A Budget of Christmas Tales by Charles Dickens and Others by Charles Dickens Page A

open question, I'd repent of being so liberal, and knock off half-a-crown."
    "And now undo
my
bundle, Joe," said the first woman.
    Joe went down on his knees for the greater convenience of opening it, and having unfastened a great many knots, dragged out a large heavy roll of some dark stuff.
    "What do you call this?" said Joe. "Bed curtains!"
    "Ah!" returned the woman, laughing and leaning forward on her crossed arms. "Bed curtains!"
    "You don't mean to say you took 'em down rings and all, with him lying there?" said Joe.
    "Yes, I do," replied the woman. "Why not?"
    "You were born to make your fortune," said Joe, "and you'll certainly do it."
    "I certainly shan't hold my hand, when I can get anything in it by reaching it out, for the sake of such a man as he was, I promise you, Joe," returned the woman coolly. "Don't drop that oil upon the blankets, now."
    "His blankets?" asked Joe.
    "Whose else's do you think?" replied the woman. "He isn't likely to take cold without 'em, I dare say."
    "I hope he didn't die of anything catching? Eh?" said old Joe, stopping in his work, and looking up.
    "Don't you be afraid of that," returned the woman. "I an't so fond of his company that I'd loiter about him for such things, if he did. Ah! you may look through that shirt till your eyes ache; but you won't find a hole in it, nor a threadbare place. It's the best he had, and a fine one too. They'd have wasted it, if it hadn't been for me."
    "What do you call wasting of it?" asked old Joe.
    "Putting it on him to be buried in, to be sure," replied the woman with a laugh. "Somebody was fool enough to do it, but I took it off again. If calico ain't good enough for such a purpose, it isn't good enough for anything. It's quite as becoming to the body. He can't look uglier than he did in that one."
    Scrooge listened to this dialogue in horror. As they sat grouped about their spoil, in the scanty light afforded by the old man's lamp, he viewed them with a detestation and disgust, which could hardly have been greater, though they had been obscene demons, marketing the corpse itself.
    "Ha, ha!" laughed the same woman, when old Joe, producing a flannel bag with money in it, told out their several gains upon the ground. "This is the end of it, you see? He frightened everyone away from him when he was alive, to profit us when he was dead! Ha! ha! ha!"
    "Spirit!" said Scrooge, shuddering from head to foot, "I see, I see. The case of this unhappy man might be my own. My life tends that way, now. Merciful Heaven, what is this?"
    He recoiled in terror, for the scene had changed, and now he almost touched a bed: a bare, uncurtained bed: on which, beneath a ragged sheet, there lay a something covered up which, though it was dumb, announced itself in awful language.
    The room was very dark, too dark to be observed with any accuracy, though Scrooge glanced round it in obedience to a secret impulse, anxious to know what kind of room it was. A pale light rising in the outer air, fell straight upon the bed: and on it, plundered and bereft, unwatched, unwept, uncared for, was the body of this man.
    Scrooge glanced toward the Phantom. Its steady hand was pointed to the head. The cover was so carelessly adjusted that the slightest raising of it, the motion of a finger upon Scrooge's part, would have disclosed the face. He thought of it, felt how easy it would be to do, and longed to do it; but had no more power to withdraw the veil than to dismiss the spectre at his side.
    "Spirit!" he said, "this is a fearful place. In leaving it, I shall not leave its lesson, trust me. Let us go!"
    Still the Ghost pointed with an unmoved finger to the head.
    "I understand you," Scrooge returned, "and I would do it if I could. But I have not the power, Spirit. I have not the power."
    Again it seemed to look upon him.
    "If there is any person in the town, who feels emotion caused by this man's death," said Scrooge, quite agonized, "show that person to me, Spirit, I beseech you!"
    The