that he seemed to wink with his legs. And he came down on his feet again without a stagger.

When the clock struck eleven, this family ball came to an end. Mr. and Mrs. Fezziwig stood one on each side of the door. They shook hands with every person as he or she went out, and wished each a Merry Christmas. When everybody had gone except the two apprentices, they did the same to them. So the cheerful voices died away, and the lads were left to their beds. These were under a counter in the back-shop.

All this time, Scrooge had acted like a man out of his mind. His heart and soul were in the scene, with his former self. He agreed with everything, remembered everything and enjoyed everything. He felt the strangest excitement. At last the bright faces of his former self and Dick turned away from him. Only then did he remember the Ghost. He saw that it was looking straight at him, and the light on its head burned very clear.

"A small matter," said the Ghost, "to make these silly people so full of thanks."

"Small!" said Scrooge, repeating the word.

The Spirit made a sign to him to listen to the two apprentices. They were pouring out their hearts in praise of Fezziwig. When Scrooge had listened, the Spirit spoke again.

"Why! Is it not small? He has spent only a few pounds of your human money. Three or four, perhaps. Is that so much that he deserves this praise?"

"It isn't that," said Scrooge. The remark had made him hot, and without knowing it he spoke like his younger self, not his older self. "It isn't that, Spirit. He has the power to make us happy or unhappy. He can make our work light or heavy, a pleasure or a hard job. Say that his power lies in words and looks. Say it lies in things so small that it is impossible to add them up. What then? The happiness he gives is quite as great as if it cost a fortune."

He felt the Spirit's glance and stopped.

"What is the matter?" asked the Ghost.

"Nothing special," said Scrooge.

"Something, I think?" the Ghost insisted.

"No," said Scrooge. "No. I should like to be able to say a word or two to my clerk just now. That's all."

His former self turned down the lamps as he said this wish aloud. Scrooge and the Ghost again stood side by side in the open air.

"My time grows short," said the Spirit. "Quick!"

This was not said to Scrooge, or to anyone he could see. But it had an immediate effect. Again Scrooge saw himself. He was older now, a man in the prime of life. His face did not yet have the harsh, hard lines of later years. But it had begun to show signs of worry and greed. His eye had an eager, greedy, restless look. It showed the passion that had taken root, and where the shadow of the growing tree would fall.

He was not alone. He sat beside a fair young girl in a mourning-dress. There were tears in her eyes, and they sparkled in the light that shone from the Ghost of Christmas Past.

"It matters little," she said softly. "To you, very little. Another idol has taken my place. I would have tried to cheer and comfort you in the future. If this idol can do that, I have no right to be sad."

"What idol has taken your place?" he answered.

"A golden one."

"This is how fair the world is!" he said. "There is nothing it is so hard on as poverty. And there is nothing it claims to condemn so strongly as the search for wealth!"

"You fear the world too much," she answered gently. "All your other hopes have turned into one hope. You hope to be safe from its mean blame. I have watched your nobler dreams fall away one by one. Now the ruling passion, Gain, has taken all your attention. Is that not so?"

"What then?" he said sharply. "Even if I have grown so much wiser, what then? I have not changed towards you."

She shook her head.

"Have I?"

"Our promise is an old one. It was made when we were both poor and happy to be so. We planned to improve our fortune in time, by patient work. You are changed. When it was made, you were another man."

"I was a boy," he said impatiently.

"Your own feeling tells you that you were not what you are now," she said. "I am the same. What promised happiness when we were one in heart brings misery now that we are two. I will not say how often and how deeply I have thought about this. It is enough that I have thought about it, and that I can set you free."

"Have I ever asked to be set free?"

"In words. No. Never."

"In what, then?"

"In a changed nature. In a different spirit. In another kind of life, with another Hope as its great aim. In everything that made my love worth anything to you. Suppose this promise had never been made between us," said the girl. She looked at him mildly but steadily. "Tell me, would you seek me out and try to win me now? Ah, no!"

He seemed to agree, in spite of himself, that this was fair. But he said, with an effort, "You think not."

"I would gladly think otherwise if I could," she answered. "Heaven knows! When I have learned a truth like this, I know how strong it must be. But suppose you were free today, or tomorrow, or yesterday. Can even I believe that you would choose a girl with no money? You weigh everything by Gain, even when you talk with her. Or suppose that you did choose her, for a moment false to your one rule. Do I not know that you would soon feel sorry and regret it? I do. And so I set you free. I do it with a full heart, for the love of the man you once were."

He was about to speak. But she turned her head away from him and went on.

"You may feel pain at this. The memory of what is past makes me half hope that you will. But a very, very short time from now, you will push the memory away, gladly. You will call it an unprofitable dream, and it will be a good thing that you woke from it. May you be happy in the life you have chosen!"

She left him, and they parted.

"Spirit!" said Scrooge. "Show me no more! Take me home. Why do you enjoy torturing me?"

"One shadow more!" cried the Ghost.

"No more!" cried Scrooge. "No more. I don't wish to see it. Show me no more!"

But the Ghost would not let him go. It held him tight in both its arms and forced him to watch what happened next.

They were in another scene and another place. It was a room, not very large or handsome, but full of comfort. Near the winter fire sat a beautiful young girl. She was so like the last girl that Scrooge thought it was the same one. Then he saw her, now a comely matron, sitting opposite her daughter. The noise in this room was quite wild. There were more children there than Scrooge, in his upset state of mind, could count. In a famous poem there is a herd of forty children who behave like one. These were not like that. Every child was behaving like forty. The result was beyond belief, and very noisy. But no one seemed to mind. On the contrary, the mother and daughter laughed heartily and enjoyed it very much. Soon the daughter began to join the games, and the young robbers attacked her without mercy. What would I not have given to be one of them! I could never have been so rude, no, no! I would not, for all the wealth in the world, have crushed that braided hair and pulled it down. And I would not have pulled off her precious little shoe, God bless my soul, to save my life. They measured her waist in fun, those bold young children. I could not have done that. I would have expected my arm to grow round it for a punishment, and never come straight again. And yet, I own, I should have dearly liked to touch her lips. I should have liked to question her, so that she would open them. I should have liked to look at the lashes of her downcast eyes, and never make her blush. I should have liked to let loose her waves of hair. One inch of it would be a keepsake beyond price. In short, I confess I should have liked to have a child's lightest freedom. And I should have liked to be man enough to know its value.

But now there was a knocking at the door. A rush followed at once. She was carried towards the door, with a laughing face and a plundered dress. A red-faced, noisy group crowded round her. She arrived just in time to greet her father. He came home with a man who was loaded with Christmas toys and presents. Then came the shouting and the struggling! The children attacked the poor man, who could not defend himself. They climbed up him, using chairs as ladders. They dived into his pockets and took his brown-paper parcels. They held on tight to his cravat and hugged him round the neck. They pounded his back and kicked his legs, from pure love. There were shouts of wonder and delight as every package was opened. Then came a terrible announcement. The baby had been caught putting a doll's frying-pan into his mouth! People more than suspected that he had swallowed a pretend turkey, glued on a wooden plate! Then came the huge relief of finding it was a false alarm. The joy, the thanks and the delight were all too great to describe. It is enough to say that little by little the children and their feelings left the parlour. They went up the stairs, one step at a time, to the top of the house. There they went to bed, and so grew quiet.

And now Scrooge looked on more closely than ever. The master of the house sat down at his own fireside. His daughter leaned fondly on him, and her mother sat beside them. Scrooge thought that another child like this one might have called him father. She would have been just as graceful and full of promise. She might have been a spring-time in the bleak winter of his life. His sight grew very dim indeed.

"Belle," said the husband, turning to his wife with a smile, "I saw an old friend of yours this afternoon."

"Who was it?"

"Guess!"

"How can I? Tut, don't I know?" she added in the same breath, laughing as he laughed. "Mr. Scrooge."

"Mr. Scrooge it was. I passed his office window. It was not shut up, and he had a candle inside, so I could hardly help seeing him. His partner is close to death, I hear. And there he sat alone. Quite alone in the world, I do believe."

"Spirit!" said Scrooge in a broken voice. "Take me away from this place."

"I told you these were shadows of the things that have been," said the Ghost. "That they are what they are, do not blame me!"

"Take me away!" Scrooge cried. "I cannot bear it!"

He turned on the Ghost. Its face looked at him, and in some strange way there were pieces of all the faces it had shown him. He wrestled with it.

"Leave me! Take me back. Haunt me no longer!"

In the struggle, the Ghost did not seem to resist. Nothing Scrooge did disturbed it at all. Scrooge saw that its light was burning high and bright. He dimly linked this with its power over him. He seized the extinguisher-cap and suddenly pressed it down on its head.

The Spirit sank under it, so that the extinguisher covered its whole shape. But Scrooge pressed it down with all his strength, and still he could not hide the light. It streamed out from under the cap in an unbroken flood on the ground.

He felt that he was worn out and overcome by a sleepiness he could not resist. He also knew that he was back in his own bedroom. He gave the cap a last squeeze, and then his hand went weak. He had barely time to stagger to bed before he sank into a heavy sleep.

### Glossary

- **repeater**: a watch that strikes the hour when you press a spring on it
- **chimes**: the musical sounds a church bell makes to tell the time
- **tunic**: a loose shirt-like piece of clothing that reaches the knees
- **holly**: a green plant with sharp leaves and red berries, used at Christmas
- **extinguisher**: a cap or tool that puts out a flame
- **bonneted**: put a bonnet (a cap) on someone's head
- **weathercock**: a metal bird on a roof that shows which way the wind blows
- **Genii**: magical spirits in old Eastern stories
- **postboy**: a young man who rode or drove the horses of a carriage for hire
- **apprenticed**: working for a master to learn a trade, usually for several years
- **Welsh wig**: a thick, close-fitting wig of wool, worn by some old men
- **porter**: a dark, strong kind of beer
- **forfeits**: party games in which the loser pays a small penalty
- **negus**: a hot, sweet drink made from wine, water and spices
- **Sir Roger de Coverley**: a lively old country dance for many couples
- **mourning-dress**: a black dress worn when someone has died
- **idol**: something people love or worship too much; here, money
- **matron**: a married woman who is no longer young
- **cravat**: a cloth worn round a man's neck, like a tie

## Stave Three: The Second of the Three Spirits

Scrooge woke in the middle of a very loud snore. He sat up in bed to get his thoughts together. Nobody had to tell him that the bell was about to strike One again. He felt that he had woken at exactly the right moment. He had a special purpose for being awake. He was to hold a meeting with the second messenger. Jacob Marley had arranged for it to be sent. But Scrooge began to feel uncomfortably cold when he wondered which curtain this new ghost would pull back. So he pushed every one of them aside with his own hands. Then he lay down again and kept a sharp look-out all round the bed. He wanted to challenge the Spirit the moment it appeared. He did not want to be taken by surprise and made nervous.

