Free The Further Adventures of Ebenezer Scrooge by Charlie Lovett Page A

Cratchit looked around the room and his eye fell on the blue paper cover of the monthly installment of the novel he had been reading a lifetime ago, it seemed. Though tears still dampened his cheeks and his breath came in choking sobs, he nonetheless realised the import of where that booklet lay—not on the floor, where it had fallen when he had been startled by Scrooge’s arrival, but on the table by his chair, where it had lain
before
he had begun his night’s reading. Cratchit rounded on Scrooge, a smile breaking across his face.
    â€œIt is not thrown down!” cried Cratchit, pointing a shaking finger towards the table. “It is not thrown down upon the hearthrug.” With this, he snatched the booklet off thetable and clutched it in his hand with a violence that would likely have displeased the author. “It is here!” he cried, shaking the booklet at Scrooge. “I am here; the shadows of the things that would have been may be dispelled. They
will
be. I
know
they will!”
    But even as Cratchit’s tears of terror and remorse turned to tears of joy and resolve, Scrooge felt himself drifting away from the scene and all that had lain before him. The threadbare chair, the table bearing the extinguished lamp, the kitchen awaiting the arrival of Mrs. Cratchit, and the trembling figure on the floor faded away and the sound of Cratchit’s sobs became the ticking of the clock on Scrooge’s own chimneypiece. The same warm air drifted in at Scrooge’s window, but as he threw up the sash and stuck his head out into the London morning, the old man found that the weather had broken, and the oppressive humidity of yesterday had given way to crisp, clean air, warmed by the summer sun but wrapped in the promise of cool autumn days to come.
    â€œHallo!” he shouted at a boy who made his way along the street below. “Can you tell me what day it is?”
    The boy, who was not previously acquainted with Scrooge’s eccentricities, cast a puzzled look upwards and, seeing no harm in the old man, shouted back, “Twenty-third of June, sir.”
    â€œThey’ve done it again!” cried Scrooge with glee. “Thespirits have done it all in one night. They can do anything they like. Of course they can. Of course they can.”
    You may never have seen such a thing as a man who has passed four score years on this earth dancing a jig in his nightshirt on a summer morning, but I assure you it is a sight well worth seeing, and one that would have provided you with plentiful laughter had you been in Scrooge’s apartment that morning to see it. And had you been there, you might also have understood the expression “in a twinkling,” for Scrooge’s eyes never stopped twinkling in anticipation of the visits he planned to pay that morning.
    As he hurried through the crowded morning streets after making himself presentable, even those who knew Scrooge well and were accustomed to his unseasonable greetings thought they detected an extra degree of enthusiasm in his bellows of “Merry Christmas!” and “Happy New Year!” He carried his walking stick only so he could swing it with gusto, wore a hat solely that he might tip it at every passing lady, patted the head of every child who ventured within his reach (and a few who tried, but failed, to give him a wide enough berth), and stuck his head in every shop he passed to remark on the fineness of the day, the fineness of the meat (or books, or pastries, or whatever was on offer), and the fineness of Christmas, which, by the way, he hoped would be merry for all.
    Scrooge’s first stop was Whitehall, where he expected to find his nephew perched on his stool and hard at work. However, though the morning had advanced past the point at which civil servants can generally be counted upon to be adding up columns of numbers for the good of England, Freddie’s stool stood empty.
    â€œHaven’t you