xenogere

‘Bah!’ said Vazra. ‘Humbug!’

Posted on Dec 22, 2006 by jason

It’s not even Christmas yet and Vazra is already practicing his miserly look.  He feels Scrooge was too nice a character; only a cat could have done the part true justice.  But to be perfectly honest, although he looks like a grumpy old coot, he’s quite the opposite . . . most of the time.

To paraphrase Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol:

Oh! But he was a tight-pawed hand at the grind-stone, Vazra! a squeezing, wrenching, grasping, scraping, scratching, biting, clutching, covetous, shedding, old sinner! Hard and sharp as flint, from which no steel had ever struck out generous fire; secret, and self-contained, and solitary as an oyster. The cold within him froze his old features, nipped his flat nose, shrivelled his cheek, stiffened his gait; made his eyes yellow, his thin lips black; and spoke out shrewdly in his grating voice, disarming though it was for its constant purring. A frosty rime was on his head, and on his eyebrows, and his wiry chin. He carried his own low temperature always about with him; he iced his office in the dogdays; and didn’t thaw it one degree at Christmas.

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