Some easy-going gentlemen like to say that they know a move or two and are equal to anything. They show how ready they are for adventure by saying they are good for anything, from pitch-and-toss to manslaughter. Between those two very different things, there is surely a wide range of other subjects. I will not go quite as far as this for Scrooge. But I ask you to believe that he was ready for a good broad field of strange sights. Nothing between a baby and a rhinoceros would have astonished him very much.

Now, he was ready for almost anything. But he was not at all ready for nothing. So when the bell struck One and no shape appeared, he began to tremble violently. Five minutes went by. Ten minutes went by. A quarter of an hour went by. Still nothing came. All this time he lay on his bed, right in the centre of a blaze of red light. It had streamed onto the bed when the clock struck the hour. Because it was only light, it was more alarming than a dozen ghosts. He could not tell what it meant or what it wanted. Sometimes he was afraid that he was an interesting case of a man burning up by himself. He would not even have the comfort of knowing it.

At last he began to think something. You or I would have thought it at the very start. It is always the person who is not in the trouble who knows what should be done. And that person would certainly have done it too! At last, I say, he began to think that the secret of this light might be in the next room. When he looked more closely, the light seemed to shine from there. This idea filled his mind. He got up softly and shuffled in his slippers to the door.

The moment Scrooge's hand touched the lock, a strange voice called him by his name. It told him to come in. He obeyed.

It was his own room. There was no doubt about that. But it had changed in a surprising way. The walls and ceiling were hung with so much living green that the room looked like a grove. Bright, gleaming berries shone from every part of it. The crisp leaves of holly, mistletoe and ivy reflected the light, as if many little mirrors had been scattered there. A mighty fire went roaring up the chimney. That dull, stone-like fireplace had never known such a blaze. Not in Scrooge's time, nor in Marley's, nor for many winters before.

On the floor lay a great heap of food, like a kind of throne. There were turkeys, geese, game and poultry. There was brawn, and there were great joints of meat and sucking-pigs. There were long wreaths of sausages, mince-pies and plum-puddings. There were barrels of oysters, red-hot chestnuts and cherry-cheeked apples. There were juicy oranges, sweet pears and immense twelfth-cakes. There were also bowls of punch, bubbling hot. Their delicious steam made the room dim. On this throne sat a jolly Giant, wonderful to see. He carried a glowing torch, shaped a little like a horn of plenty. He held it up high to shed its light on Scrooge, as Scrooge came peeping round the door.

"Come in!" cried the Ghost. "Come in! And know me better, man!"

Scrooge entered timidly and hung his head before this Spirit. He was not the stubborn Scrooge he had been. The Spirit's eyes were clear and kind, but he did not like to meet them.

"I am the Ghost of Christmas Present," said the Spirit. "Look at me!"

Scrooge looked at it with respect. It wore one simple green robe, with a border of white fur. The robe hung so loosely that the Spirit's broad chest was bare. It seemed too proud to cover itself with any trick. Its feet were bare too. They could be seen below the wide folds of the robe. On its head it wore nothing but a holly wreath, with shining icicles set here and there in it. Its dark brown curls were long and free. Free and friendly too were its face, its sparkling eye, its open hand and its cheery voice. Its manner was easy and its air was joyful. Round its middle was an old scabbard. There was no sword in it, and the old case was eaten up with rust.

"You have never seen anyone like me before!" cried the Spirit.

"Never," Scrooge answered.

"Have you never walked with the younger members of my family?" the Phantom went on. "I mean my elder brothers, who were born in these later years. For I am very young myself."

"I don't think I have," said Scrooge. "I am afraid I have not. Have you had many brothers, Spirit?"

"More than eighteen hundred," said the Ghost.

"A tremendous family to provide for!" muttered Scrooge.

The Ghost of Christmas Present rose.

"Spirit," said Scrooge humbly, "take me where you will. Last night I went out because I had to, and I learnt a lesson. It is working in me now. Tonight, if you have anything to teach me, let me profit from it."

"Touch my robe!"

Scrooge did as he was told and held it tight.

Holly, mistletoe, red berries, ivy, turkeys, geese, game, poultry, brawn, meat, pigs, sausages, oysters, pies, puddings, fruit and punch all vanished at once. So did the room, the fire, the red glow and the hour of night. They stood in the city streets on Christmas morning. The weather was severe. The people made a rough but lively kind of music, and it was not unpleasant. They scraped the snow from the pavement in front of their houses, and from the tops of their roofs. The boys thought it great fun to see the snow come plumping down into the road below. It broke into little snow-storms of its own.

The house fronts looked black enough, and the windows looked blacker. They stood against the smooth white sheet of snow on the roofs, and against the dirtier snow on the ground. The heavy wheels of carts and wagons had ploughed this lower snow into deep furrows. These furrows crossed each other hundreds of times where the great streets branched off. They made a tangle of channels, hard to follow, in the thick yellow mud and icy water. The sky was gloomy. The shortest streets were choked with a dingy mist, half thawed and half frozen. Its heavier bits came down in a shower of sooty specks. It was as if all the chimneys in Great Britain had caught fire together. They seemed to blaze away to their hearts' content. There was nothing very cheerful in the weather or the town. And yet there was an air of cheerfulness all around. The clearest summer air and the brightest summer sun could have tried to spread it in vain.

The people shovelling snow on the housetops were jolly and full of joy. They called out to one another from the low walls at the roof edges. Now and then they exchanged a playful snowball. It was a better-natured missile than many a joke made of words. They laughed heartily if it hit, and just as heartily if it missed. The poulterers' shops were still half open, and the fruiterers' shops were radiant in all their glory.

There were great, round, pot-bellied baskets of chestnuts. They were shaped like the waistcoats of jolly old gentlemen. They leaned against the doors and tumbled out into the street, as if they were bursting with riches. There were ruddy, brown-faced, broad Spanish onions. They shone in the fatness of their growth, like Spanish Friars. From their shelves they winked slyly at the girls who walked by and looked shyly at the hung-up mistletoe. There were pears and apples, piled high in blooming pyramids. There were bunches of grapes. The shopkeepers kindly hung them from hooks where all could see them. People's mouths could water for nothing as they passed. There were piles of filberts, mossy and brown. Their smell reminded people of old walks in the woods, and of pleasant shuffling, ankle deep, through dry leaves. There were Norfolk Biffins, squat and dark, which made the yellow of the oranges and lemons look brighter. They were so round and juicy. They seemed to beg to be carried home in paper bags and eaten after dinner. Even the gold and silver fish in a bowl among these fine fruits seemed to know that something was going on. They belonged to a dull, cold-blooded race. But every fish went gasping round and round its little world in slow, calm excitement.

The Grocers'! Oh, the Grocers'! They were nearly closed, with perhaps two shutters down, or one. But through those gaps, what sights there were! It was not only that the scales made a merry sound as they came down on the counter. It was not only that the string and its roller parted company so briskly. It was not only that the canisters were rattled up and down like a juggler's tricks. It was not even that the mixed smells of tea and coffee were so pleasant to the nose. Nor was it only the raisins, so plentiful and rare. It was not only the almonds, so very white, or the sticks of cinnamon, so long and straight. The other spices were delicious. The candied fruits were caked and spotted with melted sugar. They made even the coldest onlookers feel faint, and then a little sick. The figs were moist and soft. The French plums blushed in modest sourness from their highly decorated boxes. Everything was good to eat and in its Christmas dress. But the real wonder was the customers. They were all so hurried and so eager, in the hopeful promise of the day. They bumped into each other at the door. They crashed their wicker baskets wildly. They left their shopping on the counter and came running back to fetch it. They made hundreds of mistakes like this, in the best possible humour. The Grocer and his people were so frank and fresh. The shiny hearts that fastened their aprons at the back might have been their own hearts. It was as if they wore them outside for everyone to see. Christmas daws could peck at them if they liked.

But soon the steeples called all good people to church and chapel. Away they came, flocking through the streets in their best clothes and with their gayest faces. At the same time, out of scores of side-streets, lanes and nameless turnings came countless people. They were carrying their dinners to the bakers' shops. The sight of these poor merrymakers seemed to interest the Spirit very much. He stood with Scrooge beside him in a baker's doorway. As the carriers passed, he took the covers off their dinners and sprinkled incense on them from his torch. It was a very uncommon kind of torch. Once or twice some dinner-carriers jostled each other and had angry words. Then he shed a few drops of water on them from it, and their good humour came back at once. For they said it was a shame to quarrel on Christmas Day. And so it was! God love it, so it was!

In time the bells stopped, and the bakers shut up. And yet there was a kindly sign of all these dinners and how they were cooking. Above each baker's oven was a thawed, wet patch. The pavement smoked there, as if its stones were cooking too.

"Is there a special flavour in what you sprinkle from your torch?" asked Scrooge.

"There is. My own."

"Would it work on any kind of dinner today?" asked Scrooge.

"On any dinner given kindly. On a poor one most."

"Why on a poor one most?" asked Scrooge.

"Because it needs it most."

"Spirit," said Scrooge, after a moment's thought, "I wonder at you, of all the beings in the many worlds around us. You want to limit these people's chances of innocent enjoyment."

"I!" cried the Spirit.

"You would take away their means of dining every seventh day," said Scrooge. "Often it is the only day on which they can be said to dine at all. Wouldn't you?"

"I!" cried the Spirit.

"You want to close these places on the Seventh Day?" said Scrooge. "And it comes to the same thing."

"I seek to do that?" exclaimed the Spirit.

"Forgive me if I am wrong. It has been done in your name, or at least in the name of your family," said Scrooge.

"There are some people on this earth of yours," returned the Spirit, "who say they know us. They do their deeds of passion, pride, ill-will, hatred, envy, bigotry and selfishness in our name. But they are as strange to us and to all our kind as if they had never lived. Remember that. Blame what they do on themselves, not on us."

Scrooge promised that he would. They went on, unseen as before, into the suburbs of the town. The Ghost had a remarkable quality, which Scrooge had noticed at the baker's. In spite of his gigantic size, he could fit into any place with ease. He stood under a low roof as gracefully as in any lofty hall. He looked just like a supernatural creature.

