A Dinosaurs Christmas Carol - Chapter 1
Now there is a view of the whole city of Dinodon, the Prehistoric Dinosaur version of London.
At a house, servants were fixing the table for dinner. Of course, down below near a window that is to the kitchen, three Dino Kids all boys., a Megalosaurus, Polacanthus, and Cetiosaurus were outside as the Megalosaur pleaded to someone inside the place, "Come on, mister please."
"Give us some food for crying out loud!" the Polacanthus exclaims with a frown.
"Any scrap for the starving?" Cetiosaurus said.
The kids kept on shouting, wanting some food. Finally, an Allosaurus chef appeared at the window frowning as he said, "Alright. Merry Fridge, you hungry kids!"
The cook tosses a skinny leg out the window, much to the kids' delight."All right, yeah!"
However, a Didelphodon appears and snatches the skinny leg and makes off with it, with the annoyed shouting Dino kids chasing the small mammal causing some Avisaurus to fly away from the area.
Meanwhile, we see a Pteranodon chimney sweeper cleaning the chimney while getting dirty. In the market division below, customers were getting food for their meals like fish, chestnuts, wreaths to hang on doors, and eels.
Meanwhile, a Stenonychosaurus was speaking to some customers as he said, "Now here is the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost." Of course, the Troodontid frowns at a Ceratosaurus kid trying to climb up, but he pushes him away. "Get lost, kid. Anyway, which one of these cups holds the pea."
The Stenonychosaurus put the pea under the nuts and began shuffling the cups. Of course, the Ceratosaur kid tries to swipe one with the pea under it, much to the salesman's annoyance as he shoves him while scowling, "Bug off, kid!"
"Excuse me." A female Brachiosaurus said as she went through the crowd while a scowling Bloo left.
"Watch your fingers now!" said the Stenonychosaur.
A group of families mostly Tyrannosaurus and Triceratops watch on with smiles with the girl Triceratops and boy Tyrannosaurus play wheel with sticks, almost running to the alley. They were having fun...until the two kids gasped and ran off. Why? Ebenezer Scrooge is heading their way and it's bad luck as well as a bad idea to get in his way.
Mr. Grumpy soon arrived at a building and took his key out, using it to unlock the door before opening it. Then he looks at the sign of the building being marked 'Scrooge & Marley's'.
"My partner, Jacob Marley, dead seven years today." Scrooge sighed. "Oh, he was a good'n. He robbed from the widows and swindled the poor. In his will, he left me enough money to pay for his tombstone, and I have him buried at sea!"
The Oviraptor goes into the said shop. The door itself was slammed closed. Time for Mr. Scrooge to begin his usual money-wanting day.
Once upon a time - of all the good days in the year, on Fridge Day 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.
It was night as business was almost too loose inside the place. Oviraptor was counting some money while taking it off the table. He said, "All right, 50 pounds, 10 shillings to Horner. Plus his 80% interest compounded daily." Scrooge chuckle while playing with some of his coins before gathering the stuff, and hugging them. "Ahhh, at times like this, I'm glad money even existed."
In another room, someone is trying to keep himself warm by a candle while holding a candle. It was a well-dressed Hypsilophodon who breathed a little while glancing at an unopened coal box, there was barely any coal inside the furnace, Mr. Scrooge prefers to keep the place as cool as he is.
The Hypsilodophon glances at the keys to the coal box, making him ponder a bit. His name is Bob Cratchit, Ebenezer's loyal clerk.
"Hmmm..." Bob said ponderfully. He wonders if his boss would notice a coal missing if...
Of course, Scrooge glares at Tommy making the small dinosaur get back to work. The Oviraptor knows what his employee wants but no coal for him...ever! Just then the door opened with someone came into the place.
"A merry Fridge Day, 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. He is another young Oviraptor brightly colored around his head and crest compared to the dull-colored Scrooge wearing a winter snow hat and coat. His name is Fred, Scrooge's nephew and his only living relative by blood.
