Charles Dickens: A Christmas Carol

Stave 2: The First of the Three Spirits (continued)

`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 not. Master Scrooge's trunk being by this time tied on to the top of the chaise, the children bade the schoolmaster good-bye right willingly; and getting into it, drove gaily down the garden-sweep: the quick wheels dashing the hoar-frost and snow from off the dark leaves of the evergreens like spray.

`Always a delicate creature, whom a breath might have withered,' said the Ghost. `But she had a large heart.'

`So she had,' cried Scrooge. `You're right. I will not gainsay it, Spirit. God forbid.'

`She died a woman,' said the Ghost, `and had, as I think, children.'

`One child,' Scrooge returned.

`True,' said the Ghost. `Your nephew.'

Scrooge seemed uneasy in his mind; and answered briefly, `Yes.'