And perhaps the Spirit enjoyed showing off this power. Or perhaps it was his own kind, generous, hearty nature, and his sympathy with all poor men. Whatever the reason, it led him straight to the home of Scrooge's clerk. He went there and took Scrooge with him, holding to his robe. On the threshold of the door the Spirit smiled and stopped. He blessed Bob Cratchit's home with a sprinkling from his torch. Think of that! Bob had only fifteen "Bob" a week himself. On Saturdays he put into his pocket only fifteen copies of his own first name. And yet the Ghost of Christmas Present blessed his four-roomed house!

Then up rose Mrs. Cratchit, Bob Cratchit's wife. She was dressed poorly, in a gown that had been turned twice, but she was brave in ribbons. Ribbons are cheap, and they make a good show for sixpence. She laid the cloth, helped by Belinda Cratchit, her second daughter, who was also brave in ribbons. Master Peter Cratchit plunged a fork into the saucepan of potatoes. He had the corners of his monstrous shirt collar in his mouth. The collar was Bob's own private property, given to his son and heir in honour of the day. Peter was glad to find himself so gallantly dressed. He longed to show his fine linen in the fashionable parks.

And now two smaller Cratchits, a boy and a girl, came tearing in. They screamed that outside the baker's they had smelt the goose and known it for their own. They basked in thoughts of sage and onion. These young Cratchits danced round the table and praised Master Peter Cratchit to the skies. He was not proud, although his collars nearly choked him. He blew the fire until the slow potatoes bubbled up. They knocked loudly at the saucepan lid, to be let out and peeled.

"What has ever happened to your precious father?" said Mrs. Cratchit. "And your brother, Tiny Tim! And Martha was not as late last Christmas Day by half an hour!"

"Here's Martha, mother!" said a girl, appearing as she spoke.

"Here's Martha, mother!" cried the two young Cratchits. "Hurrah! There's such a goose, Martha!"

"Why, bless your heart, my dear, how late you are!" said Mrs. Cratchit. She kissed her a dozen times and took off her shawl and bonnet for her, with busy care.

"We had a lot of work to finish last night," replied the girl, "and we had to clear away this morning, mother!"

"Well! Never mind, as long as you are here," said Mrs. Cratchit. "Sit down before the fire, my dear, and get warm, Lord bless you!"

"No, no! There's father coming," cried the two young Cratchits, who were everywhere at once. "Hide, Martha, hide!"

So Martha hid herself. In came little Bob, the father. At least three feet of comforter, not counting the fringe, hung down in front of him. His threadbare clothes were darned and brushed, to look right for the season. And Tiny Tim sat on his shoulder. Alas for Tiny Tim! He had a little crutch, and his legs were held up by an iron frame!

"Why, where is our Martha?" cried Bob Cratchit, looking round.

"Not coming," said Mrs. Cratchit.

"Not coming!" said Bob. His high spirits suddenly fell. He had galloped like a horse with Tim all the way from church, and had come home full of energy. "Not coming on Christmas Day!"

Martha did not like to see him disappointed, even as a joke. So she came out too soon from behind the closet door and ran into his arms. Meanwhile the two young Cratchits hurried Tiny Tim off to the wash-house. They wanted him to hear the pudding singing in the copper.

"And how did little Tim behave?" asked Mrs. Cratchit. She had teased Bob for believing the joke, and Bob had hugged his daughter to his heart's content.

"As good as gold," said Bob, "and better. Somehow he gets thoughtful, sitting by himself so much. He thinks the strangest things you ever heard. He told me, on the way home, that he hoped the people saw him in the church, because he was lame. It might be pleasant for them to remember, on Christmas Day, who made lame beggars walk and blind men see."

Bob's voice shook when he told them this. It shook more when he said that Tiny Tim was growing strong and healthy.

His busy little crutch was heard on the floor. Tiny Tim came back before another word was spoken. His brother and sister took him to his stool by the fire. Meanwhile Bob turned up his cuffs. Poor fellow, as if they could be made any more shabby! He mixed a hot drink in a jug, with gin and lemons. He stirred it round and round and put it on the hob to simmer. Master Peter and the two young Cratchits, who were everywhere at once, went to fetch the goose. Soon they came back with it in a grand procession.

Such a bustle followed that you might have thought a goose was the rarest of all birds. It was a feathered wonder, so rare that a black swan seemed an everyday thing. And in truth it was something very like that in that house. Mrs. Cratchit made the gravy, ready beforehand in a little saucepan, hissing hot. Master Peter mashed the potatoes with amazing energy. Miss Belinda sweetened the apple-sauce. Martha dusted the hot plates. Bob sat Tiny Tim beside him in a tiny corner at the table. The two young Cratchits set chairs for everybody, not forgetting themselves. They stood guard at their places and crammed spoons into their mouths. They did not want to shriek for goose before their turn came to be served.

At last the dishes were put on the table, and grace was said. A breathless pause followed. Mrs. Cratchit looked slowly all along the carving-knife and got ready to plunge it into the breast. When she did, the long-awaited gush of stuffing came out. One murmur of delight rose all round the table. Even Tiny Tim, excited by the two young Cratchits, beat on the table with the handle of his knife. He cried "Hurrah!" in a weak little voice.

There never was such a goose. Bob said he did not believe a goose like it had ever been cooked. Everyone admired its tenderness and flavour, its size and its cheapness. With the apple-sauce and mashed potatoes, it was a big enough dinner for the whole family. Mrs. Cratchit looked at one small atom of a bone on the dish. She said with great delight that they had not eaten it all after all! Yet everyone had had enough. The youngest Cratchits in particular were steeped in sage and onion up to their eyebrows! But now Miss Belinda changed the plates. Mrs. Cratchit left the room alone, because she was too nervous to bear any witnesses. She went to take up the pudding and bring it in.

Suppose it should not be done enough! Suppose it should break when she turned it out! Suppose somebody had climbed over the wall of the back-yard and stolen it, while they were merry with the goose! At that idea the two young Cratchits turned pale with fear. All sorts of horrors were imagined.

Hallo! A great deal of steam! The pudding was out of the copper. A smell like a washing-day! That was the cloth. A smell like an eating-house and a pastrycook's next door to each other, with a laundress's next door to that! That was the pudding! In half a minute Mrs. Cratchit came in, flushed but smiling proudly. She carried the pudding, like a speckled cannon-ball, so hard and firm. It was blazing in a tiny drop of burning brandy, half of half a quartern, and decorated with Christmas holly stuck in the top.

Oh, a wonderful pudding! Bob Cratchit said calmly that he thought it was her greatest success since they were married. Mrs. Cratchit said that the weight was now off her mind. She would confess she had had her doubts about the flour. Everybody had something to say about it. But nobody said or thought it was at all a small pudding for a large family. It would have been flat heresy to do so. Any Cratchit would have blushed to hint at such a thing.

At last the dinner was all done. The cloth was cleared, the hearth swept, and the fire made up. They tasted the mixture in the jug and decided it was perfect. Apples and oranges were put on the table, and a shovelful of chestnuts on the fire. Then all the Cratchit family drew round the hearth, in what Bob Cratchit called a circle, meaning half a one. At Bob Cratchit's elbow stood the family display of glass. It was two tumblers and a custard-cup without a handle.

These held the hot drink from the jug as well as golden goblets would have done. Bob served it out with beaming looks, while the chestnuts on the fire sputtered and cracked noisily. Then Bob proposed a toast:

"A Merry Christmas to us all, my dears. God bless us!"

The whole family said it again after him.

"God bless us every one!" said Tiny Tim, the last of all.

He sat very close to his father's side on his little stool. Bob held the child's withered little hand in his. He loved the child and wanted to keep him close. It was as if he was afraid the child might be taken from him.

"Spirit," said Scrooge, with an interest he had never felt before, "tell me if Tiny Tim will live."

"I see an empty seat," replied the Ghost, "in the poor chimney-corner. I see a crutch without an owner, carefully kept. If these shadows are not changed by the Future, the child will die."

"No, no," said Scrooge. "Oh, no, kind Spirit! Say he will be spared."

"If these shadows are not changed by the Future, none other of my race," returned the Ghost, "will find him here. What then? If he is likely to die, he had better do it, and decrease the surplus population."

Scrooge hung his head to hear his own words quoted by the Spirit. He was full of sorrow and regret.

"Man," said the Ghost, "if you are a man in heart, and not a stone, stop that wicked talk. Wait until you have found out what the surplus is, and where it is. Will you decide which men shall live and which shall die? Perhaps, in the eyes of Heaven, you are more worthless than millions like this poor man's child. Perhaps you are less fit to live than they are. Oh God! To hear the Insect on the leaf talk about too much life among his hungry brothers in the dust!"

Scrooge bowed his head before the Ghost's rebuke. Trembling, he looked down at the ground. But he quickly looked up again when he heard his own name.

"Mr. Scrooge!" said Bob. "I'll give you Mr. Scrooge, the Founder of the Feast!"

"The Founder of the Feast indeed!" cried Mrs. Cratchit, turning red. "I wish I had him here. I would give him a piece of my mind to feast on. I hope he would have a good appetite for it."

"My dear," said Bob, "the children! It is Christmas Day."

"It should be Christmas Day, I am sure," she said, "when we drink the health of such a hateful, stingy, hard, unfeeling man as Mr. Scrooge. You know he is, Robert! Nobody knows it better than you do, poor fellow!"

"My dear," was Bob's mild answer, "it is Christmas Day."

"I'll drink his health for your sake and the Day's," said Mrs. Cratchit, "not for his. Long life to him! A merry Christmas and a happy new year! He'll be very merry and very happy, I have no doubt!"

The children drank the toast after her. It was the first thing they did that day without any heartiness. Tiny Tim drank it last of all, but he did not care at all about it. Scrooge was the Ogre of the family. The mention of his name cast a dark shadow on the party. It did not pass for a full five minutes.

After it had passed, they were ten times merrier than before. They were simply relieved to be done with Scrooge the Baleful, the threatening one. Bob Cratchit told them he had a job in his eye for Master Peter. If Peter got it, it would bring in a full five-and-sixpence a week. The two young Cratchits laughed enormously at the idea of Peter as a man of business. Peter himself looked thoughtfully at the fire from between his collars. He seemed to be deciding which investments he would choose, when he came into that bewildering income.

