"I have no patience with him," observed Scrooge's niece.
Scrooge's niece's sisters, and all the other ladies, expressed
the same opinion.

"Oh, I have!" said Scrooge's nephew. "I am sorry for
him; I couldn't be angry with him if I tried. Who suffers
by his ill whims! Himself, always. Here, he takes it into
his head to dislike us, and he won't come and dine with us.
What's the consequence? He don't lose much of a dinner."

"Indeed, I think he loses a very good dinner," interrupted
Scrooge's niece. Everybody else said the same, and they
must be allowed to have been competent judges, because
they had just had dinner; and, with the dessert upon the
table, were clustered round the fire, by lamplight.

"Well! I'm very glad to hear it," said Scrooge's nephew,
"because I haven't great faith in these young housekeepers.
What do you say, Topper?"

Topper had clearly got his eye upon one of Scrooge's niece's
sisters, for he answered that a bachelor was a wretched outcast,
who had no right to express an opinion on the subject.
Whereat Scrooge's niece's sister--the plump one with the lace
tucker: not the one with the roses--blushed.

"Do go on, Fred," said Scrooge's niece, clapping her hands.
"He never finishes what he begins to say! He is such a
ridiculous fellow!"

Scrooge's nephew revelled in another laugh, and as it was
impossible to keep the infection off; though the plump sister
tried hard to do it with aromatic vinegar; his example was
unanimously followed.

"I was only going to say," said Scrooge's nephew, "that
the consequence of his taking a dislike to us, and not making
merry with us, is, as I think, that he loses some pleasant
moments, which could do him no harm. I am sure he loses
pleasanter companions than he can find in his own thoughts,
either in his mouldy old office, or his dusty chambers. I
mean to give him the same chance every year, whether he
likes it or not, for I pity him. He may rail at Christmas
till he dies, but he can't help thinking better of it--I defy
him--if he finds me going there, in good temper, year after
year, and saying Uncle Scrooge, how are you? If it only
puts him in the vein to leave his poor clerk fifty pounds,
that's something; and I think I shook him yesterday."

It was their turn to laugh now at the notion of his shaking
Scrooge. But being thoroughly good-natured, and not much
caring what they laughed at, so that they laughed at any
rate, he encouraged them in their merriment, and passed the
bottle joyously.

After tea, they had some music. For they were a musical
family, and knew what they were about, when they sung a
Glee or Catch, I can assure you: especially Topper, who
could growl away in the bass like a good one, and never
swell the large veins in his forehead, or get red in the face
over it. Scrooge's niece played well upon the harp; and
played among other tunes a simple little air (a mere nothing:
you might learn to whistle it in two minutes), which had
been familiar to the child who fetched Scrooge from the
boarding-school, as he had been reminded by the Ghost of
Christmas Past. When this strain of music sounded, all the
things that Ghost had shown him, came upon his mind; he
softened more and more; and thought that if he could have
listened to it often, years ago, he might have cultivated the
kindnesses of life for his own happiness with his own hands,
without resorting to the sexton's spade that buried Jacob
Marley.

But they didn't devote the whole evening to music. After
a while they played at forfeits; for it is good to be children
sometimes, and never better than at Christmas, when its
mighty Founder was a child himself. Stop! There was first
a game at blind-man's buff. Of course there was. And I
no more believe Topper was really blind than I believe he
had eyes in his boots. My opinion is, that it was a done
thing between him and Scrooge's nephew; and that the
Ghost of Christmas Present knew it. The way he went after
that plump sister in the lace tucker, was an outrage on the
credulity of human nature. Knocking down the fire-irons,
tumbling over the chairs, bumping against the piano,
smothering himself among the curtains, wherever she went,
there went he! He always knew where the plump sister was.
He wouldn't catch anybody else. If you had fallen up
against him (as some of them did), on purpose, he would
have made a feint of endeavouring to seize you, which would
have been an affront to your understanding, and would instantly
have sidled off in the direction of the plump sister.
She often cried out that it wasn't fair; and it really was not.
But when at last, he caught her; when, in spite of all her
silken rustlings, and her rapid flutterings past him, he got
her into a corner whence there was no escape; then his
conduct was the most execrable. For his pretending not to
know her; his pretending that it was necessary to touch her
head-dress, and further to assure himself of her identity by
pressing a certain ring upon her finger, and a certain chain
about her neck; was vile, monstrous! No doubt she told
him her opinion of it, when, another blind-man being in
office, they were so very confidential together, behind the
curtains.

Scrooge's niece was not one of the blind-man's buff party,
but was made comfortable with a large chair and a footstool,
in a snug corner, where the Ghost and Scrooge were close
behind her. But she joined in the forfeits, and loved her
love to admiration with all the letters of the alphabet.
Likewise at the game of How, When, and Where, she was
very great, and to the secret joy of Scrooge's nephew, beat
her sisters hollow: though they were sharp girls too, as Topper
could have told you. There might have been twenty people there,
young and old, but they all played, and so did Scrooge; for
wholly forgetting in the interest he had in what was going on, that
his voice made no sound in their ears, he sometimes came out with
his guess quite loud, and very often guessed quite right, too;
for the sharpest needle, best Whitechapel, warranted not to cut
in the eye, was not sharper than Scrooge; blunt as he took it in
his head to be.

