"Dickens, Charles - A Christmas Carol" - читать интересную книгу автора (Dickens Charles)

mighty Mansion House, gave orders to his fifty cooks
and butlers to keep Christmas as a Lord Mayor's
household should; and even the little tailor, whom he
had fined five shillings on the previous Monday for
being drunk and bloodthirsty in the streets, stirred up
to-morrow's pudding in his garret, while his lean
wife and the baby sallied out to buy the beef.

Foggier yet, and colder! Piercing, searching, biting
cold. If the good Saint Dunstan had but nipped
the Evil Spirit's nose with a touch of such weather
as that, instead of using his familiar weapons, then
indeed he would have roared to lusty purpose. The
owner of one scant young nose, gnawed and mumbled
by the hungry cold as bones are gnawed by dogs,
stooped down at Scrooge's keyhole to regale him with
a Christmas carol: but at the first sound of

`God bless you, merry gentleman!
May nothing you dismay!'

Scrooge seized the ruler with such energy of action,
that the singer fled in terror, leaving the keyhole to
the fog and even more congenial frost.

At length the hour of shutting up the counting-
house arrived. With an ill-will Scrooge dismounted
from his stool, and tacitly admitted the fact to the
expectant clerk in the Tank, who instantly snuffed
his candle out, and put on his hat.

`You'll want all day to-morrow, I suppose?' said
Scrooge.

`If quite convenient, sir.'

`It's not convenient,' said Scrooge, `and it's not
fair. If I was to stop half-a-crown for it, you'd think
yourself ill-used, I'll be bound?'

The clerk smiled faintly.

`And yet,' said Scrooge, `you don't think me ill-used,
when I pay a day's wages for no work.'

The clerk observed that it was only once a year.

`A poor excuse for picking a man's pocket every
twenty-fifth of December!' said Scrooge, buttoning
his great-coat to the chin. `But I suppose you must