knew that it was quite correct; that
everything had happened so; that there he was, alone again, when all
the other boys had gone home for the jolly holidays.

He was not reading now, but walking up and down despairingly. Scrooge
looked at the Ghost, and with a mournful shaking of his head, glanced
anxiously towards the door.

It opened; and a little girl, much younger than the boy, came darting
in, and putting her arms about his neck, and often kissing him,
addressed him as her "Dear, dear brother."

[Illustration: Original manuscript of Page 22.]

"I have come to bring you home, dear brother!" said the child,
clapping her tiny hands, and bending down to laugh. "To bring you
home, home, home!"

"Home, little Fan?" returned the boy.

"Yes!" said the child, brimful of glee. "Home, for good and all. Home,
for ever and ever. Father is so much kinder than he used to be, that
home's like Heaven! He spoke so gently to me one dear night when I was
going to bed, that I was not afraid to ask him once more if you might
come home; and he said Yes, you should; and sent me in a coach to
bring you. And you're to be a man!" said the child, opening her eyes,
"and are never to come back here; but first, we're to be together all
the Christmas long, and have the merriest time in all the world."

"You are quite a woman, little Fan!" exclaimed the boy.

She clapped her hands and laughed, and tried to touch his head; but
being too little, laughed again, and stood on tiptoe to embrace him.
Then she began to drag him, in her childish eagerness, towards the
door; and he, nothing loth to go, accompanied her.

A terrible voice in the hall cried, "Bring down Master Scrooge's box,
there!" and in the hall appeared the schoolmaster himself, who glared
on Master Scrooge with a ferocious condescension, and threw him into a
dreadful state of mind by shaking hands with him. He then conveyed him
and his sister into the veriest old well of a shivering best-parlour
that ever was seen, where the maps upon the wall, and the celestial
and terrestrial globes in the windows, were waxy with cold. Here he
produced a decanter of curiously light wine, and a block of curiously
heavy cake, and administered instalments of those dainties to the
young people: at the same time, sending out a meagre servant to offer
a glass of "something" to the postboy, who answered that he thanked
the gentleman, but if it was the same tap as he had tasted before, he
had rather