Then Martha, who was a poor apprentice at a milliner's, told them about her work. She told them what kind of work she had to do. She told them how many hours she worked at a stretch. She said she meant to lie in bed tomorrow morning for a good long rest. Tomorrow was a holiday, and she would spend it at home. She also told them she had seen a countess and a lord some days before. The lord "was much about as tall as Peter." At this, Peter pulled his collars up so high that you could not have seen his head. All this time the chestnuts and the jug went round and round. By and by they had a song from Tiny Tim, about a lost child travelling in the snow. He had a sad little voice, and he sang it very well indeed.

There was nothing grand in this. They were not a handsome family. They were not well dressed. Their shoes were far from waterproof, and their clothes were thin. Peter might have known the inside of a pawnbroker's, and very likely did. But they were happy, thankful, pleased with one another, and content with the time. They faded away, and they looked even happier in the bright sprinkles from the Spirit's torch as they went. Scrooge kept his eye on them, and especially on Tiny Tim, until the last.

By this time it was getting dark, and snowing quite heavily. Scrooge and the Spirit went along the streets. The brightness of the roaring fires in kitchens, parlours and all sorts of rooms was wonderful. Here, the flickering blaze showed preparations for a cosy dinner. Hot plates were baking through and through before the fire. Deep red curtains were ready to be drawn to shut out the cold and the dark. There, all the children of the house were running out into the snow. They went to meet their married sisters, brothers, cousins, uncles and aunts, and to be the first to greet them. Here again were shadows on a window-blind, of guests gathering. There a group of handsome girls tripped lightly off to a neighbour's house. They were all in hoods and fur boots, and all chattering at once. Pity the single man who saw them go in, and felt himself glow! They were artful witches, and they knew it well.

Think of the numbers of people on their way to friendly gatherings. You might have thought that nobody was at home to welcome them when they got there. In fact, every house was expecting company and piling up its fires half-chimney high. Blessings on it, how the Ghost enjoyed it! How he bared his broad breast, and opened his wide palm, and floated on! He poured out his bright and harmless mirth, with a generous hand, on everything within reach. The very lamplighter ran on before, dotting the dusky street with specks of light. He was dressed to spend the evening somewhere. He laughed out loudly as the Spirit passed. He little knew that he had any company but Christmas!

And now, without a word of warning from the Ghost, they stood on a bleak and empty moor. Huge masses of rough stone were thrown about, as if it were a burial-place for giants. Water spread itself wherever it liked, or would have done, but the frost held it prisoner. Nothing grew but moss and furze and coarse, rank grass. Down in the west, the setting sun had left a streak of fiery red. It glared on the desolation for a moment, like a sullen eye. It frowned lower, lower, lower still, and was lost in the thick gloom of darkest night.

"What place is this?" asked Scrooge.

"A place where miners live, who work deep down in the earth," returned the Spirit. "But they know me. See!"

A light shone from the window of a hut, and they quickly went towards it. They passed through the wall of mud and stone and found a cheerful company round a glowing fire. There was an old, old man and an old woman. With them were their children and their children's children, and another generation beyond that. They were all dressed up gaily in their holiday clothes. The old man was singing them a Christmas song. His voice seldom rose above the howling of the wind on the empty land. It had been a very old song when he was a boy. From time to time they all joined in the chorus. As soon as they raised their voices, the old man became cheerful and loud. As soon as they stopped, his strength sank again.

The Spirit did not stay here. He told Scrooge to hold his robe. Passing on above the moor, he sped away. Where? Not to sea? To sea. To Scrooge's horror, he looked back and saw the last of the land, a frightful range of rocks, behind them. His ears were deafened by the thunder of water. It rolled and roared and raged among the dreadful caverns it had worn. It fiercely tried to dig away the earth.

On a dismal reef of sunken rocks, about three miles from the shore, stood a lonely lighthouse. The waters beat and dashed on those rocks all the wild year through. Great heaps of seaweed clung to its base. Storm-birds rose and fell around it, like the waves they skimmed. One might suppose they were born of the wind, as seaweed is born of the water.

But even here, two men who watched the light had made a fire. Through the loophole in the thick stone wall it shed a ray of brightness on the awful sea. They sat at a rough table and joined their hard, rough hands over it. They wished each other Merry Christmas in their can of grog. One of them was the elder. His face was damaged and scarred by hard weather, like the carved figure at the front of an old ship. He struck up a sturdy song that was like a gale itself.

Again the Ghost sped on, above the black and heaving sea. On, on, until he said they were far from any shore. Then they landed on a ship. They stood beside the man steering at the wheel. They stood beside the look-out in the bow, and beside the officers who had the watch. They were dark, ghostly figures at their different posts. But every man among them hummed a Christmas tune, or had a Christmas thought. Or he spoke softly to his companion about a Christmas Day long gone. Hopes of home belonged to that memory. Every man on board, awake or asleep, good or bad, had spoken a kinder word to someone that day. He had never been so kind on any other day of the year. He had shared in the festivities, in some way. He had remembered those he cared for far away. And he had known that they were glad to remember him.

Scrooge listened to the moaning of the wind. He was thinking what a solemn thing it was to move on through the lonely darkness, over an unknown deep. Its depths were secrets as profound as Death. Then he heard a hearty laugh. It was a great surprise to him. It was a much greater surprise to recognise the laugh as his own nephew's. He found himself in a bright, dry, gleaming room. The Spirit stood smiling by his side and looked at that same nephew with approving friendliness!

"Ha, ha!" laughed Scrooge's nephew. "Ha, ha, ha!"

If, by any unlikely chance, you know a man who laughs better than Scrooge's nephew, I should like to know him too. All I can say is this: introduce him to me, and I will make him my friend.

It is a fair, even-handed, noble arrangement of things. Disease and sorrow are catching. But nothing in the world is so irresistibly catching as laughter and good humour. Scrooge's nephew laughed in this way. He held his sides, rolled his head and twisted his face into the most wild shapes. Scrooge's niece, by marriage, laughed as heartily as he did. And their friends, who had gathered there, were not a bit behind. They roared out lustily.

"Ha, ha! Ha, ha, ha, ha!"

"He said that Christmas was a humbug, as true as I live!" cried Scrooge's nephew. "He believed it too!"

"More shame for him, Fred!" said Scrooge's niece angrily. Bless those women! They never do anything by halves. They are always in earnest.

She was very pretty: exceedingly pretty. She had a dimpled, surprised-looking, lovely face. Her ripe little mouth seemed made to be kissed, as no doubt it was. All kinds of good little dots about her chin melted into one another when she laughed. And she had the sunniest pair of eyes you ever saw in any little creature's head. Altogether she was what you would call provoking, you know. But she was satisfactory, too. Oh, perfectly satisfactory.

"He's a comical old fellow," said Scrooge's nephew, "that's the truth. And he's not as pleasant as he might be. However, his faults carry their own punishment, and I have nothing to say against him."

"I'm sure he is very rich, Fred," hinted Scrooge's niece. "At least you always tell me so."

"What of that, my dear!" said Scrooge's nephew. "His wealth is of no use to him. He doesn't do any good with it. He doesn't make himself comfortable with it. He doesn't even have the satisfaction of thinking—ha, ha, ha!—that he is ever going to benefit us with it."

"I have no patience with him," said Scrooge's niece. Her sisters, and all the other ladies, said the same.

"Oh, I have!" said Scrooge's nephew. "I am sorry for him. I could not be angry with him if I tried. Who suffers from his bad moods? Himself, always. Here, he takes it into his head to dislike us, and he won't come and dine with us. What is the result? He doesn't lose much of a dinner."

"Indeed, I think he loses a very good dinner," interrupted Scrooge's niece. Everybody else said the same. We must allow that they were good judges, because they had just had dinner. The dessert was on the table, and they were gathered round the fire, by lamplight.

"Well! I'm very glad to hear it," said Scrooge's nephew, "because I haven't great faith in these young housekeepers. What do you say, Topper?"

Topper clearly had his eye on one of Scrooge's niece's sisters. He answered that a bachelor was a wretched outcast, who had no right to give an opinion on the subject. At this, Scrooge's niece's sister blushed. She was the plump one with the lace tucker, not the one with the roses.

"Do go on, Fred," said Scrooge's niece, clapping her hands. "He never finishes what he starts to say! He is such a ridiculous fellow!"

Scrooge's nephew enjoyed another laugh. It was impossible to keep the infection away, though the plump sister tried hard with aromatic vinegar. Everyone followed his example together.

"I was only going to say," said Scrooge's nephew, "that because he dislikes us and does not make merry with us, he loses some pleasant moments. They could do him no harm. I am sure he loses better company than his own thoughts. He finds only those in his mouldy old office or his dusty rooms. I mean to give him the same chance every year, whether he likes it or not, because I pity him. He may speak angrily against Christmas until he dies. But he can't help thinking better of it, I defy him. He will see me go there in good temper, year after year. I will say, 'Uncle Scrooge, how are you?' If it only puts him in the mood to leave his poor clerk fifty pounds, that is something! And I think I shook him yesterday."

It was their turn to laugh now at the idea of his shaking Scrooge. But Fred was thoroughly good-natured. He did not care much what they laughed at, so long as they laughed. So he encouraged them in their merriment and passed the bottle joyfully.

After tea they had some music. They were a musical family, and they knew what they were about when they sang a glee or a catch, I can assure you. Topper knew best of all. He could growl away in the bass like a good one. He never made the big veins in his forehead swell, or got red in the face. Scrooge's niece played well on the harp. Among other tunes she played a simple little air. It was a mere nothing: you could learn to whistle it in two minutes. The child who fetched Scrooge from the boarding-school had known it well. The Ghost of Christmas Past had reminded him of this. When this music sounded, all the things that Ghost had shown him came into his mind. He softened more and more. He thought that he could have listened to it often, years ago. Then he might have grown the kindnesses of life, with his own hands, for his own happiness. He would not have needed the sexton's spade that buried Jacob Marley.

But they did not spend the whole evening on music. After a while they played at forfeits. It is good to be children sometimes, and never better than at Christmas, when its mighty Founder was a child himself. Stop! First there was a game of blind-man's buff. Of course there was. And I no more believe Topper was really blind than I believe he had eyes in his boots. My opinion is that it was all arranged between him and Scrooge's nephew. And the Ghost of Christmas Present knew it. The way he went after that plump sister in the lace tucker was an insult to human belief. He knocked down the fire-irons. He tumbled over the chairs. He bumped against the piano. He smothered himself among the curtains. Wherever she went, there went he! He always knew where the plump sister was. He would not catch anybody else. Suppose you fell against him on purpose, as some of them did. He would make a pretend attempt to seize you. That would be an insult to your intelligence. Then he would at once slip away towards the plump sister. She often cried out that it was not fair. And it really was not. But at last he caught her. She rustled in her silk dress and fluttered quickly past him. But he got her into a corner with no escape. Then his behaviour was the worst of all. He pretended not to know her. He pretended it was necessary to touch her head-dress. He pretended he must make sure who she was. For that he pressed a certain ring on her finger and a certain chain round her neck. It was vile and monstrous! No doubt she told him her opinion of it later. By then another player was blind-man, and the two of them were so very confidential together, behind the curtains.

