Once upon a time – of all the good days in the year, on Christmas Eve – old Brown sat busy in his counting house. It was cold, bleak, biting weather. The door was open that he might keep his eye upon his clerk, Darling, who in a dismal little cell was copying figures and then erasing them again as soon as he had set them down. Brown had a small fire of smouldering parliamentary expenses' claims. The clerk's fire was so very much smaller that it looked like one coal.
"A merry Christmas, uncle! God save you!" cried a cheerful, rather posh voice. It belonged to the old Etonian who owned the toy shop next door. "Bah!" said Brown. "Humbug!"
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