woman, laughing and leaning forward on her crossed
arms. "Bed curtains!"

"You don't mean to say you took 'em 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 shan't hold my hand, when I can get anything in it by
reaching it out, for the sake of such a man as he was, I promise you,
Joe," returned the woman coolly. "Don't drop that oil upon the blankets,
now."

"His blankets?" asked Joe.

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

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

"Don't you be afraid of that," returned the woman. "I an't so fond of
his company that I'd loiter about him for such things, if he did. Ah!
you may look through that shirt till your eyes ache; but you won't find
a hole in it, nor a threadbare place. It's the best he had, and a fine
one too. They'd have wasted it, if it hadn't been for me."

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

"Putting it on him to be buried in, to be sure," replied the woman with
a laugh. "Somebody was fool enough to do it, but I took it off again. If
calico ain't good enough for such a purpose, it isn't good enough for
anything. It's quite as becoming to the body. He can't look uglier than
he did in that one."

Scrooge listened to this dialogue in horror. As they sat grouped about
their spoil, in the scanty light afforded by the old man's lamp, he
viewed them with a detestation and disgust, which could hardly have been
greater, though they had been obscene demons, marketing the corpse
itself.

"Ha, ha!" laughed the same woman, when old Joe, producing a flannel bag
with money in it, told out their several gains upon the ground. "This is
the end of it, you see? He frightened everyone away from him when he was
alive, to profit us when he was dead! Ha! ha! ha!"

"Spirit!" said Scrooge, shuddering from head to foot, "I see, I see. The
case of this unhappy man might be my own. My life tends that way, now.
Merciful Heaven, what is this?"

He recoiled in terror, for the scene had changed, and now he almost
touched a bed: a bare, uncurtained bed: on which, beneath a ragged
sheet, there lay a something covered up which, though it was dumb,
announced itself in awful language.

The room was very dark, to