Scrooge's niece was not one of the blind-man's buff party. She had been made comfortable with a large chair and a footstool, in a snug corner. The Ghost and Scrooge were close behind her. But she joined in the forfeits. She played the game of loving her love with all the letters of the alphabet, and she played it wonderfully. She was also very good at the game of How, When and Where. To the secret joy of Scrooge's nephew, she beat her sisters easily. They were sharp girls too, as Topper could have told you. There might have been twenty people there, young and old, but they all played, and so did Scrooge. He forgot completely, in his interest in what was going on, that his voice made no sound in their ears. He sometimes came out with his guess quite loud. Very often he guessed right, too. The sharpest needle, the best Whitechapel kind, guaranteed not to cut your eye, was not sharper than Scrooge. He had just taken it into his head that he was blunt.

The Ghost was greatly pleased to find him in this mood. He looked on Scrooge with such favour that Scrooge begged, like a boy, to be allowed to stay until the guests left. But the Spirit said this could not be done.

"Here is a new game," said Scrooge. "One half hour, Spirit, only one!"

It was a game called Yes and No. Scrooge's nephew had to think of something, and the others must find out what it was. He answered their questions only with yes or no, as the case was. They fired questions at him quickly. From his answers they learned that he was thinking of an animal, a live animal. It was a rather disagreeable animal and a savage animal. It growled and grunted sometimes, and talked sometimes. It lived in London and walked about the streets. Nobody made a show of it, and nobody led it. It did not live in a menagerie. It was never killed in a market. It was not a horse, an ass, a cow or a bull. It was not a tiger, a dog, a pig, a cat or a bear. At every new question, this nephew burst into a fresh roar of laughter. He was so tickled that he had to get up off the sofa and stamp. At last the plump sister fell into the same state and cried out:

"I have found it out! I know what it is, Fred! I know what it is!"

"What is it?" cried Fred.

"It's your Uncle Scro-o-o-o-oge!"

Which it certainly was. Everyone admired this. But some objected that the answer to "Is it a bear?" ought to have been "Yes." A "No" was enough to turn their thoughts away from Mr. Scrooge. That is, if they had ever had any tendency that way.

"He has given us plenty of merriment, I am sure," said Fred, "and it would be ungrateful not to drink his health. Here is a glass of mulled wine ready to our hand at this moment. And I say, 'Uncle Scrooge!'"

"Well! Uncle Scrooge!" they cried.

"A Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to the old man, whatever he is!" said Scrooge's nephew. "He wouldn't take it from me, but may he have it, nevertheless. Uncle Scrooge!"

Uncle Scrooge had become so gay and light of heart, without noticing it. He would have toasted the company in return. He would have thanked them in a speech they could not hear, if the Ghost had given him time. But the whole scene passed away in the breath of the last word his nephew spoke. And he and the Spirit were again on their travels.

They saw much, and went far, and visited many homes, but always with a happy end. The Spirit stood beside sick beds, and the sick were cheerful. He stood in foreign lands, and they seemed close to home. He stood by struggling men, and they were patient in their greater hope. He stood by poverty, and it was rich. He went to almshouses, hospitals and jails, to every refuge of misery. Vain man, in his little brief authority, sometimes locks the door and bars the Spirit out. But wherever he had not done so, the Spirit left his blessing. And he taught Scrooge his lessons.

It was a long night, if it was only a night. But Scrooge had his doubts. The Christmas holidays seemed to be squeezed into the time they spent together. It was strange, too. Scrooge stayed unchanged in his outward form, but the Ghost grew older, clearly older. Scrooge had seen this change but never spoke of it. Then they left a children's Twelfth Night party. They stood together in an open place, and Scrooge looked at the Spirit and saw that his hair was grey.

"Are spirits' lives so short?" asked Scrooge.

"My life on this globe is very brief," replied the Ghost. "It ends tonight."

"Tonight!" cried Scrooge.

"Tonight at midnight. Listen! The time is drawing near."

The chimes were ringing a quarter to twelve at that moment.

"Forgive me if I should not ask this," said Scrooge, looking hard at the Spirit's robe. "But I see something strange sticking out from your skirts. It does not seem to belong to you. Is it a foot or a claw?"

"It might be a claw, for the flesh there is on it," was the Spirit's sorrowful reply. "Look here."

From the folds of his robe he brought out two children. They were wretched, humble, frightful, hideous and miserable. They knelt down at his feet and clung to the outside of his robe.

"Oh, Man! Look here. Look, look, down here!" cried the Ghost.

They were a boy and a girl. They were yellow, thin, ragged, scowling and wolfish. But they were also bowed low in their humility. Youth should have filled out their faces and touched them with its freshest colours. Instead, a stale, shrivelled hand, like the hand of old age, had pinched and twisted them. It had pulled them into shreds. Where angels might have sat on thrones, devils lurked and glared out in threat. No change in humanity has monsters half so horrible and dreadful. No degradation, no twisting, in any rank, through all the mysteries of wonderful creation, has anything like them.

Scrooge started back, shocked. The children were shown to him like this. He tried to say they were fine children. But the words choked in his throat. They would not be part of a lie so enormous.

"Spirit! Are they yours?" Scrooge could say no more.

"They are Man's," said the Spirit, looking down at them. "And they cling to me, turning to me for help against their fathers. This boy is Ignorance. This girl is Want. Beware of them both, and all of their kind. But most of all beware of this boy. On his brow I see something written. It is Doom, unless the writing is erased. Deny it!" cried the Spirit, stretching out his hand towards the city. "Say bad things about those who tell you this! Or admit it, for your own selfish purposes, and make it worse. And wait for the end!"

"Have they no place of safety and no way to help themselves?" cried Scrooge.

"Are there no prisons?" said the Spirit, turning on him for the last time with his own words. "Are there no workhouses?"

The bell struck twelve.

Scrooge looked about him for the Ghost and saw nothing of him. As the last stroke faded away, he remembered the prediction of old Jacob Marley. He lifted up his eyes and saw a solemn Phantom, draped and hooded, coming towards him like a mist along the ground.

### Glossary

- **pitch-and-toss**: an old game in which players throw coins
- **manslaughter**: killing a person without planning to
- **brawn**: cold meat set in jelly
- **scabbard**: the case that holds a sword
- **Norfolk Biffins**: a kind of small, dark apple
- **daws**: small black birds that peck at things
- **fifteen "Bob"**: "Bob" was slang for a shilling, a coin
- **copper**: a big metal pot used for boiling
- **milliner's**: a shop where hats are made and sold
- **furze**: a wild bush with sharp thorns and yellow flowers
- **grog**: a hot drink of strong alcohol mixed with water
- **sexton**: a church worker who digs graves
- **forfeits**: a party game in which players pay small penalties
- **almshouses**: houses where poor people lived, paid for by charity
- **Twelfth Night**: the night of 5 or 6 January, the end of the Christmas season
- **Doom**: a terrible fate
- **workhouses**: places where very poor people lived and worked for food

## Stave Four: The Last of the Spirits

The Phantom came slowly, gravely and silently. When it came near, Scrooge went down on one knee. The air around this Spirit seemed to spread gloom and mystery.

It was wrapped in a deep black robe. The robe hid its head, its face and its body. Only one outstretched hand was visible. Without that hand, it would have been hard to tell the figure from the night, or to separate it from the darkness around it.

Scrooge felt that the Phantom was tall and stately as it came beside him. Its mysterious presence filled him with deep, solemn fear. He knew no more, because the Spirit neither spoke nor moved.

"Am I in the presence of the Ghost of Christmas Yet To Come?" said Scrooge.

The Spirit did not answer. It pointed ahead with its hand.

"You are going to show me shadows of things that have not happened," Scrooge went on. "They will happen in the time before us. Is that so, Spirit?"

The top of the robe folded for a moment, as if the Spirit had bowed its head. That was the only answer he got.

By now Scrooge was used to ghostly company. But he feared this silent shape so much that his legs shook. When he got ready to follow it, he found that he could hardly stand. The Spirit stopped for a moment. It seemed to see how he was, and it gave him time to recover.

But this made Scrooge feel worse. A vague, unclear horror ran through him. Behind the dark cloth, he knew, ghostly eyes were fixed on him. He stretched his own eyes as far as he could. Still he could see only a ghostly hand and one great heap of black.

"Ghost of the Future!" he cried. "I fear you more than any spectre I have seen. But I know you want to do me good. I hope to live and be a different man from the one I was. So I am ready to go with you, and I do it with a thankful heart. Will you not speak to me?"

It gave him no reply. The hand pointed straight ahead.

"Lead on!" said Scrooge. "Lead on! The night is passing fast, and I know the time is precious to me. Lead on, Spirit!"

The Phantom moved away, as it had come towards him. Scrooge followed in the shadow of its robe. He thought the robe lifted him up and carried him along.

They hardly seemed to enter the city. It seemed rather that the city sprang up around them, all by itself. But there they were, in the middle of it, on 'Change, among the merchants. The men hurried up and down. They made the money in their pockets chink, and they talked in groups. They looked at their watches and played thoughtfully with their big gold seals. They did all the usual things, as Scrooge had often seen them do.

The Spirit stopped beside one small group of business men. The hand pointed at them, so Scrooge came closer to listen to their talk.

"No," said a great fat man with a huge chin. "I don't know much about it, either way. I only know he's dead."

"When did he die?" asked another.

"Last night, I believe."

"Why, what was the matter with him?" asked a third man. He took a great deal of snuff out of a very large snuff-box. "I thought he would never die."

"God knows," said the first man, with a yawn.

"What has he done with his money?" asked a red-faced man. He had a large lump on the end of his nose, and it shook like the gills of a turkey-cock.

"I haven't heard," said the man with the big chin, yawning again. "Left it to his company, perhaps. He hasn't left it to me. That's all I know."

The others laughed at this joke.

"It will probably be a very cheap funeral," said the same man. "Upon my life, I don't know anybody who would go to it. Shall we make up a party and volunteer?"

"I don't mind going if there is a lunch," said the man with the lump on his nose. "But if I go, I must be fed."

