"Nephew!" returned the uncle, sternly, "keep Christmas in your own
way, and let me keep it in mine."

"Keep it!" repeated Scrooge's nephew. "But you don't keep it."

"Let me leave it alone, then," said Scrooge. "Much good may it do you!
Much good it has ever done you!"

"There are many things from which I might have derived good, by which
I have not profited, I dare say," returned the nephew: "Christmas
among the rest. But I am sure I have always thought of Christmas time,
when it has come round--apart from the veneration due to its sacred
name and origin, if anything belonging to it can be apart from
that--as a good time: a kind, forgiving, charitable, pleasant time:
the only time I know of, in the long calendar of the year, when men
and women seem by one consent to open their shut-up hearts freely, and
to think of people below them as if they really were fellow-passengers
to the grave, and not another race of creatures bound on other
journeys. And therefore, uncle, though it has never put a scrap of
gold or silver in my pocket, I believe that it _has_ done me good, and
_will_ do me good; and I say, God bless it!"

The clerk in the tank involuntarily applauded: becoming immediately
sensible of the impropriety, he poked the fire, and extinguished the
last frail spark for ever.

"Let me hear another sound from _you_" said Scrooge, "and you'll keep
your Christmas by losing your situation. You're quite a powerful
speaker, sir," he added, turning to his nephew. "I wonder you don't go
into Parliament."

"Don't be angry, uncle. Come! Dine with us to-morrow."

Scrooge said that he would see him--yes, indeed he did. He went the
whole length of the expression, and said that he would see him in that
extremity first.

[Illustration: Original manuscript of Page 4.]

"But why?" cried Scrooge's nephew. "Why?"

"Why did you get married?" said Scrooge.

"Because I fell in love."

"Because you fell in love!" growled Scrooge, as if that were the only
one thing in the world more ridiculous than a merry Christmas. "Good
afternoon!"

"Nay, uncle, but you never came to see me before that happened. Why
give it as a reason for not coming now?"

"Good afternoon," said Scrooge.

"I want nothing from you; I ask nothing of you; why cannot we be
friends?"

"Good afternoon," said Scrooge.

"I am sorry, with all my heart, to find you so resolute. We have never
had any quarrel, to which I have been a party. But I have made the