Ebenezer Scrooge (2:10)

Ho, ho.

Bob Cratchit (2:12)

Hey there, boys.

Narrator (2:14)

Scrooge took his melancholy dinner in his usual melancholy tavern, and, having read all the newspapers and beguiled the rest of the evening with his banker's book, went home to bed.

Narrator (2:32)

Cab.

Ebenezer Scrooge (2:32)

Cabby. Whoa.

Cab Driver (2:35)

Where to, sir? Back to your missus.

Ebenezer Scrooge (2:37)

Lambeth Marsh and Westminster.

Cab Driver (2:39)

Lambeth Marsh it is, sir. All set for Christmas. No need to make a stop near the shops.

Ebenezer Scrooge (2:43)

Lambeth Marsh, Cabby.

Cab Driver (2:45)

Very good, sir. As you like it, sir.

Narrator (2:50)

He lived in chambers which had once belonged to his deceased partner, Jacob Marley. They were a gloomy suite of rooms in a lowering pile of building up a yard where it had so little business to be that one could scarcely help fancying it must have run there when it was a young house playing at hide and seek with other houses and forgotten the way out again.

Ebenezer Scrooge (3:09)

Here, cab.

Cab Driver (3:10)

Here. Yes, sir. Whoa, lads. Steady now.

Ebenezer Scrooge (3:15)

Yes, just let me out of the gate.

Cab Driver (3:18)

That'll be fourpence, sir.

Narrator (3:22)

It was old enough now and dreary enough, for nobody lived in it but Scrooge, the other rooms being all let out as offices.

Ebenezer Scrooge (3:29)

Now, where is that confounded gate key? I know it's here someplace. Oh, if that forsaken chain hadn't broken then. Oh, this is it, I think.

Ebenezer Scrooge (3:46)

Confound this fog. Can't see past the tip of my nose.

Narrator (3:51)

The yard was so dark that even Scrooge, who knew its every stone, was fain to grope with his hands. The fog and frost so hung about the black old gateway of the house that it seemed as if the genius of the weather sat in mournful meditation on the threshold.

Ebenezer Scrooge (4:06)

Ah, but here's the door, I think. Yes. Where's the key?

Ebenezer Scrooge (4:14)

This one doesn't want to work now. Both you and Bob Cratcher don't want to work on Christmas. That makes two.

Narrator (4:22)

Now, it is a fact that there was nothing at all particular about the knocker on the door, except that it was very large. It is also a fact that Scrooge had seen it night and morning during his whole residence in that place. Also that Scrooge had as little of what is called fancy about him as any man in the city of London, even including, which is a bold word, the corporation, aldermen and livery. Let it also be borne in mind that Scrooge had not bestowed one thought on Marley since his last mention of his seven years dead partner that afternoon. And then let any man explain to me, if he can, how it happened that Scrooge, having his key in the lock of the door, saw in the knocker, without its undergoing any intermediate process of change. Not a knocker, but Marley's face.

Narrator (5:12)

Marley's face. It was not an impenetrable shadow, as the other objects in the yard were, but had a dismal light about it, like a bad lobster in a dark cellar. It was not angry or ferocious, but looked at Scrooge as Marley used to look, with ghostly spectacles turned up on its ghostly forehead. The hair was curiously stirred, as if by breath or hot air, and though the eyes were wide open, they were perfectly motionless. That and its livid color made it horrible, but its horror seemed to be in spite of the face and beyond its control, rather than a part of its own expression. Marley, as Scrooge looked fixedly at this phenomenon. It was a knocker again. To say that he was not startled, or that his blood was not conscious of a terrible sensation to which it had been a stranger from infancy would be untrue. But he put his hand upon the key he had relinquished, turned it sturdily, walked in and lighted his candle. He did pause with a moment's irresolution before he shut the door. And he did look cautiously behind it first, as if he half expected to be terrified with the sight of Marley's pigtail sticking out into the hole. But there was nothing on the back of the door except the screws and nuts that held the knocker on.

Ebenezer Scrooge (6:32)

Pooh, pooh.

Narrator (6:38)

Scrooge shut the door. The sound resounded at the house like thunder. Every room above and every cask in the wine merchant's cellars below appeared to have a separate peal of echoes of its own. Scrooge was not a man to be frightened by echoes.

Ebenezer Scrooge (6:54)

Ridiculous. Come now.

Narrator (6:57)

He fastened the door and walked across the hall and up the stairs slowly, too, trimming his candle as he went. You may talk vaguely about driving a coach and six up a good old flight of stairs or through a bad young act of Parliament, but I mean to say, you might have got a hearse up that staircase and taken it broad wise with the splinter bar towards the wall and the door towards the balustrades and done it easy. There was plenty of width for that and room to spare. Which is perhaps the reason why Scrooge thought he saw a locomotive hearse going on before him in the gloom. Half a dozen gas lamps out of the street wouldn't have lighted the entry too well, so you may suppose it was pretty dark with Scrooge's candle. Up Scrooge went, not carrying a button, for that. Darkness is cheap and Scrooge liked it. But before he shut his heavy door, he walked through his rooms to see that all was right.

Ebenezer Scrooge (7:52)

This is outrageous. Everything seems normal.

Narrator (7:57)

He had just enough recollection of the face to desire to do that.

Ebenezer Scrooge (8:03)

Marley.

Ebenezer Scrooge (8:05)

No. It couldn't have been Marley. Marley's dead. Molly's dead.

Announcer (8:18)

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