`` A quarter past , '' said Scrooge , counting . `` Ding , dong ! '' `` Half past , '' said Scrooge . `` Ding , dong ! '' `` A quarter to it , '' said Scrooge . `` Ding , dong ! '' `` The hour itself , '' said Scrooge triumphantly , `` and nothing else ! '' He spoke before the hour bell sounded , which it now did with a deep , dull , hollow , melancholy ONE . Light flashed up in the room upon the instant , and the curtains of his bed were drawn . The curtains of his bed were drawn aside , I tell you , by a hand . Not the curtains at his feet , nor the curtains at his back , but those to which his face was addressed . The curtains of his bed were drawn aside ; and Scrooge , starting up into a half-recumbent attitude , found himself face to face with the unearthly visitor who drew them : as close to it as I am now to you , and I am standing in the spirit at your elbow . It was a strange figure -- like a child : yet not so like a child as like an old man , viewed through some supernatural medium , which gave him the appearance of having receded from the view , and being diminished to a child 's proportions . Its hair , which hung about its neck and down its back , was white , as if with age ; and yet the face had not a wrinkle in it , and the tenderest bloom was on the skin . The arms were very long and muscular ; the hands the same , as if its hold were of uncommon strength . Its legs and feet , most delicately formed , were , like those upper members , bare . It wore a tunic of the purest white ; and round its waist was bound a lustrous belt , the sheen of which was beautiful . It held a branch of fresh green holly in its hand : and , in singular contradiction of that wintry emblem , had its dress trimmed with summer flowers . But the strangest thing about it was , that from the crown of its head there sprung a bright clear jet of light , by which all this was visible ; and which was doubtless the occasion of its using , in its duller moments , a great extinguisher for a cap , which it now held under its arm . Even this , though , when Scrooge looked at it with increasing steadiness , was not its strangest quality .
For , as its belt sparkled and glittered , now XXXXX one part and now in another , and what was light one instant at another time was dark , so the figure itself fluctuated in its distinctness : being now a thing with one arm , now with one leg , now with twenty legs , now a pair of legs without a head , now a head without a body : of which dissolving parts no outline would be visible in the dense gloom wherein they melted away .
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