display of glass. Two
tumblers and a custard cup without a handle.

These held the hot stuff from the jug, however, as well as golden
goblets would have done; and Bob served it out with beaming looks, while
the chestnuts on the fire sputtered and cracked noisily. Then Bob
proposed:

"A merry Christmas to us all, my dears. God bless us!"

Which all the family re-echoed.

"God bless us every one!" said Tiny Tim, the last of all.

He sat very close to his father's side, upon his little stool. Bob held
his withered little hand in his, as if he loved the child, and wished to
keep him by his side, and dreaded that he might be taken from him.

"Spirit," said Scrooge with an interest he had never felt before, "tell
me if Tiny Tim will live."

"I see a vacant seat," replied the Ghost, "in the poor chimney-corner,
and a crutch without an owner, carefully preserved. If these shadows
remain unaltered by the Future, the child will die."

"No, no," said Scrooge. "Oh, no, kind Spirit! say he will be spared."

"If these shadows remain unaltered by the Future, none other of my
race," returned the Ghost, "will find him here. What then? If he be like
to die, he had better do it, and decrease the surplus population."

Scrooge hung his head to hear his own words quoted by the Spirit, and
was overcome with penitence and grief.

"Man," said the Ghost, "if man you be in heart, not adamant, forbear
that wicked cant until you have discovered What the surplus is, and
Where it is. Will you decide what men shall live, what men shall die? It
may be that, in the sight of Heaven, you are more worthless and less fit
to live than millions like this poor man's child. Oh God! to hear the
Insect on the leaf pronouncing on the too much life among his hungry
brothers in the dust!"

Scrooge bent before the Ghost's rebuke, and, trembling, cast his eyes
upon the ground. But he raised them speedily on hearing his own name.

"Mr. Scrooge!" said Bob. "I'll give you Mr. Scrooge, the Founder of the
Feast!"

"The Founder of the Feast, indeed!" cried Mrs. Cratchit, reddening. "I
wish I had him here. I'd give him a piece of my mind to feast upon, and
I hope he'd have a good appetite for it."

"My dear," said Bob, "the children! Christmas-day."

"It should be Christmas-day, I am sure," said she, "on which one drinks
the health of such an odious, stingy, hard, unfeeling man as Mr.
Scrooge. You know he is, Robert! Nobody knows it better than you do,
po