nd, pot-bellied baskets of chestnuts, shaped
like the waistcoats of jolly old gentlemen lolling at the doors and
tumbling into the streets in their apoplectic opulence." Nothing about
the ruddy, brown-faced, broad-girthed Spanish onions, shining in the
fatness of their growth like Spanish friars, and "winking from their
shelves in wanton slyness at the girls as they went by, and glanced
demurely at the hung-up mistletoe." Nothing about the canisters of tea
and coffee "rattled up and down like juggling tricks," or about the
candied fruits, "so caked and spotted with molten sugar as to make the
coldest lookers-on feel faint, and subsequently bilious."

Nay, we were denied even a momentary glimpse, on the snow-crusted
pavement at nightfall, of that group of handsome girls, all hooded and
fur-booted, and all chattering at once, tripping lightly off to some
near neighbour's house, "where, woe upon the single man who saw them
enter--artful witches, well they knew it--in a glow!" Topper was there,
however, and the plump sister in the lace tucker, and the game of
Yes-and-No, the solution to which was, "It's your uncle Scro-o-o-o-oge!"
Happiest of all these non-omissions, as one may call them, there
was that charming picture of Scrooge's niece by marriage, which--as
brightly, exquisitely articulated by the lips of her imaginer--was
like the loveliest girl-portrait ever painted by Greuze. "She was very
pretty, exceedingly pretty. With a dimpled, surprised-looking, capital
face; a ripe little mouth, that seemed made to be kissed--as no doubt it
was; all kinds of good little dots about her chin, that melted into one
another when she laughed; and the sunniest pair of eyes you ever saw
in any little creature's head. Altogether she was what you would
have called provoking, you know; but satisfactory, too. Oh, perfectly
satisfactory." The grave face and twinkling eyes with which this
cordial acquiescence in the conclusion arrived at was expressed were
irresistibly exhilarating. Just in the same way there was a sort of
parenthetical smack of the lips in the self-communing of Scrooge when,
at the very close of the story, after hesitating awhile at his Nephew's
door as to whether he should knock, he made a dash and did it. "Is your
master at home, my dear?" said Scrooge. "_Nice girl! very._" Then, as to
the cordiality of his reception by his Nephew, what could by possibility
have expressed it better than the look, voice, manner of the Read