ng what particular
investments he should favor when he came into receipt of the bewildering
income. Martha, who was a poor apprentice at a milliner's, then told
them what kind of work she had to do, and how many hours she worked at
a stretch, and how she meant to be abed to-morrow morning for a good
long rest, to-morrow being a holiday she passed at home. Also how she
had seen a countess and a lord some days before, and how the lord "was
much about as tall as Peter," at which Peter pulled up his collars so
high that you couldn't have seen his head if you had been there. By and
by they had a song, about a lost child traveling in the snow, from Tiny
Tim, who had a plaintive little voice, and sang it very well indeed.

There was nothing of high mark in this. They were not a handsome family;
they were not well dressed; their shoes were far from being waterproof;
their clothes were scanty; and Peter might have known, and very likely
did, the inside of a pawnbroker's. But they were happy, grateful,
pleased with one another, and contented with the time; and when they
faded, and looked happier yet in the bright sprinklings of the Spirit's
torch at parting, Scrooge had his eye upon them, and especially on Tiny
Tim, until the last.

By this time it was getting dark and snowing pretty heavily; and as
Scrooge and the Spirit went along the streets, the brightness of the
roaring fires in kitchens, parlors, and all sorts of rooms, was
wonderful. Here, the flickering of the blaze showed preparations for a
cosy dinner, with hot plates baking through and through before the fire,
and deep red curtains, ready to be drawn to shut out cold and darkness.
There, all the children of the house were running out into the snow to
meet their married sisters, brothers, cousins, uncles, aunts, and be the
first to greet them.

It was a great surprise to Scrooge, as he meditated on these scenes, to
hear a hearty laugh. It was a much greater surprise to Scrooge to
recognize it as his own nephew's, and to find himself in a bright, dry,
gleaming room, with the Spirit standing smiling by his side, and looking
at that same nephew with approving affability!

"Ha! ha!" laughed Scrooge's nephew. "Ha! ha! ha!"

If you should happen, by any unlikely chance, to know a man more blessed
in a laugh than Scrooge's nephew, all I can say is, I should like to
know him too. Introduce him to me, and I'll cultivate his acquaintance.

It is a fair, even-handed, noble a