rom Tiny
Tim, who had a plaintive little voice, and sang it very well indeed.

There was nothing of high mark in this. They were not a handsome family;
they were not well dressed; their shoes were far from being water-proof;
their clothes were scanty; and Peter might have known, and very likely
did, the inside of a pawnbroker's. But they were happy, grateful,
pleased with one another, and contented with the time; and when they
faded, and looked happier yet in the bright sprinklings of the Spirit's
torch at parting, Scrooge had his eye upon them, and especially on Tiny
Tim, until the last.

It was a great surprise to Scrooge, as this scene vanished, to hear a
hearty laugh. It was a much greater surprise to Scrooge to recognize it
as his own nephew's, and to find himself in a bright, dry, gleaming
room, with the Spirit standing smiling by his side, and looking at that
same nephew.

It is a fair, even-handed, noble adjustment of things, that while there
is infection in disease and sorrow, there is nothing in the world so
irresistibly contagious as laughter and good-humor. When Scrooge's
nephew laughed, Scrooge's niece by marriage laughed as heartily as he.
And their assembled friends, being not a bit behindhand, laughed out
lustily.

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

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

She was very pretty, exceedingly pretty. With a dimpled,
surprised-looking, capital face; a ripe little mouth that seemed made to
be kissed,--as no doubt it was; all kinds of good little dots about her
chin, that melted into one another when she laughed; and the sunniest
pair of eyes you ever saw in any little creature's head. Altogether she
was what you would have called provoking, but satisfactory, too. O,
perfectly satisfactory!

"He's a comical old fellow," said Scrooge's nephew, "that's the truth;
and not so pleasant as he might be. However, his offences carry their
own punishment, and I have nothing to say against him. Who suffers by
his ill whims? Himself, always. Here he takes it into his head to
dislike us, and he won't come and dine with us. What's the consequence?
He don't lose much of a dinner."

"Indeed, I think he loses a very good dinner," interrupted Scrooge's
niece. Everybody else said the same, and they must be allowed to have