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

heard?” asked the clerk on the adjacent stool. “He talked as if it were all your idea.”
    After wishing the fellow the merriest of Christmases, Scrooge enquired as to the nature of the idea attributed to him.
    â€œFreddie’s decided to run for Parliament,” said the clerk. “There were some in the office who found it quite a shock, I don’t mind telling you; but many of us wondered what took him so long. I always knew he could do it.”
    â€œDo what?” asked Freddie with a scowl, for he had just arrived at the door.
    â€œAh, there you are, nephew,” said Scrooge. “I had hoped I might have a chat with you this morning.”
    â€œA chat?” replied Freddie sternly. “I should think there are more important things in this world than chatting with one’s uncle.”
    â€œAnd what might those be?” asked Scrooge, concerned with this unexpected standoffishness in his nephew’s demeanour.
    â€œWhy, wishing him a Merry Christmas, for a start!” criedFreddie, breaking into a smile and throwing his arms round his uncle. “And a Happy New Year, uncle, for it is a new year for me. A new year and a new life all beginning today, thanks to you.” Freddie pulled his uncle by the sleeve into a corner of the room hidden from the other clerk by a filing cabinet and whispered, “All those years ago, when you told us about being visited by those spirits—we all thought you’d gone a bit potty, you know. Most of the family still think so, though they’d never say it to your face. But, oh, uncle! What a night! What a revelation! I never understood before now.” And unable to think of what to say next, he again embraced his uncle with another “Merry Christmas,” hearty enough to be heard clearly by the clerk who put so much faith in Freddie’s future.
    If Scrooge had hoped to chat with his nephew, he found the chat rather one-sided, for it was nigh on impossible for him to squeeze a word into Freddie’s unstoppable torrent of excitement. Like the surf in a winter storm came Freddie’s ideas, one after the other, without a moment to catch one’s breath in between whiles. He would propose this and he would do something about that; he had a plan for one problem and an idea about another. If Freddie had been made dictator of the empire at that very moment, I daresay the world would have been a much better place in a fortnight, but Scroogeknew that even as a lowly backbencher Freddie could, and would, do much good, and he might well rise through the ranks to higher and more influential posts as the years went by. He smiled as Freddie spoke, but after a time Scrooge did not hear every word his nephew said, for he thought he might hear, faintly on the wind, another sound—the sound of chains falling to the ground, link by link. If Freddie accomplished one-twentieth of what he set for himself, Marley would certainly be a free man.
    It took no small effort for Scrooge to extricate himself from the conversation, and it was only when Freddie realised that he was late for a meeting with a gentleman likely to back his candidacy that Scrooge was able to bid his nephew farewell and press on to his next destination.
    Up Whitehall to Trafalgar, up the Strand and Fleet Street and into the City strode Scrooge, whilst a sea of Londoners parted in front of him, none quite sure how to respond to his wishes for a Merry Christmas. When he arrived at the bank, his request to see the Messrs. Pleasant and Portly was met with a blank stare by the clerk in the cage. Laughing at his own foolishness, Scrooge enquired after the bankers again, this time using their proper names, which he had somehow managed to remember (when he thought it over afterwards,he suspected that Marley, who surely would have known, had whispered the names in his ear).
    The clerk informed him that the two bankers he sought were engaged in a highly important conference