The Ghost was greatly pleased to find him in this mood,
and looked upon him with such favour, that he begged like
a boy to be allowed to stay until the guests departed. But
this the Spirit said could not be done.

"Here is a new game," said Scrooge. "One half hour,
Spirit, only one!"

It was a Game called Yes and No, where Scrooge's nephew
had to think of something, and the rest must find out what;
he only answering to their questions yes or no, as the case
was. The brisk fire of questioning to which he was exposed,
elicited from him that he was thinking of an animal, a live
animal, rather a disagreeable animal, a savage animal, an
animal that growled and grunted sometimes, and talked sometimes,
and lived in London, and walked about the streets,
and wasn't made a show of, and wasn't led by anybody, and
didn't live in a menagerie, and was never killed in a market,
and was not a horse, or an ass, or a cow, or a bull, or a
tiger, or a dog, or a pig, or a cat, or a bear. At every fresh
question that was put to him, this nephew burst into a
fresh roar of laughter; and was so inexpressibly tickled, that
he was obliged to get up off the sofa and stamp. At last
the plump sister, falling into a similar state, cried out:

"I have found it out! I know what it is, Fred! I know
what it is!"

Which it certainly was. Admiration was the universal
sentiment, though some objected that the reply to "Is it a
bear?" ought to have been "Yes;" inasmuch as an answer
in the negative was sufficient to have diverted their thoughts
from Mr. Scrooge, supposing they had ever had any tendency
that way.

"He has given us plenty of merriment, I am sure," said
Fred, "and it would be ungrateful not to drink his health.
Here is a glass of mulled wine ready to our hand at the
moment; and I say, 'Uncle Scrooge!'"

"A Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to the old
man, whatever he is!" said Scrooge's nephew. "He wouldn't
take it from me, but may he have it, nevertheless. Uncle
Scrooge!"

Uncle Scrooge had imperceptibly become so gay and light
of heart, that he would have pledged the unconscious
company in return, and thanked them in an inaudible speech,
if the Ghost had given him time. But the whole scene
passed off in the breath of the last word spoken by his
nephew; and he and the Spirit were again upon their travels.

Much they saw, and far they went, and many homes they
visited, but always with a happy end. The Spirit stood
beside sick beds, and they were cheerful; on foreign lands,
and they were close at home; by struggling men, and they
were patient in their greater hope; by poverty, and it was
rich. In almshouse, hospital, and jail, in misery's every
refuge, where vain man in his little brief authority had not
made fast the door, and barred the Spirit out, he left his
blessing, and taught Scrooge his precepts.

It was a long night, if it were only a night; but Scrooge
had his doubts of this, because the Christmas Holidays appeared
to be condensed into the space of time they passed
together. It was strange, too, that while Scrooge remained
unaltered in his outward form, the Ghost grew older, clearly
older. Scrooge had observed this change, but never spoke of
it, until they left a children's Twelfth Night party, when,
looking at the Spirit as they stood together in an open place,
he noticed that its hair was grey.

"Are spirits' lives so short?" asked Scrooge.

"My life upon this globe, is very brief," replied the Ghost.
"It ends to-night."

"To-night at midnight. Hark! The time is drawing
near."

The chimes were ringing the three quarters past eleven at
that moment.

"Forgive me if I am not justified in what I ask," said
Scrooge, looking intently at the Spirit's robe, "but I see
something strange, and not belonging to yourself, protruding
from your skirts. Is it a foot or a claw?"

"It might be a claw, for the flesh there is upon it," was
the Spirit's sorrowful reply. "Look here."

From the foldings of its robe, it brought two children;
wretched, abject, frightful, hideous, miserable. They knelt
down at its feet, and clung upon the outside of its garment.

"Oh, Man! look here. Look, look, down here!" exclaimed
the Ghost.

They were a boy and girl. Yellow, meagre, ragged, scowling,
wolfish; but prostrate, too, in their humility. Where
graceful youth should have filled their features out, and
touched them with its freshest tints, a stale and shrivelled
hand, like that of age, had pinched, and twisted them, and
pulled them into shreds. Where angels might have sat
enthroned, devils lurked, and glared out menacing. No
change, no degradation, no perversion of humanity, in any
grade, through all the mysteries of wonderful creation, has
monsters half so horrible and dread.

Scrooge started back, appalled. Having them shown to
him in this way, he tried to say they were fine children, but
the words choked themselves, rather than be parties to a lie
of such enormous magnitude.

"Spirit! are they yours?" Scrooge could say no more.

