`` Bad , '' he answered . `` We are quite ruined ? '' `` No . There is hope yet , Caroline . '' `` If he relents , '' she said , amazed , `` there is ! Nothing is past hope , if such a miracle has happened . '' `` He is past relenting , '' said her husband . `` He is dead . '' She was a mild and patient creature , if her face spoke truth ; but she was thankful in her soul to hear it , and she said so with clasped hands . She prayed forgiveness the next moment , and was sorry ; but the first was the emotion of her heart . `` What the half-drunken woman , whom I told you of last night , said to me when I tried to see him and obtain a week 's delay , and what I thought was a mere excuse to avoid me , turns out to have been quite true . He was not only very ill , but dying , then . '' `` To whom will our debt be transferred ? '' `` I do n't know . But , before that time , we shall be ready with the money ; and , even though we were not , it would be bad fortune indeed to find so merciless a creditor in his successor . We may sleep to-night with light hearts , Caroline ! '' Yes . Soften it as they would , their hearts were lighter . The children 's faces , hushed and clustered round to hear what they so little understood , were brighter ; and it was a happier house for this man 's death ! The only emotion that the Ghost could show him , caused by the event , was one of pleasure .
`` Let me see some tenderness connected with a death , '' said Scrooge ; `` or that dark chamber , Spirit , which we left just now , will be for ever present XXXXX me . ''
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