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 blood-thirsty 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 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 the hungry cold as bones are gnawed
by dogs, stooped down at Scrooge's keyhole to regale him with a
Christmas carol: but at the first sound of--

"God bless you merry gentleman!
May nothing you dismay!"

Scrooge seized the ruler with such energy of action, that the singer
fled in terror, leaving the keyhole to the fog and even more congenial
frost.

At length the hour of shutting up the counting-house arrived. With an
ill-will Scrooge dismounted from his stool, and tacitly admitted the
fact to the expectant clerk in the Tank, who instantly snuffed his
candle out, and put on his hat.

"You'll want all day to-morrow, I suppose?" said Scrooge.

[Illustration: Original manuscript of Page 7.]

"If quite convenient, Sir."

"It's not convenient," said Scrooge, "and it's not fair. If I was to
stop half-a-crown for it, you'd think yourself ill used, I'll be
bound?"

The clerk smiled faintly.

"And yet," said Scrooge, "you don't think _me_ ill-used, when I pay a
day's wages for no work."

The clerk observed that it was only once a year.

"A poor excuse for picking a man's pocket every twenty-fifth of
December!" said Scrooge, buttoning his great-coat to the chin. "But I
suppose you must have the whole day. Be here all the earlier next
morning!"

The clerk promised that he would; and Scrooge walked out with a growl.
The office was closed in a twinkling, and the clerk, with the long
ends of his white comforter dangling below his waist (for he boasted
no great-coat), went down a slide on Cornhill, at the end of a lane of
boys, twenty times, in honour of its being Christmas-eve, and then ran
home to Camden Town as hard as he could pelt, to pla