The Further Adventures of Ebenezer Scrooge Read Free

greeting, the New Year being, in the mind of the clerk, some six months distant, Scrooge replied that the calendar was an arbitrary governor of a man’s life and that the year began anew whenever one decided to live his life in a new way. The clerk managed to escape before Scrooge couldexplain just how this change might be effected, but his disappearance made not the slightest difference in Scrooge’s holiday temper. Only a few steps on, he paused before the open door of an office to regale the occupants with a Christmas carol, but at the first sound of
    â€œGod Bless you merry, gentlemen!
    May nothing you dismay”
    the door was slammed with such energy of action that even Scrooge came close to flinching before he toddled off down the road.
    Just as the hour for shutting up the countinghouse arrived, so did Scrooge, strolling through the open door with his usual goodwill.
    â€œYou should take the day off tomorrow,” he said, as Cratchit dismounted from his stool. “Spend some time with your little grandson. I’m sure young Timothy would find it quite convenient.”
    â€œI don’t find it convenient,” replied Cratchit in the tone of a parent attempting for the hundredth time to disabuse a stubborn child of a ridiculous notion. “And I don’t find it fair. If I did such a thing and failed to reduce my salary by half a crown, I’d think the firm ill-used.”
    â€œAnd yet,” said Scrooge, “you don’t think the firm ill-used when I draw a day’s wages for an hour’s copying letters and seven more wandering about the city wishing strangers a merry Christmas.”
    Cratchit observed that, whilst this was a bit unfair, it happened only about once a week.
    â€œA poor excuse for picking your pocket,” said Scrooge. “If it eases your conscience, you may come in all the earlier the next day.”
    Cratchit remarked that he would be of little help to his grandson if he were not careful to see the firm remained profitable and that he fully intended to arrive at an early hour the next morning; he flinched only moderately when, as he left, Scrooge bellowed after him, “Merry Christmas!” Cratchit, after all, was used to it.
    The office was closed in a moment, and Scrooge walked with a lightness in his step, puzzling to other pedestrians weighed down by the heat, to a nearby tavern. There he settled in to read the papers and to take his evening meal in a room which anyone else on such a day would have called stuffy but which Scrooge thought of as cosy. The tavern keeper had learned long ago that whatever Scrooge took for dinner (tonight it was mutton), he would take Christmas pudding with it, and so that concoction had been prepared inanticipation of Scrooge’s arrival. The tavern keeper knew, too, that although Scrooge could rarely afford to pay his bill (tonight was no exception), he was nonetheless good for business; most of London knew that Scrooge dined at this particular tavern, and much of London stopped by now and again for a mug of ale and a chance to gawk at the old fool daintily consuming his Christmas pudding in the long days of summer.
    Recall, if you will, Scrooge’s lodgings—the lowering pile of a building huddled in the dark corner of a dark yard amongst neighbours which would have seemed decrepit on their own but which, by comparison to the house where Scrooge made his abode, positively gleamed with youth. At the front of the house we find the heavy door with its great knocker, behind that door the flight of stairs wide enough to accommodate a hearse broadside, and at the top of those stairs Scrooge’s gloomy suite of rooms: sitting room, bedroom, and lumber room, none furnished with any chattels beyond the necessary. Some things about Scrooge had remained unchanged after his well-publicised transformation two decades ago, amongst them his ascetic domestic arrangements.
    The sole exception to this rule stood by