ery idiot who goes about with 'Merry
Christmas' on his lips should be boiled with his own pudding, and buried
with a stake of holly through his heart! He should!"

"Uncle!"

"Nephew, keep Christmas in your own way, and let me keep it in mine."

"Keep it! But you don't keep it."

"Let me leave it alone, then. Much good may it do you! Much good it has
ever done you!"

"There are many things from which I might have derived good, by which I
have not profited, I dare say, Christmas among the rest. But I am sure I
have always thought of Christmas time, when it has come round,--apart
from the veneration due to its sacred origin, if anything belonging to
it _can_ be apart from that,--as a good time; a kind, forgiving,
charitable, pleasant time; the only time I know of, in the long calendar
of the year, when men and women seem by one consent to open their
shut-up hearts freely, and to think of people below them as if they
really were fellow-travellers to the grave, and not another race of
creatures bound on other journeys. And therefore, uncle, though it has
never put a scrap of gold or silver in my pocket, I believe that it
_has_ done me good, and _will_ do me good; and I say, God bless it!"

The clerk in the tank involuntarily applauded.

"Let me hear another sound from _you_" said Scrooge, "and you'll keep
your Christmas by losing your situation!--You're quite a powerful
speaker, sir," he added, turning to his nephew, "I wonder you don't go
into Parliament."

"Don't be angry, uncle. Come! Dine with us, to-morrow."

Scrooge said that he would see him--yes, indeed he did. He went the
whole length of the expression, and said that he would see him in that
extremity first.

"But why?" cried Scrooge's nephew. "Why?"

"Why did you get married?"

"Because I fell in love."

"Because you fell in love!" growled Scrooge, as if that were the only
one thing in the world more ridiculous than a merry Christmas. "Good
afternoon!"

"Nay, uncle, but you never came to see me before that happened. Why give
it as a reason for not coming now?"

"Good afternoon."

"I want nothing from you; I ask nothing of you; why cannot we be
friends?"

"Good afternoon."

"I am sorry, with all my heart, to find you so resolute. We have never
had any quarrel, to which I have been a party. But I have made the trial
in homage to Christmas, and I'll keep my Christmas humor to the last.
So, A Merry Christmas, uncle!"

"Good afternoon!"

"An