1.Scrooge and Marley's·Christmas Eve, afternoon·Cold in the Counting-House
Marley was dead: to begin with. There is no doubt whatever about that. Old Marley was as dead as a door-nail. Scrooge was his sole executor, his sole administrator, his sole friend, and sole mourner. And even Scrooge was not so dreadfully cut up by the sad event but that he solemnised the very day of the funeral with an undoubted bargain.
Scrooge never painted out Old Marley's name. There it stood, years afterwards, above the warehouse door: Scrooge and Marley. Sometimes people new to the business called Scrooge Scrooge, and sometimes Marley, but he answered to both names. It was all the same to him.
It was cold, bleak, biting weather on Christmas Eve, and the fog came pouring in at every chink and keyhole. The door of Scrooge's counting-house was open, that he might keep his eye upon his clerk, Bob Cratchit, who in a dismal little cell beyond, a sort of tank, was copying letters by the light of one candle. Scrooge had a very small fire, but the clerk's fire was so very much smaller that it looked like one coal. He couldn't replenish it, for Scrooge kept the coal-box in his own room.
Whenever the clerk came in with the shovel, his master's eyes rose from the ledger. So the clerk put on his white comforter, and tried to warm himself at the candle.
Then the door flew open, and in came a gust of cold air and a cheerful, glowing face.
Fred
A merry Christmas, uncle! God save you!
Scrooge
Bah! Humbug!
Fred
Christmas a humbug, uncle! You don't mean that, I am sure.
I have always thought of Christmas time as a good time: a kind, forgiving, charitable, pleasant time; the only time I know of when men and women seem by one consent to open their shut-up hearts freely. And therefore, uncle, I say, God bless it!
The clerk in the tank involuntarily applauded. Becoming immediately sensible of the impropriety, he poked the fire, and extinguished the last frail spark for ever.
Scrooge
without lifting his eyes, his pen scratching across the ledger
Let me hear another sound from you, and you'll keep your Christmas by losing your situation!