his cravat, hug him round the
neck, pummel his back, and kick his legs in irrepressible affection! The
shouts of wonder and delight with which the development of every package
was received! The terrible announcement that the baby had been taken in
the act of putting a doll's frying-pan into his mouth, and was more than
suspected of having swallowed a fictitious turkey, glued on a wooden
platter! The immense relief of finding this a false alarm! The joy, and
gratitude, and ecstasy! They are all indescribable alike. It is enough
that by degrees, the children and their emotions got out of the parlour,
and, by one stair at a time, up to the top of the house, where they went
to bed, and so subsided.

And now Scrooge looked on more attentively than ever, when the master of
the house, having his daughter leaning fondly on him, sat down with her
and her mother at his own fireside; and when he thought that such
another creature, quite as graceful and as full of promise, might have
called him father, and been a spring-time in the haggard winter of his
life, his sight grew very dim indeed.

"Belle," said the husband, turning to his wife with a smile, "I saw an
old friend of yours this afternoon."

"Who was it?"

"Guess!"

"How can I? Tut, don't I know?" she added in the same breath, laughing
as he laughed. "Mr. Scrooge."

"Mr. Scrooge it was. I passed his office window; and as it was not shut
up, and he had a candle inside, I could scarcely help seeing him. His
partner lies upon the point of death, I hear; and there he sat alone.
Quite alone in the world, I do believe."

"Spirit!" said Scrooge in a broken voice, "remove me from this place."

"I told you these were shadows of the things that have been," said the
Ghost. "That they are what they are, do not blame me!"

"Remove me!" Scrooge exclaimed. "I cannot bear it!"

He turned upon the Ghost, and seeing that it looked upon him with a face
in which in some strange way there were fragments of all the faces it
had shown him, wrestled with it.

"Leave me! Take me back! Haunt me no longer!"

In the struggle--if that can be called a struggle in which the Ghost,
with no visible resistance on its own part, was undisturbed by any
effort of its adversary--Scrooge observed that its light was burning
high and bright; and dimly connecting that with its influence over him,
he seized the extinguisher cap, and by a sudden action pressed it down
upon its head.

The Spirit droppe