Page:A Christmas Carol (1916, Rackham).djvu/129

Rh gleaming room, with the Spirit standing smiling by his side, and looking at that same nephew with approving affability!

‘Ha, ha!’ laughed Scrooge’s nephew. ‘Ha, ha, ha!’

If you should happen, by any unlikely chance, to know a man more blessed in a laugh than Scrooge’s nephew, all I can say is, I should like to know him too. Introduce him to me, and I’ll cultivate his acquaintance.

It is a fair, even-handed, noble adjustment of things, that while there is infection in disease and sorrow, there is nothing in the world so irresistibly contagious as laughter and good-humour. When Scrooge’s nephew laughed in this way—holding his sides, rolling his head, and twisting his face into the most extravagant contortions—Scrooge’s niece, by marriage, laughed as heartily as he. And their assembled friends, being not a bit behindhand, roared out lustily.

‘Ha, ha! Ha, ha, ha, ha!’

‘He said that Christmas was a humbug, as I live! ’ cried Scrooge’s nephew. ‘He believed it, too!’

‘More shame for him, Fred!’ said Scrooge’s niece indignantly. Bless those women! they never do anything by halves. They are always in earnest.

She was very pretty; exceedingly pretty. With a dimpled, surprised-looking, capital face; a ripe little mouth, that seemed made to be kissed—as no doubt it