"They are Man's," said the Spirit, looking down upon
them. "And they cling to me, appealing from their fathers.
This boy is Ignorance. This girl is Want. Beware them both,
and all of their degree, but most of all beware this boy, for
on his brow I see that written which is Doom, unless the
writing be erased. Deny it!" cried the Spirit, stretching out
its hand towards the city. "Slander those who tell it ye!
Admit it for your factious purposes, and make it worse.
And bide the end!"

"Have they no refuge or resource?" cried Scrooge.

"Are there no prisons?" said the Spirit, turning on him
for the last time with his own words. "Are there no workhouses?"

Scrooge looked about him for the Ghost, and saw it not.
As the last stroke ceased to vibrate, he remembered the
prediction of old Jacob Marley, and lifting up his eyes,
beheld a solemn Phantom, draped and hooded, coming, like
a mist along the ground, towards him.

THE Phantom slowly, gravely, silently, approached. When
it came near him, Scrooge bent down upon his knee; for in
the very air through which this Spirit moved it seemed to
scatter gloom and mystery.

It was shrouded in a deep black garment, which concealed
its head, its face, its form, and left nothing of it visible
save one outstretched hand. But for this it would have been
difficult to detach its figure from the night, and separate it
from the darkness by which it was surrounded.

He felt that it was tall and stately when it came beside
him, and that its mysterious presence filled him with a
solemn dread. He knew no more, for the Spirit neither
spoke nor moved.

"I am in the presence of the Ghost of Christmas Yet To
Come?" said Scrooge.

The Spirit answered not, but pointed onward with its
hand.

"You are about to show me shadows of the things that
have not happened, but will happen in the time before us,"
Scrooge pursued. "Is that so, Spirit?"

The upper portion of the garment was contracted for an
instant in its folds, as if the Spirit had inclined its head.
That was the only answer he received.

Although well used to ghostly company by this time,
Scrooge feared the silent shape so much that his legs trembled
beneath him, and he found that he could hardly stand when
he prepared to follow it. The Spirit paused a moment, as
observing his condition, and giving him time to recover.

But Scrooge was all the worse for this. It thrilled him
with a vague uncertain horror, to know that behind the
dusky shroud, there were ghostly eyes intently fixed upon
him, while he, though he stretched his own to the utmost,
could see nothing but a spectral hand and one great heap
of black.

"Ghost of the Future!" he exclaimed, "I fear you more
than any spectre I have seen. But as I know your purpose
is to do me good, and as I hope to live to be another
man from what I was, I am prepared to bear you company,
and do it with a thankful heart. Will you not speak
to me?"

It gave him no reply. The hand was pointed straight
before them.

"Lead on!" said Scrooge. "Lead on! The night is
waning fast, and it is precious time to me, I know. Lead
on, Spirit!"

The Phantom moved away as it had come towards him.
Scrooge followed in the shadow of its dress, which bore him
up, he thought, and carried him along.

They scarcely seemed to enter the city; for the city rather
seemed to spring up about them, and encompass them of its
own act. But there they were, in the heart of it; on
'Change, amongst the merchants; who hurried up and down,
and chinked the money in their pockets, and conversed in
groups, and looked at their watches, and trifled thoughtfully
with their great gold seals; and so forth, as Scrooge had
seen them often.

The Spirit stopped beside one little knot of business men.
Observing that the hand was pointed to them, Scrooge
advanced to listen to their talk.

"No," said a great fat man with a monstrous chin, "I
don't know much about it, either way. I only know he's
dead."

"Why, what was the matter with him?" asked a third,
taking a vast quantity of snuff out of a very large snuff-box.
"I thought he'd never die."

"God knows," said the first, with a yawn.

"What has he done with his money?" asked a red-faced
gentleman with a pendulous excrescence on the end of his
nose, that shook like the gills of a turkey-cock.

"I haven't heard," said the man with the large chin,
yawning again. "Left it to his company, perhaps. He hasn't
left it to me. That's all I know."

This pleasantry was received with a general laugh.

"It's likely to be a very cheap funeral," said the same
speaker; "for upon my life I don't know of anybody to go
to it. Suppose we make up a party and volunteer?"

"I don't mind going if a lunch is provided," observed the
gentleman with the excrescence on his nose. "But I must
be fed, if I make one."

"Well, I am the most disinterested among you, after all,"
said the first speaker, "for I never wear black gloves, and I
never eat lunch. But I'll offer to go, if anybody else will.
When I come to think of it, I'm not at all sure that I wasn't
his most particular friend; for we used to stop and speak
whenever we met. Bye, bye!"

Speakers and listeners strolled away, and mixed with
other groups. Scrooge knew the men, and looked towards the
Spirit for an explanation.

The Phantom glided on into a street. Its finger pointed
to two persons meeting. Scrooge listened again, thinking
that the explanation might lie here.

He knew these men, also, perfectly. They were men of business:
very wealthy, and of great importance. He had made a point
always of standing well in their esteem: in a business point
of view, that is; strictly in a business point of view.