Christmas Carol 56 recto

56

with (which was not until after a long silence) appeared embarrassed how to answer.

“Is it good,” she said, “or bad?”—to help him.

“Bad,” he answered.

“Then wWe have are quite ruined.”

“No., he ????? cried There is hope yet, Caroline.”

“If he relents,” she cried said, amazed. “There is! Nothing is past hope, if such a miracle
has happened.”

“He is past relenting,” said her husband. “He is dead.”

She was a mild and patient creature if her face spoke truth; but it
was plain that she felt was thankful in her heart soul to hear it, and she said so, with
clasped hands. She prayed forgiveness the next moment, and was sorry, but the first
was the emotion of her heart.

“What they told me the half- the drunken woman whom I told you of last night, said to me, when I went tried to see him
and obtain a week’s delay; and what I thought was a mere excuse to avoid
seeing me; turns out to have been quite true. He was ???? not only very ill,
but dying, then.”

“To whom will our debt be transferred?”

“I don’t know. But before that time we shall be ready with the
money; and even though we were not, we should might hope it would be bad fortune indeed to find a more so
merciful merciless a creditor in his successor. We may sleep tonight with light hearts,
Caroline!”

Yes. Soften it as they would, their hearts were lighter. The children’s faces hushed, and clustered round to listen hear what they so little understood, were brighter; and and it was a
happier house for this man’s death! The only emotion, that that caused by the event that the Ghost could
shew him, caused by the event, was one sentimentone of pleasure

“Let me see some tenderness connected with a death,” said Scrooge;
“or that dark chamber, Spirit, which we left just now, will be always for ever present to me.”

They glided Ghost went conducted him, through the many several and streets familiar to his feet; and as they went along, Scrooge looked here and there to
find himself, but nowhere was he to be seen. He had [mingled with] They entered poor Bob Cratchet
Past and Present Cratchit’s house—the same house dwelling he had visited before—and found the family mother and
about the fire at work the children seated round the fire.

Very ???? Quiet. Very quiet. The noisy little Cratchits were as still
as [mice] statues in one corner, and sat looking up at Peter, who was reading to them from had
a Book before him. The mother and her daughters were busy with [her] making clothes engaged in sewing. But so surely they
were very quiet!

“‘And He took a child, and set him in the midst of them’.” [n?delta?Where had
Scrooge ha heard these words? He had not dreamed them. The boy The boy
had must have read them out, surely, as he and the Spirit crossed the threshold thresh-hold. [ Why did he not
go on!

“The [fire] hurts mother laid her work upon the table, z and put her hand
up to her face.

““The colour hurts hurts my eyes!”? she said. The colour? Blac??. Poor

The colour? Black? Ah Poor Tiny Tim!

“They’re better now again”, said Cratchit’s wife. “It makes them