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Christmas Stories from Household Words and All the Year Round
Christmas Stories from Household Words and All the Year Round Author:Charles Dickens Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: her knees before the basket; speaking in a sprightly voice, and busy with the parcels. 'There are not many of them to-night, John, but I saw some goods behind... more » the cart, just now; and though they give more trouble, perhaps, still they pay as well; so we have no reason to grumble, have we? Besides, you have been delivering, I dare say, as you came along?" 'Oh, yes," John said. "A good many." " Why, what's this round box? Heart alive, John, it's a wedding-cake!" " Leave a woman alone to find out that," said John, admiringly. " Now a man would never have thought of it! Whereas, it's my belief, that if you was to pack a wedding-cake up in a tea-chest, or a turn-up bedstead, or a pickled salmon keg, or any unlikely thing, a woman would be sure to find it out directly. Yes; I called for it at the pastry-cook's." "And it weighs I don't know what—whole hundredweights!" cried Dot, making a great demonstration of trying to lift it. "Whose is it, John? Where is it going?" " Read the writing on the other side," said John. " Why, John! My goodness, John!" " Ah! who'd have thought it!" John returned. " You never mean to say," pursued Dot. sitting on the floor and shaking her head at him, " that it's Gruff and Tackleton the toymaker!" John nodded. Mrs. Peerybingle nodded also, fifty times at least. Not in assent—in dumb and pitying amazement; screwing up her lips, the while, with all their little force (they were never made for screwing up; 1 am clear of that), and looking the good Carrier through and through, in her abstraction. Miss Slowboy, in the meantime, who had a mechanical power of reproducing scraps of current conversation for the delectation of the baby, with all the sense struck out of them, and all the nouns changed into the plural number, inquired alo...« less