The kettle begins it, then the cricket joins in, as John Peerybingle the carrier comes home to his young wife Dot and their baby. Around their hearth gather the poor toymaker Caleb Plummer and his blind daughter Bertha, the hard-hearted toy merchant Tackleton who plans to marry a girl half his age, and a mysterious deaf old stranger. Told in three “chirps”, it is a story of jealousy, trust and domestic love.
The third of Dickens’s Christmas books, a cosy fireside tale for winter evenings. Download the free EPUB.