title: a-christmas-carol.txt.
,' 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.'

Another laugh.

[Illustration:

  _"How are you?" said one.
   "How are you?" returned the other.
   "Well!" said the first. "Old Scratch has got his own at last, hey?"_

]

'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.

'How are you?' said one.

'How are you?' returned the other.

'Well!' said the first, 'old Scratch has got his own at last, hey?'

'So I am told,' returned the second. 'Cold, isn't it?'

'Seasonable for Christmas-time. You are not a skater, I suppose?'

'No, no. Something else to think of. Good-morning!'

Not another word. That was their meeting, their conversation, and their
parting.

Scrooge was at first inclined to be surprised that the Spirit should
attach importance to conversations apparently so trivial; but feeling
assured that they must have some hidden purpose, he set himself to
consider what it was likely to be. They could scarcely be supposed to
have any bearing on the death of Jacob, his old partner, for that was
Past, and this Ghost's province was the Future. Nor could he think of
any one immediately connected with himself to whom he could apply them.
But nothing doubting that, to whomsoever they applied, they had some
latent moral for his own improvement, he resolved to treasure up every
word he heard, and everything he saw; and especially to observe the
shadow of himself when it appeared. For he had an expectation that the
conduct of his future self would give him the clue he missed, and would
render the solution of these riddles easy.

He looked about in that very place for his own image, but another man
stood in his accustomed corner; and though the clock pointed to his
usual time of day for being there, he saw no likeness of himself among
the multitudes that poured in through the Porch. It gave him little
surprise, however; for he had been revolving in his mind a change of
life, and thought and hoped he saw his new-born resolutions carried out
in this.

Quiet and dark, beside him stood the Phantom, with its outstretched
hand. When he roused himself from his thoughtful quest, he fancied,
from the turn of the hand, and its situation in reference to himself,
that the Unseen Eyes were looking at him keenly. It made him shudder,
and feel very cold.

They left the busy scene, and went into an obscure part of the town,
where Scrooge had never penetrated before, although he recognised its
situation and its bad repute. The ways were foul and narrow; the shop
and houses wretched; the people half naked, drunken, slipshod, ugly.
Alleys and archways, like so many cesspools, disgorged their offences of
smell and dirt, and life upon the straggling streets; and the whole
quarter reeked with crime, with filth, and misery.

Far in this den of infamous resort, there was a low-browed, beetling
shop, below a penthouse roof, where iron, old rags, bottles, bones, and
greasy offal were bought. Upon the floor within were piled up heaps of
rusty keys, nails, chains, hinges, files, scales, weights, and refuse
iron of all kinds. Secrets that few would like to scrutinise were bred
and hidden in mountains of unseemly rags, masses of corrupted fat, and
sepulchres of bones. Sitting in among the wares he dealt in, by a
charcoal stove made of old bricks, was a grey-haired rascal, nearly
seventy years of age, who had screened himself from the cold air without
by a frouzy curtaining of miscellaneous tatters hung upon a line and
smoked his pipe in all