The Further Adventures of Ebenezer Scrooge by Charlie Lovett Page A

mind of the most clear-thinking man. The city clocks had just gone three, but the sun seemed disinclined to rest in its glaring pursuit of those souls who slogged along the paving stones. The heat came pouring in at every chink and keyhole and spared no one, from the lowliest clerk to the wealthiest miser who ever captained a countinghouse.
    In a government office in Whitehall, labouring to keep a certain column of numbers from encroaching upon another, similar column and thus bringing down the empire, sat Scrooge’s nephew, Freddie, and as he had left his door standing open, in the vain hope that some stirring of the air might bring a hint of relief from the stifling heat, he had not the turn of the handle to warn him of his uncle’s approach.
    â€œA Merry Christmas, nephew! God save you!” cried Scrooge in a cheerful voice.
    â€œChristmas?” replied the startled nephew. “I’ve no time now for Christmas, uncle.”
    Scrooge inexplicably wore a muffler wound round hisruddy neck, and this he now unwound in a leisurely fashion, as if it were one and the same to him whether it adorned him or not. His eyes sparkled as he endured the impatient stare of his nephew.
    â€œNo time for Christmas!” said Scrooge. “You don’t mean that, I am sure.”
    â€œI do,” said Freddie. “Merry Christmas on the longest day of summer? What right have you to be merry, when all around you are working? What reason have you to be merry? You’re poor enough.”
    â€œCome, then,” replied Scrooge gaily. “What right have you to be dismal? What reason have you to be morose?”
    â€œNot this again, uncle,” said Freddie.
    â€œI’m poor because I choose to be, because I take more pleasure in giving away my gold than in hoarding it to pay for my meagre needs,” answered Scrooge, ignoring his nephew. “And so I say again, Merry Christmas.”
    Fearing that his superior, the assistant to the undersecretary of a governmental department the purpose of which Scrooge had never entirely understood, might overhear their conversation, Freddie pulled shut the connecting door and lowered his voice. “It is all the same to me, uncle, if you wish me a Merry Christmas on every day of the year. I’ve no objection if you keep Christmas in your way; but there are otherswho say that Bedlam is the place for a fool who walks about with ‘Merry Christmas’ on his lips on the hottest days of summer. There are those who mutter behind your back that such an idiot as Scrooge should be stuffed like a goose, wrapped in mistletoe, and floated across the Thames.”
    â€œNephew,” replied his uncle gently, “why should Christmas be the only good time of the year, the only kind, forgiving, charitable, pleasant time? Why should Christmas be the only time when men and women open their shut-up hearts freely and think of people below them as if they really were fellow passengers to the grave?”
    â€œYour sentiments are admirable, uncle, I have no doubt, but I have bills to pay and books to balance. I’m a year older than last summer and not a farthing richer, though of all the quantities that surround me—my wife’s allowance, my children’s appetites, my haberdasher’s bill—the only one which seems never to increase is my bank balance. I should love to have your leisure for cheerfulness, uncle, but most of us”—and here he glanced at the closed door which hid his superior—“can afford no more than a few days of ‘Merry Christmas.’”
    â€œI shall come to dine with you, tomorrow,” said Scrooge, paying no more mind to his nephew’s speech than a duck to a raindrop.
    â€œWe’ve little to spare, uncle.”
    â€œAnd little is exactly what I require. Good works, kindness, my cheerful Christmas greetings that you so abhor—these are enough to fill me.” Scrooge retrieved his muffler