The Ghost stopped at a certain warehouse door, and asked Scrooge if he knew it. 

 'Know it!' said Scrooge.  'Was I apprenticed here?'  Scrooge cried in great excitement- 'Why, it's old Fezziwig! Bless his heart, it's Fezziwig alive again!' 

 Old Fezziwig called out, in a comfortable, oily, rich, fat, jovial voice- 'Yo ho, there! Ebenezer! Dick!' 

 Scrooge's former self, now grown a young man, came briskly in, accompanied by his fellow-'prentice.  'Dick Wilkins, to be sure!' said Scrooge to the Ghost.  'Bless me, yes. There he is.  He was very much attached to me, was Dick.  Poor Dick! Dear, dear!' 

 'Yo ho, my boys!' said Fezziwig.  'No more work to-night.  Christmas Eve, Dick.  Christmas, Ebenezer! Let's have the shutters up,' cried old Fezziwig, with a sharp clap of his hands, 'before a man can say Jack Robinson!'  'Hilli-ho!' cried old Fezziwig, skipping down from the high desk with wonderful agility.  'Clear away, my lads, and let's have lots of room here! Hilli-ho, Dick! Chirrup, Ebenezer!' 

 'A small matter,' said the Ghost, 'to make these silly folks so full of gratitude.' 

 'Small!' echoed Scrooge. 

 The Spirit signed to him to listen to the two apprentices, who were pouring out their hearts in praise of Fezziwig; and when he had done so, said: 'Why! Is it not? He has spent but a few pounds of your mortal money: three or four, perhaps.  Is that so much that he deserves this praise?' 

 'It isn't that,' said Scrooge, heated by the remark, and speaking unconsciously like his former, not his latter self.  'It isn't that, Spirit.  He has the power to render us happy or unhappy; to make our service light or burdensome; a pleasure or a toil.  Say that his power lies in words and looks; in things so slight and insignificant that it is impossible to add and count 'em up: what then? The happiness he gives is quite as great as if it cost a fortune.' 

 'What is the matter?' asked the Ghost. 

 'Nothing particular,' said Scrooge. 

 'Something, I think?' the Ghost insisted. 

 'No,' said Scrooge, 'no.  I should like to be able to say a word or two to my clerk just now.  That's all.' 

 'My time grows short,' observed the Spirit.  'Quick!' 

 He was not alone, but sat by the side of a fair young girl in a mourning dress: in whose eyes there were tears, which sparkled in the light that shone out of the Ghost of Christmas Past.  'It matters little,' she said softly.  'To you, very little.  Another idol has displaced me; and, if it can cheer and comfort you in time to come as I would have tried to do, I have no just cause to grieve.' 

 'What Idol has displaced you?' he rejoined. 

 'A golden one.' 

 'This is the even-handed dealing of the world!' he said.  'There is nothing on which it is so hard as poverty; and there is nothing it professes to condemn with such severity as the pursuit of wealth!' 

 'You fear the world too much,' she answered gently.  'All your other hopes have merged into the hope of being beyond the chance of its sordid reproach.  I have seen your nobler aspirations fall off one by one, until the master passion, Gain, engrosses you.  Have I not?' 

 'What then?' he retorted.  'Even if I have grown so much wiser, what then? I am not changed towards you.' 

 She shook her head. 'Am I?' 

 'Our contract is an old one.  It was made when we were both poor, and content to be so, until, in good season, we could improve our worldly fortune by our patient industry.  You are changed.  When it was made you were another man.' 

 'I was a boy,' he said impatiently. 

 'Your own feeling tells you that you were not what you are,' she returned.  'I am.  That which promised happiness when we were one in heart is fraught with misery now that we are two.  How often and how keenly I have thought of this I will not say.  It is enough that I have thought of it, and can release you.' 

 'Have I ever sought release?' 

 'In words.  No.  Never.' 

 'In what, then?' 

 'In a changed nature; in an altered spirit; in another atmosphere of life; another Hope as its great end.  In everything that made my love of any worth or value in your sight.  If this had never been between us,' said the girl, looking mildly, but with steadiness, upon him; 'tell me, would you seek me out and try to win me now? Ah, no!' 

 He seemed to yield to the justice of this supposition in spite of himself.  But he said, with a struggle, 'You think not.' 

 'I would gladly think otherwise if I could,' she answered.  'Heav