There was nothing of high mark in this. They were not a handsome family;
they were not well dressed; their shoes were far from being water-proof;
their clothes were scanty; and Peter might have known, and very likely
did, the inside of a pawnbroker's. But they were happy, grateful,
pleased with one another, and contented with the time; and when they
faded, and looked happier yet in the bright sprinklings of the Spirit's
torch at parting, Scrooge had his eye upon them, and especially on Tiny
Tim, until the last.
It was a great surprise to Scrooge, as this scene vanished, to hear a
hearty laugh. It was a much greater surprise to Scrooge to recognize it
as his own nephew's, and to find himself in a bright, dry, gleaming
room, with the Spirit standing smiling by his side, and looking at that
same nephew.
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-humor. When Scrooge's
nephew laughed, Scrooge's niece by marriage laughed as heartily as he.
And their assembled friends, being not a bit behindhand, laughed out
lustily.
"He said that Christmas was a humbug, as I live!" cried Scrooge's
nephew.
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