" The door of Scrooge's counting house was open that he might keep an 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 a single 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 strong imagination, he failed. "

― Charles Dickens , A Christmas Carol