Another laugh.

"Well, I am the most unselfish of you all," said the first speaker. "I never wear black gloves, and I never eat lunch. But I'll offer to go, if anybody else will. Now I think of it, I'm not sure that I wasn't his closest friend. We always stopped and spoke whenever we met. Goodbye!"

The speakers and listeners strolled away and joined other groups. Scrooge knew the men. He looked at the Spirit for an explanation.

The Phantom glided on into a street. Its finger pointed at two men who were meeting. Scrooge listened again. He thought the explanation might be here.

He knew these men perfectly well too. They were business men, very rich and very important. He had always taken care to stand well in their opinion. But he had done it only for business reasons. Strictly for business reasons.

"How are you?" said one.

"How are you?" said the other.

"Well!" said the first. "Old Scratch has got his own at last, hey?"

"So I am told," said the second. "Cold, isn't it?"

"It's the right weather for Christmas time. You're not a skater, I suppose?"

"No. No. I have something else to think about. Good morning!"

Not another word. That was their meeting, their talk and their parting.

At first Scrooge was surprised. Why did the Spirit think such small talk was important? But he felt sure it must have a hidden purpose, and he tried to guess what it was. It could hardly be about the death of Jacob, his old partner. That was the Past, and this Ghost belonged to the Future. He could not think of anyone close to himself that the talk might fit. But he was sure that, whoever it was about, it held a hidden lesson for his own improvement. So he decided to keep every word he heard and everything he saw. Above all, he would watch for his own shadow when it appeared. He expected that his future self would give him the clue he was missing. Then these riddles would be easy to solve.

He looked for his own image in that very place. But another man stood in his usual corner. The clock showed his usual time for being there, yet he saw no likeness of himself among the crowds pouring in through the Porch. This did not surprise him much. He had been thinking about changing his life. He thought and hoped that he saw his new resolutions carried out here.

The Phantom stood beside him, quiet and dark, with its outstretched hand. Scrooge woke from his thoughtful search. From the turn of the hand, he thought the Unseen Eyes were looking at him closely. It made him shudder and feel very cold.

They left the busy scene and went to a dark part of the town. Scrooge had never been there before, though he knew where it was and its bad name. The streets were dirty and narrow. The shops and houses were wretched. The people were half-naked, drunken, slipshod and ugly. Alleys and archways were like so many cesspools. They poured their smells, their dirt and their people onto the winding streets. The whole quarter smelt of crime, filth and misery.

Far inside this den of bad people was a low, gloomy shop under a sloping roof. Here they bought iron, old rags, bottles, bones and greasy scraps of meat. On the floor lay heaps of rusty keys, nails, chains, hinges, files, scales, weights and old iron of all kinds. Few people would want to look closely at the secrets hidden here. They were hidden in mountains of ugly rags, lumps of rotten fat and graves of bones.

Among the goods he dealt in, by a charcoal stove made of old bricks, sat a grey-haired rascal. He was nearly seventy years old. He had screened himself from the cold outside with a curtain of dirty, mixed-up rags hung on a line. He smoked his pipe and enjoyed his calm retirement.

Scrooge and the Phantom came to this man just as a woman with a heavy bundle crept into the shop. She had hardly come in when another woman, carrying a bundle too, came in after her. A man in faded black followed closely. He was as startled to see them as they were to see each other. For a short while they stared blankly. Then the old man with the pipe joined them, and all three burst out laughing.

"Trust the charwoman to be first!" cried the woman who had come in first. "Trust the laundress to be second. And trust the undertaker's man to be third. Look here, old Joe, what luck! We have all three met here without meaning to!"

"You couldn't have met in a better place," said old Joe, taking his pipe out of his mouth. "Come into the parlour. You were free to use it long ago, you know. And the other two are not strangers. Wait till I shut the shop door. Ah! How it screeches! There isn't a rustier piece of metal here than its own hinges, I believe. And I'm sure there are no older bones here than mine. Ha, ha! We all fit our jobs. We're well matched. Come into the parlour. Come into the parlour."

The parlour was the space behind the screen of rags. The old man raked the fire together with an old stair-rod. His smoky lamp needed trimming, because it was night. He did it with the stem of his pipe, and then he put the pipe back in his mouth.

While he did this, the woman who had already spoken threw her bundle on the floor. She sat down on a stool in a bold, showy way. She crossed her elbows on her knees and looked at the other two with open defiance.

"What does it matter? What does it matter, Mrs. Dilber?" said the woman. "Every person has the right to look after themselves. He always did."

"That's true, indeed!" said the laundress. "No man more so."

"Then don't stand staring as if you were afraid, woman. Who is going to know? We won't point out each other's faults, I suppose?"

"No, indeed!" said Mrs. Dilber and the man together. "We should hope not."

"Very well, then!" cried the woman. "That's enough. Who is hurt by the loss of a few things like these? Not a dead man, I suppose."

"No, indeed," said Mrs. Dilber, laughing.

"If he wanted to keep them after he was dead, the wicked old miser," the woman went on, "why wasn't he natural in his lifetime? If he had been, he would have had somebody to look after him when Death struck him. Instead, he lay there alone, gasping out his last breath."

"It's the truest word ever spoken," said Mrs. Dilber. "It's a judgment on him."

"I wish it was a heavier judgment," replied the woman. "And it would have been, you can be sure, if I could have got my hands on anything else. Open that bundle, old Joe, and tell me what it is worth. Speak plainly. I'm not afraid to be first, or afraid for them to see it. We all know we were helping ourselves before we met here, I think. It's no sin. Open the bundle, Joe."

But her friends were too polite to let her go first. The man in faded black went first and brought out his plunder. There was not much. A seal or two, a pencil-case, a pair of sleeve-buttons and a brooch of no great value. That was all. Old Joe looked at each one and judged its price. He chalked on the wall the sum he would give for each. When nothing more came, he added them up into a total.

"That's your account," said Joe. "I wouldn't give another sixpence, even if I was to be boiled for it. Who's next?"

Mrs. Dilber was next. She had sheets and towels, some clothes, two old-fashioned silver teaspoons, a pair of sugar-tongs and a few boots. Her account was written on the wall in the same way.

"I always give too much to ladies. It's a weakness of mine, and that is how I ruin myself," said old Joe. "That's your account. If you asked me for another penny and argued about it, I would be sorry I was so generous. Then I would knock off half-a-crown."

"And now open my bundle, Joe," said the first woman.

Joe went down on his knees to open it more easily. He undid a great many knots. Then he dragged out a large, heavy roll of some dark cloth.

"What do you call this?" said Joe. "Bed-curtains!"

"Ah!" answered the woman, laughing and leaning forward on her crossed arms. "Bed-curtains!"

"You don't mean you took them down, rings and all, with him lying there?" said Joe.

"Yes, I do," replied the woman. "Why not?"

"You were born to make your fortune," said Joe, "and you'll certainly do it."

"I certainly won't hold back my hand when I can get something by reaching out for it. Not for the sake of such a man as he was, I promise you, Joe," the woman answered coolly. "Don't drop that oil on the blankets, now."

"His blankets?" asked Joe.

"Whose else do you think?" replied the woman. "He isn't likely to catch cold without them, I dare say."

"I hope he didn't die of anything catching? Eh?" said old Joe, stopping his work and looking up.

"Don't be afraid of that," answered the woman. "I'm not so fond of his company that I would stay near him for such things, if he had. Ah! You can look through that shirt until your eyes ache. You won't find a hole in it, or a thin place. It's the best he had, and a fine one too. They would have wasted it, if it hadn't been for me."

"What do you call wasting it?" asked old Joe.

"Putting it on him to be buried in, of course," replied the woman with a laugh. "Somebody was fool enough to do it, but I took it off again. If calico isn't good enough for that, it isn't good enough for anything. It looks just as good on a dead body. He can't look uglier than he did in that one."

Scrooge listened to this talk in horror. They sat in a group around their spoil, in the weak light of the old man's lamp. He looked at them with hatred and disgust. He could hardly have felt more, if they had been foul demons selling the dead body itself.

"Ha, ha!" laughed the same woman, when old Joe took out a flannel bag of money. He counted out their different gains on the ground. "This is the end of it, you see! He frightened everyone away from him when he was alive, so that we could profit when he was dead! Ha, ha, ha!"

"Spirit!" said Scrooge, shuddering from head to foot. "I see, I see. This unhappy man could be me. My life is going that way now. Merciful Heaven, what is this!"

He jumped back in terror, because the scene had changed. Now he almost touched a bed. It was a bare bed with no curtains. Under a ragged sheet lay something covered up. It could not speak, but it announced itself in terrible language.

The room was very dark, too dark to see clearly. Scrooge looked round it because of a secret impulse. He wanted to know what kind of room it was. A pale light rose in the outer air and fell straight on the bed. And there, robbed and stripped, unwatched, unwept and uncared for, lay the body of this man.

Scrooge looked at the Phantom. Its steady hand pointed to the head. The cover was laid so carelessly that the slightest lift would show the face. One movement of Scrooge's finger would do it. He thought of it, and felt how easy it would be, and longed to do it. But he had no more power to pull away the cover than to send away the spectre at his side.

Oh cold, cold, rigid, dreadful Death! Set up your altar here. Dress it with all the terrors you command, for this is your kingdom! But you cannot turn one hair of a loved, respected and honoured head to your dreadful purposes. You cannot make one feature ugly. It is not that the hand is heavy and will fall down when it is let go. It is not that the heart and pulse are still. It is that the hand was open, generous and true. The heart was brave, warm and tender. The pulse was a man's. Strike, Shadow, strike! And see his good deeds spring from the wound, to sow the world with life that never dies!

No voice said these words in Scrooge's ears, and yet he heard them as he looked at the bed. He thought, if this man could rise up now, what would he think of first? Greed, hard dealing, grasping cares? They had brought him to a rich end, truly!

He lay there in the dark, empty house. Not one man, woman or child was there to say, "He was kind to me in this or that, and for the memory of one kind word I will be kind to him." A cat was tearing at the door. Under the hearth-stone there was a sound of gnawing rats. What they wanted in the room of death, and why they were so restless, Scrooge did not dare to think.

"Spirit!" he said. "This is a fearful place. When I leave it, I will not leave its lesson behind, trust me. Let us go!"

The Ghost still pointed with an unmoving finger to the head.

"I understand you," Scrooge answered, "and I would do it if I could. But I do not have the power, Spirit. I do not have the power."

Again it seemed to look at him.

"If there is any person in the town who feels any emotion because of this man's death," said Scrooge, in great agony, "show that person to me, Spirit. I beg you!"

