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.

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	THE CRICKET ON THE HEARTH.	201
	Certainly, if these old gentlemen were inclined to have a fiendish joy in the contemplation of Tackleton's discomfiture, they had good reason to be satisfied. Tackleton couldn't get on at all; and the more cheerful his intended bride became in Dot's society, the less he liked it, though he had brought them together for that purpose. For he was a regular Dog in the Manger, was Tackleton ; and when they laughed, and he couldn't, he took it into his head, immediately, that they must be laughing at him. " Ah May !" said Dot. " Dear dear, what changes ! To talk of those merry school-days makes one young again." " Why, you an't particularly old, at any time ; are you ?" said Tackleton. "Look at my sober plodding husband there," returned Dot. " He adds twenty years to my age at least. Don't you, John?" " Forty," John replied.
	. "How many you'W add to May's, I'm sure I don't know," said Dot, laughing. " But she can't be much less than a hundred years of age on her next birthday." " Ha ha ! " laughed Tackleton. Hollow as a drum, that laugh though. And he looked as if he could have twisted Dot's neck : comfortably. "Dear dear!" said Dot. "Only to remember how we used to talk, at school, about the husbands we would choose. I don't know how young, and how handsome, and how gay, and how lively, mine was not to be ! And as to May's—! Ah dear ! I don't know whether to laugh or cry, when I think what silly girls we were." May seemed to know which to do; for the colour flashed into her face, and tears stood in her eyes.