'good afternoon!' said Scrooge
His nephew left the room, without an angry word, stopping only to wish Bob Cratchit a merry Christmas.
Then two other gentlemen came in. They were large, round, comfortable-looking men, with books and papers in their hands.
‘This is Scrooge and Marley’s, I think,’ said one of them, looking at the papers that he was carrying. ‘Am I speaking to MR Scrooge or Mr Marley?’
‘Mr Marley is dead,’ Scrooge replied. ‘He died sevev years ago today, on Christmas Eve.’
‘I’m sure that you are just at kind to the poor as your partner,’ said the gentleman,smiling.
What was true was that Scrooge was just as mean as Marley, and Marley had been just as mean as Scrooge.
‘At this happy time of year, Mr Scrooge,’ the gentleman went on, taking up his pen, ‘we should help poor people who have no food or clothes or home.’
‘Are there no prisons?’ asked Scrooge coldly.
‘Plenty of prisons,’ said the gentleman.
‘And the workhouses, where poor people can live and work? Are still open?’
‘Yes, they are, I’m sorryto say.’
‘I’m happy to hear it,’ said Scrooge. ‘I thought, from what you said at first, that perhaps these useful places were closed, for some reason.’
‘But some of us feel,’ replied the gentleman, ‘that these places don’t iffer enough to poor people. We’re hoping to give some meat and drink, and wood for a fire, to people who need all these things.