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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	336	THE HAUNTED MAN
	exactly what I say myself, Sir. There never was such a memory as my father's. He's the most wonderful man in the world. He don't know what forgetting means. It's the very observation I'm always making to Mrs. William, Sir, if you'll believe me !"
	Mr. Swidger, in his polite desire to seem to acquiesce at all events, delivered this as if there were no iota of contradic­tion in it, and it were all said in unbounded and unqualified assent. The Chemist pushed his plate away, and, rising from the table, walked across the room to where the old man stood looking at a little sprig of holly in his hand. " It recalls the time when many of
	those years were old and new, then?'5 he said, observing him attentively, and touching him on the shoulder. " Does it ?"
	"Oh many, many ! " said Philip, half awaking from his reverie. " I'm eighty-seven !" "Merry and happy, was it?" asked the Chemist in a low voice. "Merry and happy, old man ?"
	" Maybe as high as that, no higher," said the old man, holding out his hand a little way above the level of his knee, and looking retro­spectively at his questioner, "when I first remember 'em! Cold, sunshiny day it was, out a-walking, when some one — it was my
	mother as sure as you stand there, though I don't know what her blessed face was like, for she took ill and died that Christmas­time—told me they were food for birds. The pretty little fellow thought—that's me, you understand—that birds' eyes were so bright, perhaps, because the berries that they lived on in the