"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.
"Fridge Day a humbug, uncle!" said Scrooge's nephew. "You don't mean that, I am sure."
"I do," said Scrooge. "Merry Fridge Day! 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 Oviraptor nephew.
"What else can I be," returned the uncle, "when I live in such a world of fools as this? Merry Fridge Day! Out upon merry Fridge Day! What's Refridgerator 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 Fridge Day' 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 Fridge Day 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. "Fridge Day among the rest. But I am sure I have always thought of Refridgerator 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 Fridge Day 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."
Scrooge said that he would see him - yes, indeed he did. He went the whole length of the expression, and said that he would see him in that extremity first.
"But why?" cried Scrooge's nephew. "Why?"
"Why did you get married?" said Scrooge.
"Because I fell in love."
"Because you fell in love!" growled Scrooge, as if that were the only one thing in the world more ridiculous than a merry Fridge Day. "Good afternoon!"
"Nay, uncle, but you never came to see me before that happened. Why give it as a reason for not coming now?"
"Good afternoon," said Scrooge.
"I want nothing from you; I ask nothing of you; why cannot we be friends?"
"Good afternoon," said Scrooge.
"I am sorry, with all my heart, to find you so resolute. We have never had any quarrel, to which I have been a party. But I have made the trial in homage to Fridge Day, and I'll keep my Fridge Day humour to the last. So A Merry Fridge Day, uncle!"
"Good afternoon," said Scrooge.
"And A Happy New Year!"
"Good afternoon!" said Scrooge.
His nephew left the room without an angry word, notwithstanding. He stopped at the outer door to bestow the greetings of the season on the clerk, who cold as he was, was warmer than Scrooge; for he returned them cordially.
"There's another fellow," muttered Scrooge; who overheard him: "My clerk, with fifteen shillings a week, and a wife and family, talking about a merry Fridge Day. I'll retire to Bedlam."
This lunatic, in letting Scrooge's nephew out, had let two other people in, One an Iguanodon and another a Styracosaurus. They were portly gentlemen, pleasant to behold, and now stood, with their hats off, in Scrooge's office. They had books and papers in their hands and bowed to him.
"Scrooge and Marley's, I believe," said the Iguanodon, referring to his list. "Have I the pleasure of addressing Mr. Scrooge, or Mr. Marley?"
"Mr. Marley has been dead these seven years," Scrooge replied. "He died seven years ago, this very night."
"We have no doubt his liberality is well represented by his surviving partner," said the Iguanodon gentleman, presenting his credentials.
It certainly was; for they had been two kindred spirits. At the ominous word "liberality," Scrooge frowned, and shook his head, and handed the credentials back.
"At this festive season of the year, Mr. Scrooge," said the Iguanodon, taking up a pen, "it is more than usually desirable that we should make some slight provision for the Poor and Destitute, who suffer greatly at the present time. Many thousands are in want of common necessaries; hundreds of thousands are in want of common comforts, sir."
"Are there no prisons?" asked Scrooge.
"Plenty of prisons," said the gentleman, laying down the pen again.
"And the Union workhouses?" demanded Scrooge. "Are they still in operation?"
"They are. Still," returned the Iguanodon, "I wish I could say they were not."
"The Treadmill and the Poor Law are in full vigour, then?" said Scrooge.
"Both very busy, sir."
"Oh! I was afraid, from what you said at first, that something had occurred to stop them in their useful course," said Scrooge. "I'm very glad to hear it."
"Under the impression that they scarcely furnish Christian cheer of mind or body to the multitude," returned the gentleman, "a few of us are endeavouring to raise a fund to buy the Poor some meat and drink and means of warmth. We choose this time, because it is a time, of all others, when Want is keenly felt, and Abundance rejoices. What shall I put you down for?" said the Iguanodon
"Nothing!" Scrooge replied.
"You wish to be anonymous?"
