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. Five minutes, ten minutes, a quarter of an hour went by, yet nothing came. 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. Without venturing for Scrooge quite as hardily as this, I don’t mind calling on you to believe that he was ready for a good broad field of strange appearances, and that nothing between a baby and rhinoceros would have astonished him very much. Gentlemen of the free-and-easy sort, who plume themselves on being acquainted with a move or two, and being usually equal to the time-of-day, express the wide range of their capacity for adventure by observing that they are good for anything from pitch-and-toss to manslaughter between which opposite extremes, no doubt, there lies a tolerably wide and comprehensive range of subjects.
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. But finding that he turned uncomfortably cold when he began to wonder which of his curtains this new spectre would draw back, he put them every one aside with his own hands and lying down again, established a sharp look-out all round the bed. 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 despatched to him through Jacob Marley’s intervention.
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