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 n...
His beloved printing-office was in the last stages of destruction by fire, and grief and anger consumed him just as the flames consumed his paper and his press and melted his metal type. He had gone through in his mind again and again, since he had been shaken awake by his landlady in the predawn...
“It’s a weird day to have a birthday,” she had told him. “I mean, everyone is always celebrating on Halloween, but it doesn’t have anything to do with me.” She had already planned the evening; that left him to find a present, and he wanted to give her something that would reflect her passions and...