st, the houses opposite were mere
phantoms. To see the dingy cloud come drooping down, obscuring
everything, one might have thought that Nature lived hard by, and was
brewing on a large scale.

The door of Scrooge's counting-house was open that he might keep his
eye upon his clerk, who in a dismal little cell beyond, a sort of
tank, was copying letters. Scrooge had a very small fire, but the
clerk's fire was so very much smaller that it looked like one coal.
But he couldn't replenish it, for Scrooge kept the coal-box in his own
room; and so surely as the clerk came in with the shovel, the master
predicted that it would be necessary for them to part. Wherefore the
clerk put on his white comforter, and tried to warm himself at the
candle; in which effort, not being a man of a strong imagination, he
failed.

"A merry Christmas, uncle! God save you!" cried a cheerful voice. It
was the voice of Scrooge's nephew, who came upon him so quickly that
this was the first intimation he had of his approach.

"Bah!" said Scrooge, "Humbug!"

He had so heated himself with rapid walking in the fog and frost, this
nephew of Scrooge's, that he was all in a glow; his face was ruddy and
handsome; his eyes sparkled, and his breath smoked again.

"Christmas a humbug, uncle!" said Scrooge's nephew. "You don't mean
that, I am sure."

"I do," said Scrooge. "Merry Christmas! what right have you to be
merry? what reason have you to be merry? You're poor enough."

"Come, then," returned the nephew gaily. "What right have you to be
dismal? what reason have you to be morose? You're rich enough."

Scrooge having no better answer ready on the spur of the moment, said,
"Bah!" again; and followed it up with "Humbug."

"Don't be cross, uncle," said the nephew.

"What else can I be" returned the uncle, "when I live in such

[Illustration: Original manuscript of Page 3.]

a world of fools as this? Merry Christmas! Out upon merry Christmas!
What's Christmas time to you but a time for paying bills without
money; a time for finding yourself a year older, and not an hour
richer; a time for balancing your books and having every item in 'em
through a round dozen of months presented dead against you? If I could
work my will," said Scrooge, indignantly, "every idiot who goes about
with 'Merry Christmas,' on his lips, should be boiled with his own
pudding, and buried with a stake of holly through his heart. He
should!"

"Uncle!" pleaded the nephew.