title: a-christmas-carol.txt.
 in good season, we could improve our worldly
fortune by our patient industry. You _are_ changed. When it was made you
were another man.'

'I was a boy,' he said impatiently.

'Your own feeling tells you that you were not what you are,' she
returned. 'I am. That which promised happiness when we were one in heart
is fraught with misery now that we are two. How often and how keenly I
have thought of this I will not say. It is enough that I _have_ thought
of it, and can release you.'

'Have I ever sought release?'

'In words. No. Never.'

'In what, then?'

'In a changed nature; in an altered spirit; in another atmosphere of
life; another Hope as its great end. In everything that made my love of
any worth or value in your sight. If this had never been between us,'
said the girl, looking mildly, but with steadiness, upon him; 'tell me,
would you seek me out and try to win me now? Ah, no!'

He seemed to yield to the justice of this supposition in spite of
himself. But he said, with a struggle, 'You think not.'

'I would gladly think otherwise if I could,' she answered. 'Heaven
knows! When _I_ have learned a Truth like this, I know how strong and
irresistible it must be. But if you were free to-day, to-morrow,
yesterday, can even I believe that you would choose a dowerless
girl--you who, in your very confidence with her, weigh everything by
Gain: or, choosing her, if for a moment you were false enough to your
one guiding principle to do so, do I not know that your repentance and
regret would surely follow? I do; and I release you. With a full heart,
for the love of him you once were.'

[Illustration: SHE LEFT HIM, AND THEY PARTED]

He was about to speak; but, with her head turned from him, she resumed:

'You may--the memory of what is past half makes me hope you will--have
pain in this. A very, very brief time, and you will dismiss the
recollection of it gladly, as an unprofitable dream, from which it
happened well that you awoke. May you be happy in the life you have
chosen!'

She left him, and they parted.

'Spirit!' said Scrooge, 'show me no more! Conduct me home. Why do you
delight to torture me?'

'One shadow more!' exclaimed the Ghost.

'No more!' cried Scrooge. 'No more! I don't wish to see it. Show me no
more!'

But the relentless Ghost pinioned him in both his arms, and forced him
to observe what happened next.

They were in another scene and place; a room, not very large or
handsome, but full of comfort. Near to the winter fire sat a beautiful
young girl, so like that last that Scrooge believed it was the same,
until he saw _her_, now a comely matron, sitting opposite her daughter.
The noise in this room was perfectly tumultuous, for there were more
children there than Scrooge in his agitated state of mind could count;
and, unlike the celebrated herd in the poem, they were not forty
children conducting themselves like one, but every child was conducting
itself like forty. The consequences were uproarious beyond belief; but
no one seemed to care; on the contrary, the mother and daughter laughed
heartily, and enjoyed it very much; and the latter, soon beginning to
mingle in the sports, got pillaged by the young brigands most
ruthlessly. What would I not have given to be one of them! Though I
never could have been so rude, no, no! I wouldn't for the wealth of all
the world have crushed that braided hair, and torn it down; and for the
precious little shoe, I wouldn't have plucked it off, God bless my soul!
to save my life. As to measuring her waist in sport, as they did, bold
young brood, I couldn't have done it; I should have expected my arm to
have grown round it for a punishment, and never come straight again. And
yet I should have dearly liked, I own, to have touched her lips; to have
questioned her, that she might have opened them; to have looked upon the
lashes of her downcast eyes, and never raised a blush; to have let loose
waves of hair, an inch of which would be a keepsake beyond price: in
short, I should have liked, I do confess, to have had the lightest
license of a child, and yet to have been man enough to know its value.

[Illustration: _A flushed and boisterous group_]

But now a knocking at the door was heard, and such a rush immediately
ensued that she, with laughing face and plundered dress, was borne
towards it the centre of a flushed and boisterous group, just in time to
greet the father, who came home attended by a man laden with Christmas
toys and presents. Then the shouting and the struggling, and the
onslaught that was made on the defenceless porter! The scaling him, with
chairs for ladders, to dive into his pockets, despoil him of
brown-paper parcels, hold on tight by his cravat, hug him round his
neck, pummel his back, and kick his legs in irrepressible