nd
decrease the surplus population. Besides--excuse me--I don't know that."

"But you might know it," observed 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 occupies me constantly. Good afternoon, gentlemen!"

Seeing clearly that it would be useless to pursue their point, the
gentlemen withdrew. Scrooge resumed his labours with an improved opinion
of himself, and in more facetious temper than was usual with him.

Meanwhile the fog and darkness thickened so, that the people ran about
with flaring links,[253-5] proffering their services to go before horses
in carriages, and conduct them on their way. The ancient tower of a
church, whose gruff old bell was always peeping slily down at Scrooge
out of a gothic window in the wall, became invisible, and struck the
hours and quarters in the clouds, with tremulous vibrations afterwards
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, and had lighted a great fire in
a brazier, round which a party of ragged men and boys were gathered:
warming their hands and winking their eyes before the blaze in rapture.
The water-plug being left in solitude, its overflowings sullenly
congealed, and turned to misanthropic ice. The brightness of the shop
where holly sprigs and berries crackled in the lamp heat of the windows,
made pale faces ruddy as they passed. Poulterers' and grocers' trades
became a splendid joke: a glorious pageant, with which it was next to
impossible to believe that such dull principles as bargain and sale had
anything to do. The Lord Mayor, in the stronghold of 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, whom he had
fined five shillings on the previous Monday for being drunk and
bloodthirsty in the streets, stirred up to-morrow's pudding in his
garret, while his lean wife and the baby sallied out to buy the beef.

Foggier yet, and colder! Piercing, searching, biting cold. If the good
Saint Dunstan[254-6] had but nipped the Evil Spirit's nose with a touch
of such weather as that, instead of using his familiar weapons, then
indeed he would have roared to lusty purpose. The owner of one scant
young nose, gnawed and mumbled by th