title: a-christmas-carol.txt.
 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.

[Illustration: _The way he went after that plump sister in the lace
tucker!_]

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 up against the piano, smothering himself
amongst 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
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