Dickens's Christmas Books - complete online versions

The Christmas Carol, The Chimes, Cricket On the Hearth, Battle Of Life
& The Haunted Man & the Ghosts's Bargain with Illustrations.

	134                                            THE CHIMES.
	and that his daughter was again before him, seated at her work. But in a poorer, meaner garret than before; and with no Lilian by her side. The frame at which she had worked, was put away upon a shelf and
	covered up. The chair in which she had sat, was turned against the wall. A history was written in these little things, and in Meg's grief - worn face. Oh! who could fail to read it! Meg strained her eyes upon her work until it was too dark to see the threads; and when the night closed in, she lighted her feeble candle and worked on. Still her old father was invisible about her; looking down upon her; loving her—how dearly loving her!— and talking to her in a tender voice about the old times, and Bells. Though he knew, poor T r o t t y, though he knew she could not hear him. A great part of the evening had worn away, when a knock came at her door. She opened it. A man was on the threshold. A slouching, moody, drunken sloven : wasted by intemperance and vice : and with his matted hair and unshorn beard in wild (lis-