But they didn’t devote the whole evening to music.  After a while they played at forfeits; for it is good to be children sometimes, and never better than at Christmas, when its mighty Founder was a child himself.  There was first a game at blind-man’s-buff, though.  And I no more believe Topper was really blinded than I believe he had eyes in his boots.  Because the way in which he went after that plump sister in the lace tucker was an outrage on the credulity of human nature.  Knocking down the fire-irons, tumbling over the chairs, bumping up against the piano, smothering himself among the curtains, wherever she went there went he!  He always knew where the plump sister was.  He wouldn’t catch anybody else.  If you had fallen up against him, as some of them did, and stood there, he would have made a feint of endeavoring to seize you, which would have been an affront to your understanding, and would instantly have sidled off in the direction of the plump sister.

“Here is a new game,” said Scrooge.  “One half-hour, Spirit, only one!”

It was a Game called Yes and No, where Scrooge’s nephew had to think of something, and the rest must find out what; he only answering to their questions yes or no, as the case was.  The fire of questioning to which he was exposed elicited from him that he was thinking of an animal, a live animal, rather a disagreeable animal, a savage animal, an animal that growled and grunted sometimes, and talked sometimes, and lived in London, and walked about the streets, and wasn’t made a show of, and wasn’t led by anybody, and didn’t live in a menagerie, and was never killed in a market, and was not a horse, or an ass, or a cow, or a bull, or a tiger, or a dog, or a pig, or a cat, or a bear.  At every new question put to him, this nephew burst into a fresh roar of laughter; and was so inexpressibly tickled, that he was obliged to get up off the sofa and stamp.  At last the plump sister cried out,—­

“I have found it out!  I know what it is, Fred!  I know what it is!”

“What is it?” cried Fred.

“It’s your uncle Scro-o-o-o-oge!”

Which it certainly was.  Admiration was the universal sentiment, though some objected that the reply to “Is it a bear?” ought to have been “Yes.”

Uncle Scrooge had imperceptibly become so gay and light of heart, that he would have drunk to the unconscious company in an inaudible speech.  But the whole scene passed off in the breath of the last word spoken by his nephew; and he and the Spirit were again upon their travels.

Much they saw, and far they went, and many homes they visited, but always with a happy end.  The Spirit stood beside sick-beds, and they were cheerful; on foreign lands, and they were close at home; by struggling men, and they were patient in their greater hope; by poverty, and it was rich.  In alms-house, hospital, and jail, in misery’s every refuge, where vain man in his little brief authority had not made fast the door, and barred the Spirit out, he left his blessing, and taught Scrooge his precepts.  Suddenly, as they stood together in an open place, the bell struck twelve.