The Phantom spread its dark robe in front of him for a moment, like a wing. When it drew the robe back, it showed a room in daylight. A mother and her children were there.

She was waiting for someone, and she was very anxious. She walked up and down the room. She jumped at every sound. She looked out of the window and glanced at the clock. She tried to sew with her needle, but she could not. She could hardly bear the voices of the children at play.

At last the long-awaited knock came. She hurried to the door and met her husband. His face was tired with care and sad, though he was young. But there was a strange look on it now. It was a kind of serious delight. He was ashamed of it and tried to hold it back.

He sat down to the dinner that had been kept warm for him by the fire. After a long silence, she asked him in a faint voice what the news was. He seemed not to know how to answer.

"Is it good?" she said, "or bad?" She said it to help him.

"Bad," he answered.

"Are we quite ruined?"

"No. There is still hope, Caroline."

"If he shows mercy," she said, amazed, "there is! Nothing is past hope, if such a miracle has happened."

"He is past showing mercy," said her husband. "He is dead."

She was a mild and patient woman, if her face told the truth. But in her soul she was thankful to hear it, and she said so, with clasped hands. The next moment she prayed for forgiveness and was sorry. But the first feeling was the true feeling of her heart.

"The half-drunken woman I told you about last night said something to me," her husband went on. "It was when I tried to see him and ask for a week's delay. I thought it was only an excuse to avoid me. But it has turned out to be quite true. He was not only very ill, but dying, then."

"To whom will our debt be passed?"

"I don't know. But we will have the money ready before then. And even if we did not, it would be very bad luck to find so merciless a creditor in his successor. We may sleep tonight with light hearts, Caroline!"

Yes. They could soften it as much as they liked, but their hearts were lighter. The children's faces were brighter. They were hushed and gathered round to hear what they understood so little. And it was a happier house because of this man's death! The only emotion that the Ghost could show him, caused by the event, was pleasure.

"Let me see some tenderness connected with a death," said Scrooge. "If not, that dark room we just left, Spirit, will be with me for ever."

The Ghost led him through several streets that his feet knew well. As they went along, Scrooge looked here and there to find himself, but he was nowhere to be seen. They entered poor Bob Cratchit's house, the home he had visited before. They found the mother and the children sitting round the fire.

Quiet. Very quiet. The noisy little Cratchits were as still as statues in one corner. They sat looking up at Peter, who had a book in front of him. The mother and her daughters were sewing. But surely they were very quiet!

"'And He took a child, and set him in the midst of them.'"

Where had Scrooge heard those words? He had not dreamed them. The boy must have read them out as he and the Spirit crossed the doorway. Why did he not go on?

The mother laid her work on the table and put her hand up to her face.

"The colour hurts my eyes," she said.

The colour? Ah, poor Tiny Tim!

"They're better now," said Mrs. Cratchit. "It makes them weak, working by candle-light. And I wouldn't let your father see weak eyes when he comes home, not for the world. It must be nearly his time."

"Past it, rather," Peter answered, shutting his book. "But I think he has walked a little slower than he used to, these last few evenings, mother."

They were very quiet again. At last she spoke, in a steady, cheerful voice that shook only once.

"I have known him walk with—I have known him walk with Tiny Tim on his shoulder, very fast indeed."

"And so have I," cried Peter. "Often."

"And so have I," said another. So had all.

"But he was very light to carry," she went on, looking hard at her work, "and his father loved him so much that it was no trouble. No trouble. And there is your father at the door!"

She hurried out to meet him. Little Bob came in, in his comforter. Poor fellow, he needed it. His tea was ready for him on the hob, and they all tried to be the one who helped him to it most. Then the two young Cratchits climbed on his knees. Each child laid a little cheek against his face, as if to say, "Don't mind it, father. Don't be sad!"

Bob was very cheerful with them and spoke kindly to all the family. He looked at the work on the table. He praised the hard work and speed of Mrs. Cratchit and the girls. They would be done long before Sunday, he said.

"Sunday! You went today, then, Robert?" said his wife.

"Yes, my dear," Bob answered. "I wish you could have gone. It would have done you good to see how green a place it is. But you'll see it often. I promised him that I would walk there on a Sunday. My little, little child!" cried Bob. "My little child!"

He broke down all at once. He could not help it. If he could have helped it, he and his child might have been farther apart than they were.

He left the room and went upstairs to the room above. It was lit cheerfully and hung with Christmas decorations. A chair stood close beside the child, and there were signs that someone had been there lately. Poor Bob sat down in it. He thought for a little and calmed himself, and then he kissed the little face. He accepted what had happened, and he went down again, quite happy.

They drew round the fire and talked. The girls and their mother were still working. Bob told them about the great kindness of Mr. Scrooge's nephew. Bob had seen him only once before. That day they had met in the street. Fred saw that Bob looked a little—"just a little down, you know," said Bob—and he asked what had happened to upset him.

"So," said Bob, "I told him. He is the most pleasant-spoken gentleman you ever heard. 'I am heartily sorry for it, Mr. Cratchit,' he said, 'and heartily sorry for your good wife.' By the way, how he ever knew that, I don't know."

"Knew what, my dear?"

"Why, that you were a good wife," replied Bob.

"Everybody knows that!" said Peter.

"Very well said, my boy!" cried Bob. "I hope they do. 'Heartily sorry,' he said, 'for your good wife. If I can help you in any way,' he said, giving me his card, 'that's where I live. Please come to me.' Now, it wasn't for anything he might be able to do for us," cried Bob. "It was his kind way that was so delightful. It really seemed as if he had known our Tiny Tim, and felt with us."

"I'm sure he's a good soul!" said Mrs. Cratchit.

"You would be surer of it, my dear," Bob answered, "if you saw and spoke to him. I shouldn't be at all surprised—mark what I say!—if he got Peter a better job."

"Only hear that, Peter," said Mrs. Cratchit.

"And then," cried one of the girls, "Peter will be keeping company with someone, and setting up for himself."

"Get along with you!" said Peter, grinning.

"It's just as likely as not," said Bob, "one of these days. But there is plenty of time for that, my dear. However and whenever we part from one another, I am sure none of us will forget poor Tiny Tim. Shall we? Or this first parting among us?"

"Never, father!" cried they all.

"And I know," said Bob, "I know, my dears, that we will remember how patient and how gentle he was, although he was a little, little child. Then we shall not quarrel easily among ourselves, and forget poor Tiny Tim by doing it."

"No, never, father!" they all cried again.

"I am very happy," said little Bob. "I am very happy!"

Mrs. Cratchit kissed him. His daughters kissed him. The two young Cratchits kissed him. Peter and he shook hands. Spirit of Tiny Tim, your childish soul came from God!

"Spectre," said Scrooge, "something tells me our time together is nearly over. I know it, but I do not know how. Tell me, who was that man we saw lying dead?"

The Ghost of Christmas Yet To Come carried him on, as before. It seemed to be at a different time, he thought. Indeed, there seemed to be no order in these last visions, except that they were all in the Future. It took him to the places where business men met, but it did not show him himself. In fact the Spirit did not stop for anything. It went straight on, as if to the end that Scrooge now wanted. At last he begged it to wait a moment.

"This court that we are hurrying through," said Scrooge, "is where my office is. It has been there for a long time. I see the house. Let me see what I will be in days to come!"

The Spirit stopped. The hand pointed somewhere else.

"The house is over there," Scrooge cried. "Why do you point away?"

The finger, which nothing could move, did not change at all.

Scrooge hurried to the window of his office and looked in. It was an office still, but not his. The furniture was not the same, and the person in the chair was not himself. The Phantom pointed as before.

He joined it again. He wondered why it had gone there and where it was going. He went with it until they reached an iron gate. He stopped to look round before he went in.

A churchyard. So here the wretched man, whose name he still had to learn, lay under the ground. It was a worthy place. It was walled in by houses. Grass and weeds covered it, the growth of death, not of life. It was choked with too many burials, and fat like a man who has eaten too much. A worthy place!

The Spirit stood among the graves and pointed down at one. Scrooge went towards it, trembling. The Phantom was exactly as it had been. But he feared that he saw a new meaning in its solemn shape.

"Before I come nearer to that stone you point to," said Scrooge, "answer me one question. Are these the shadows of things that Will be, or are they only shadows of things that May be?"

Still the Ghost pointed down at the grave beside which it stood.

"The way men live points to certain ends," said Scrooge. "If they keep to it, it must lead there. But if they leave that way, the ends will change. Say it is so with what you show me!"

The Spirit was as unmoving as ever.

Scrooge crept towards it, trembling as he went. He followed the finger and read on the stone of the neglected grave his own name, Ebenezer Scrooge.

"Am I that man who lay upon the bed?" he cried, on his knees.

The finger pointed from the grave to him, and back again.

"No, Spirit! Oh no, no!"

The finger was still there.

"Spirit!" he cried, clutching its robe tightly. "Hear me! I am not the man I was. I will not be the man I would have been if you had not come to me. Why show me this, if I am past all hope?"

For the first time the hand seemed to shake.

"Good Spirit," he went on, as he fell down on the ground before it, "your nature pleads for me and pities me. Assure me that I can still change these shadows you have shown me, by living differently!"

The kind hand trembled.

"I will honour Christmas in my heart, and try to keep it all the year. I will live in the Past, the Present and the Future. The Spirits of all Three will work within me. I will not shut out the lessons that they teach. Oh, tell me I can wipe away the writing on this stone!"

In his agony he caught the ghostly hand. It tried to free itself, but he was strong in his begging and held it. The Spirit, stronger still, pushed him away.

Holding up his hands in a last prayer to change his fate, he saw a change in the Phantom's hood and robe. It shrank, collapsed and dwindled down into a bedpost.

### Glossary

- **'Change**: the place where business men met to buy, sell and do deals (the Exchange)
- **snuff**: brown powder that people breathed in through the nose, in the past
- **Old Scratch**: a name for the Devil
- **charwoman**: a woman who is paid to clean houses
- **laundress**: a woman who washes clothes for pay
- **undertaker's man**: a worker for the person who prepares dead bodies for burial
- **plunder**: things taken by stealing
- **calico**: plain, cheap cotton cloth
- **creditor**: a person you owe money to
- **hearth-stone**: the stone floor in front of a fireplace

## Stave Five: The End of It

Yes! And the bedpost was his own. The bed was his own, the room was his own. Best and happiest of all, the Time before him was his own, to make things right in!

