Transcript
Host (0:03)
The Merry Bakers at Relevant radio present.
Narrator (0:07)
This day of Christmas my true love came to me A partridge in a pear tree of Christmas pleasure to me Two turtle doves and a partridge in a pear tree.
Host (0:27)
Charles Dickens A Christmas Carol Episode 14 Christmas present awaking in the middle of.
Charles Dickens (0:58)
A prodigiously tough snore, and sitting up in bed to get his thoughts together, Scrooge had no occasion to be told that the bell was again upon the stroke of one.
Narrator (1:16)
It's almost one already, almost one o'clock.
Charles Dickens (1:21)
He felt that he was restored to consciousness in the right nick of time, for the especial purpose of holding a conference with the second messenger dispatched to him through Jacob Marley's intervention. But finding that he turned uncomfortably cold when he began to wonder which of his curtains this new specter would draw back, he put them, every one, aside with his own hands, and lying down again, established a sharp lookout all round the bed, for he wished to challenge the spirit on the moment of its appearance, and did not wish to be taken by surprise and made nervous. Scrooge was ready for a good broad field of strange appearances, and that nothing between a baby and a rhinoceros would have astonished him very much.
Narrator (2:04)
Come now, come now. Ah, it's 1:00.
Charles Dickens (2:10)
Here it is now. Being prepared for almost anything, he was not by any means prepared for nothing, and consequently, when the bell struck one and no shape appeared, he was taken with a violent fit of trembling.
Narrator (2:27)
Where is it? Where is it?
Charles Dickens (2:30)
Five minutes, ten minutes. A quarter of an hour went by, yet nothing came. All this time he lay upon his bed, the very core and centre of a blaze of ruddy light which streamed upon it when the clock proclaimed the hour, and which, being only light, was more alarming than a dozen ghosts. As he was powerless to make out what it meant or would be at, and was sometimes apprehensive that he might be at that very moment an interesting case of spontaneous combustion, without having the consolation of knowing it. At last, however, he began to think as you or I would have thought at first, for it is always the person not in the predicament who knows what ought to have been done in it, and would unquestionably have done it too. At last, I say, he began to think that the source and secret of this ghostly light might be in the adjoining room, from whence, on further tracing it, it seemed to shine. This idea taking full possession of his mind, he got up softly and shuffled in his slippers to the door.