"I wish to be left alone," said Scrooge. "Since you ask me what I wish, gentlemen, that is my answer. I don't make merry myself at Fridge Day and I can't afford to make idle people merry. I help to support the establishments I have mentioned - they cost enough; and those who are badly off must go there."
"Many can't go there; and many would rather die."
"If they would rather die," said Scrooge, "they had better do it, and decrease the surplus population. Besides - excuse me - I don't know that."
"But you might know it," observed the Iguanodon.
"It's not my business," Scrooge returned. "It's enough for a man to understand his own business, and not to interfere with other people's. Mine occupies me constantly. Good afternoon, gentlemen!"
Seeing clearly that it would be useless to pursue their point, the gentlemen withdrew. Scrooge returned his labours with an improved opinion of himself, and in a more facetious temper than was usual with him.
Meanwhile the fog and darkness thickened so, that people ran about with flaring links, proffering their services to go before horses in carriages, and conduct them on their way. The ancient tower of a church, whose gruff old bell was always peeping slyly down at Scrooge out of a Gothic window in the wall, became invisible, and struck the hours and quarters in the clouds, with tremulous vibrations afterwards as if its teeth were chattering in its frozen head up there. The cold became intense. In the main street at the corner of the court, some labourers were repairing the gas-pipes, and had lighted a great fire in a brazier, round which a party of ragged men and boys were gathered: warming their hands and winking their eyes before the blaze in rapture. The water-plug being left in solitude, its overflowing sullenly congealed, and turned to misanthropic ice. The brightness of the shops where holly sprigs and berries crackled in the lamp heat of the windows, made pale faces ruddy as they passed. Poulterers' and grocers' trades became a splendid joke; a glorious pageant, with which it was next to impossible to believe that such dull principles as bargain and sale had anything to do. The Lord Mayor, in the stronghold of the mighty Mansion House, gave orders to his fifty cooks and butlers to keep Fridge Day as a Lord Mayor's household should; and even the little tailor, whom he had fined five shillings on the previous Monday for being drunk and bloodthirsty in the streets, stirred up to-morrow's pudding in his garret, while his lean wife and the baby sallied out to buy the beef.
Foggier yet, and colder! Piercing, searching, biting cold. If the good Saint Dunstan had but nipped the Evil Spirit's nose with a touch of such weather as that, instead of using his familiar weapons, then indeed he would have roared to lusty purpose. The owner of one scant young nose, gnawed and mumbled by the hungry cold as bones are gnawed by dogs, stooped down at Scrooge's keyhole to regale him with a Fridge Day carol: but at the first sound of -
"God bless you, merry gentleman! May nothing you dismay!"
Scrooge seized the ruler with such energy of action, that the singer fled in terror, leaving the keyhole to the fog and even more congenial frost.
At length the hour of shutting up the countinghouse arrived. With an ill-will Scrooge dismounted from his stool, and tacitly admitted the fact to the expectant clerk in the Tank, who instantly snuffed his candle out, and put on his hat.
"You'll want all day to-morrow, I suppose?" said Scrooge.
"If quite convenient, sir." said the Hypsilophodon.
"It's not convenient," said Scrooge, "and it's not fair. If I was to stop half-a-crown for it, you'd think yourself ill-used, I'll be bound?"
The clerk smiled faintly.
"And yet," said Scrooge, "you don't think me ill-used, when I pay a day's wages for no work."
The clerk observed that it was only once a year.
"A poor excuse for picking a man's pocket every twenty-fifth of December!" said Scrooge, buttoning his great-coat to the chin. "But I suppose you must have the whole day. Be here all the earlier next morning."
The clerk promised that he would; and Scrooge walked out with a growl. The office was closed in a twinkling, and the clerk, with the long ends of his white comforter dangling below his waist (for he boasted no great-coat), went down a slide on Cornhill, at the end of a lane of boys, twenty times, in honour of its being Fridge Day Eve, and then ran home to Camden Town as hard as he could pelt, to play at blindman's-buff.