"I will live in the Past, the Present and the Future!" Scrooge said again, as he scrambled out of bed. "The Spirits of all Three will work within me. Oh, Jacob Marley! Heaven and the Christmas Time be praised for this! I say it on my knees, old Jacob. On my knees!"

He was so excited and so glowing with good plans that his broken voice would hardly answer him. He had been sobbing hard in his fight with the Spirit, and his face was wet with tears.

"They are not torn down," cried Scrooge, folding one of his bed-curtains in his arms. "They are not torn down, rings and all. They are here. I am here. The shadows of the things that would have been can be driven away. They will be. I know they will!"

His hands were busy with his clothes all this time. He turned them inside out. He put them on upside down. He tore them, lost them, and made them part of every kind of foolishness.

"I don't know what to do!" cried Scrooge, laughing and crying in the same breath. He was making a perfect Laocoön of himself with his stockings. "I am as light as a feather. I am as happy as an angel. I am as merry as a schoolboy. I am as giddy as a drunken man. A merry Christmas to everybody! A happy New Year to all the world! Hallo here! Whoop! Hallo!"

He had frisked into the sitting-room, and now he stood there, completely out of breath.

"There's the saucepan the gruel was in!" cried Scrooge. He started off again and went round the fireplace. "There's the door the Ghost of Jacob Marley came in by! There's the corner where the Ghost of Christmas Present sat! There's the window where I saw the wandering Spirits! It's all right. It's all true. It all happened. Ha ha ha!"

Really, for a man who had been out of practice for so many years, it was a splendid laugh, a most famous laugh. It was the father of a long, long line of brilliant laughs!

"I don't know what day of the month it is!" said Scrooge. "I don't know how long I've been among the Spirits. I don't know anything. I'm quite a baby. Never mind. I don't care. I'd rather be a baby. Hallo! Whoop! Hallo here!"

His joy was stopped by the churches. They were ringing out the loudest peals he had ever heard. Clash, clang, hammer; ding, dong, bell. Bell, dong, ding; hammer, clang, clash! Oh, glorious, glorious!

He ran to the window, opened it and put out his head. No fog, no mist. It was clear, bright, merry, lively and cold. It was the kind of cold that plays a tune for the blood to dance to. Golden sunlight! Heavenly sky! Sweet fresh air! Merry bells! Oh, glorious! Glorious!

"What's today?" cried Scrooge, calling down to a boy in Sunday clothes. The boy had perhaps come into the street to look around.

"Eh?" answered the boy, full of wonder.

"What's today, my fine fellow?" said Scrooge.

"Today!" replied the boy. "Why, Christmas Day."

"It's Christmas Day!" said Scrooge to himself. "I haven't missed it. The Spirits have done it all in one night. They can do anything they like. Of course they can. Of course they can. Hallo, my fine fellow!"

"Hallo!" answered the boy.

"Do you know the poulterer's, in the next street but one, at the corner?" Scrooge asked.

"I should hope I did," replied the boy.

"An intelligent boy!" said Scrooge. "A remarkable boy! Do you know whether they have sold the prize turkey that was hanging up there? Not the little prize turkey. The big one!"

"What, the one as big as me?" answered the boy.

"What a delightful boy!" said Scrooge. "It's a pleasure to talk to him. Yes, my buck!"

"It's hanging there now," replied the boy.

"Is it?" said Scrooge. "Go and buy it."

"Walk-er!" cried the boy.

"No, no," said Scrooge, "I am in earnest. Go and buy it, and tell them to bring it here. Then I can tell them where to take it. Come back with the man, and I'll give you a shilling. Come back with him in less than five minutes, and I'll give you half-a-crown!"

The boy was off like a shot. A man would have needed a very steady hand on a gun to fire a shot half as fast.

"I'll send it to Bob Cratchit's!" whispered Scrooge, rubbing his hands and bursting with laughter. "He won't know who sends it. It's twice the size of Tiny Tim. Joe Miller never made such a joke as sending it to Bob's will be!"

The hand he wrote the address with was not steady, but write it he did, somehow. Then he went downstairs to open the street door, ready for the poulterer's man. While he stood there waiting, the knocker caught his eye.

"I shall love it as long as I live!" cried Scrooge, patting it with his hand. "I hardly ever looked at it before. What an honest face it has! It's a wonderful knocker! Here's the turkey! Hallo! Whoop! How are you! Merry Christmas!"

It was a turkey! That bird could never have stood on its legs. It would have snapped them off short in a minute, like sticks of sealing-wax.

"Why, it's impossible to carry that to Camden Town," said Scrooge. "You must take a cab."

He chuckled as he said this. He chuckled as he paid for the turkey, and he chuckled as he paid for the cab. He chuckled as he paid the boy. But the biggest chuckle came when he sat down again in his chair, out of breath, and chuckled until he cried.

Shaving was not easy, because his hand kept shaking very much. Shaving needs attention, even when you don't dance while you do it. But if he had cut off the end of his nose, he would have put a piece of sticking-plaster over it and been quite satisfied.

He dressed "all in his best" and at last went out into the streets. By this time people were pouring out of their houses, as he had seen them with the Ghost of Christmas Present. Scrooge walked with his hands behind him and looked at everyone with a delighted smile. He looked so pleasant that three or four good-humoured fellows said, "Good morning, sir! A merry Christmas to you!" Scrooge often said afterwards that of all the happy sounds he had ever heard, those were the happiest in his ears.

He had not gone far when he saw the portly gentleman coming towards him. This was the man who had walked into his counting-house the day before and said, "Scrooge and Marley's, I believe?" Scrooge felt a pang in his heart at the thought of how the old gentleman would look at him when they met. But he knew what path lay straight in front of him, and he took it.

"My dear sir," said Scrooge, hurrying his steps and taking the old gentleman by both hands. "How do you do? I hope you succeeded yesterday. It was very kind of you. A merry Christmas to you, sir!"

"Mr. Scrooge?"

"Yes," said Scrooge. "That is my name, and I fear it may not be pleasant to you. Please allow me to ask your pardon. And will you have the goodness—" Here Scrooge whispered in his ear.

"Lord bless me!" cried the gentleman, as if his breath were taken away. "My dear Mr. Scrooge, are you serious?"

"If you please," said Scrooge. "Not a farthing less. A great many back-payments are included in it, I assure you. Will you do me that favour?"

"My dear sir," said the other, shaking hands with him. "I don't know what to say to such munifi—"

"Don't say anything, please," said Scrooge. "Come and see me. Will you come and see me?"

"I will!" cried the old gentleman. And it was clear that he meant to do it.

"Thank you," said Scrooge. "I am much obliged to you. I thank you fifty times. Bless you!"

He went to church, and walked about the streets. He watched the people hurrying to and fro. He patted children on the head and talked to beggars. He looked down into the kitchens of houses and up at the windows. He found that everything could give him pleasure. He had never dreamed that any walk, or anything at all, could give him so much happiness. In the afternoon he turned his steps towards his nephew's house.

He passed the door a dozen times before he had the courage to go up and knock. But he made a dash and did it.

"Is your master at home, my dear?" said Scrooge to the girl. Nice girl! Very.

"Yes, sir."

"Where is he, my love?" said Scrooge.

"He's in the dining-room, sir, with the mistress. I'll show you upstairs, if you please."

"Thank you. He knows me," said Scrooge, with his hand already on the dining-room lock. "I'll go in here, my dear."

He turned it gently and slid his face in round the door. Fred and his wife were looking at the table, which was laid out in great style. These young housekeepers are always nervous about such things, and like to see that everything is right.

"Fred!" said Scrooge.

Dear heart alive, how his niece by marriage jumped! Scrooge had forgotten for the moment that she sat in the corner with the footstool. If he had remembered, he would not have done it for anything.

"Why, bless my soul!" cried Fred. "Who's that?"

"It's I. Your uncle Scrooge. I have come to dinner. Will you let me in, Fred?"

Let him in! It is lucky Fred didn't shake his arm off. He was at home in five minutes. Nothing could be heartier. His niece looked just the same. So did Topper when he came. So did the plump sister when she came. So did everyone when they came. Wonderful party, wonderful games, wonderful agreement, won-der-ful happiness!

But he was early at the office next morning. Oh, he was early there. If he could only be there first and catch Bob Cratchit coming late! That was the thing he had set his heart on.

And he did it. Yes, he did! The clock struck nine. No Bob. A quarter past. No Bob. Bob was a full eighteen minutes and a half late. Scrooge sat with his door wide open, so that he could see him come into the Tank.

Bob's hat was off before he opened the door, and his comforter too. He was on his stool in no time, driving his pen along as if he were trying to catch up with nine o'clock.

"Hallo!" growled Scrooge, in his old voice, as near as he could fake it. "What do you mean by coming here at this time of day?"

"I am very sorry, sir," said Bob. "I am behind my time."

"You are?" said Scrooge. "Yes. I think you are. Step this way, sir, if you please."

"It's only once a year, sir," pleaded Bob, coming out of the Tank. "It won't happen again. I was making rather merry yesterday, sir."

"Now, I'll tell you what, my friend," said Scrooge. "I am not going to put up with this sort of thing any longer. And therefore..."

He leapt from his stool and dug Bob in the waistcoat. Bob staggered back into the Tank again.

"And therefore I am going to raise your salary!" said Scrooge.

Bob trembled and moved a little nearer to the ruler. For a moment he thought of knocking Scrooge down with it and holding him. He would call to the people in the court for help and a strait-jacket.

"A merry Christmas, Bob!" said Scrooge, with an earnestness that could not be mistaken. He clapped him on the back. "A merrier Christmas, Bob, my good fellow, than I have given you for many a year! I'll raise your salary, and I'll try to help your struggling family. We will talk about your affairs this very afternoon, over a Christmas bowl of smoking bishop, Bob! Make up the fires, and buy another coal-scuttle before you dot another i, Bob Cratchit!"

### Glossary

- **poulterer**: a person who sells chickens, geese and turkeys
- **Laocoön**: a famous old statue of a man tangled up with snakes
- **Walk-er!**: a slang word that means "No way! You must be joking!"
- **Joe Miller**: the name of a famous book of jokes
- **sealing-wax**: hard red wax that people used to close letters; it breaks easily
- **sticking-plaster**: a small sticky bandage for a cut
- **farthing**: a very small coin of little value
- **the Tank**: the small room where Bob Cratchit works
- **strait-jacket**: a tight jacket put on a person who is thought to be mad
- **smoking bishop**: a hot, spiced wine drink
- **coal-scuttle**: a metal bucket for carrying coal