English - August 2018

Read the extract carefully, then answer the questions.
‘A Christmas Carol’ by Charles Dickens tells the story of mean and lonely Mr Scrooge, who, on
Christmas Eve, meets the ghosts of the past, present and future, who frighten him into changing
his ways.
Once upon a time – of all the good days in the year, on Christmas Eve – old Scrooge sat busy
in his counting house. It was cold, bleak, biting weather: foggy withal: and he could hear the
people in the court outside, go wheezing up and down, beating their hands upon their breasts,
and stamping their feet upon the pavement stones to warm them. The city clocks had only just
gone three, but it was quite dark already – it had not been light all day – and candles were
flaring in the windows of the neighbouring offices, like ruddy smears upon the palpable brown
air. The fog came pouring in at every chink and keyhole, and was so dense without, that
although the court was of the narrowest, the houses opposite were mere phantoms. To see the
dingy cloud come drooping down, obscuring everything, one might have thought that Nature
lived hard by, and was brewing on a large scale.
The door of Scrooge’s counting house was open that he might keep his eye upon his clerk,
who in a dismal little cell beyond, a sort of tank, was copying letters. Scrooge had a very small
fire, but the clerk’s fire was so very much smaller that it looked like one coal. But he couldn’t
replenish it, for Scrooge kept the coal-box in his own room; and so surely as the clerk came in
with the shovel, the master predicted that it would be necessary for them to part. Wherefore the
clerk put on his white comforter, and tried to warm himself at the candle; in which effort, not
being a man of a strong imagination, he failed.
“A merry Christmas, uncle! God save you!” cried a cheerful voice. It was the voice of
Scrooge’s nephew, who came upon him so quickly that this was the first intimation he had of
his approach.
“Bah!” said Scrooge, “Humbug!”
He had so heated himself with rapid walking in the fog and frost, this nephew of Scrooge’s,
that he was all in a glow; his face was ruddy and handsome; his eyes sparkled, and his breath
smoked again. “Christmas a humbug, uncle!” said Scrooge’s nephew. “You don’t mean that, I
am sure?”
“I do,” said Scrooge. “Merry Christmas! What right have you to be merry? What reason have
you to be merry? You’re poor enough.”
“Come, then,” returned the nephew gaily. “What right have you to be dismal? What reason
have you to be morose? You’re rich enough.”
Scrooge having no better answer ready on the spur of the moment, said “Bah!” again; and
followed it up with “Humbug.”
“Don’t be cross, uncle!” said the nephew.
“What else can I be,” returned the uncle, “when I live in such a world of fools as this? Merry
Christmas! Out upon merry Christmas! What’s Christmas time to you but a time for paying bills
without money; a time for finding yourself a year older, but not an hour richer; a time for
balancing your books and having every item in ’em through a round dozen of months
presented dead against you? If I could work my will,” said Scrooge indignantly, “every idiot who
goes about with ‘Merry Christmas’ on his lips, should be boiled with his own pudding, and
buried with a stake of holly through his heart. He should!”
“Uncle!” pleaded the nephew.
“Nephew!” returned the uncle sternly, “keep Christmas in your own way, and let me keep it in
mine.”
“Keep it!” repeated Scrooge’s nephew. “But you don’t keep it.”
“Let me leave it alone, then,” said Scrooge. “Much good may it do you! Much good it has
ever done you!”
“There are many things from which I might have derived good, by which I have not profited, I
dare say,” returned the nephew. “Christmas among the rest. But I am sure I have always
thought of Christmas time, when it has come round – apart from the veneration due to its
sacred name and origin, if anything belonging to it can be apart from that – as a good time; a
kind, forgiving, charitable, pleasant time: the only time I know of, in the long calendar of the
year, when men and women seem by one consent to open their shut-up hearts freely, and to
think of people below them as if they really were fellow-passengers to the grave, and not
another race of creatures bound on other journeys. And therefore, uncle, though it has never
put a scrap of gold or silver in my pocket, I believe that it has done me good, and will do me
good; and I say, God bless it!”
The clerk in the Tank involuntarily applauded. Becoming immediately sensible of the
impropriety, he poked the fire, and extinguished the last frail spark for ever.
“Let me hear another sound from you,” said Scrooge, “and you’ll keep your Christmas by
losing your situation! You’re quite a powerful speaker, sir,” he added, turning to his nephew. “I
wonder you don’t go into Parliament.”
“Don’t be angry, uncle. Come! Dine with us tomorrow.”
(Adapted from A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens)