hail, and sleet, could boast of the
advantage over him in only one respect. They often "came down"
handsomely, and Scrooge never did.

Nobody ever stopped him in the street to say, with gladsome looks, "My
dear Scrooge, how are you? When will you come to see me?" No beggars
implored him to bestow a trifle, no children asked him what it was
o'clock, no man or woman ever once in all his life inquired the way to
such and such a place, of Scrooge.

But what did Scrooge care? It was the very thing he liked. To edge his
way along the crowded paths of life, warning all human sympathy to keep
its distance, was what the knowing ones call "nuts" to Scrooge.

Once upon a time--of all the good days in the year, on Christmas
Eve--old Scrooge sat busy in his counting-house. It was cold, bleak,
biting weather: foggy withal: and he could hear the people in the court
outside, go wheezing up and down, beating their hands upon their
breasts, and stamping their feet upon the pavement stones to warm them.
The city clocks had only just gone three, but it was quite dark
already--it had not been light all day--and candles were flaring in the
windows of the neighboring offices, like ruddy smears upon the palpable
brown air.

The door of Scrooge's counting-house was open, that he might keep his
eye upon his clerk, who in a dismal little cell beyond, a sort of tank,
was copying letters. Scrooge had a very small fire, but the clerk's fire
was so very much smaller that it looked like one coal. But he couldn't
replenish it, for Scrooge kept the coal-box in his own room; and so
surely as the clerk came in with the shovel, the master predicted that
it would be necessary for them to part. Wherefore the clerk put on his
white comforter, and tried to warm himself at the candle; in which
effort, not being a man of strong imagination, he failed.

"A merry Christmas, uncle! God save you!" cried a cheerful voice. It was
the voice of Scrooge's nephew, who came upon him so quickly that this
was the first intimation he had of his approach.

"Bah!" said Scrooge. "Humbug!"

He had so heated himself with rapid walking in the fog and frost, this
nephew of Scrooge's, that he was all in a glow; his face was ruddy and
handsome; his eyes sparkled, and his breath smoked again.

"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