on Scrooge. No warmth could
warm, nor wintry weather chill him. No wind that blew was bitterer than
he, no falling snow was more intent upon its purpose, no pelting rain
less open to entreaty. Foul weather didn't know where to have him. The
heaviest rain, and snow, and 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. Even the blind men's dogs appeared to
know him; and when they saw him coming on, would tug their owners into
doorways and up courts; and then would wag their tails as though they
said, "No eye at all is better than an evil eye, dark master!"

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
fog came pouring in at every chink and keyhole, and was so dense
without, that although the court was of the narrowest, the houses
opposite were mere phantoms. To see the dingy cloud come drooping down,
obscuring everything, one might have thought that Nature lived hard by,
and was brewing on a large scale.[247-1]

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