Fog covered the three-story buildings and narrow street like a funeral shroud.  The man blew into his cupped hands to warm them.  Peering at the sign in the window, he found what he was looking for.

A bell over the door clanged as he pushed it open and shut it tight behind him.  The room was stocked floor to ceiling with books.  A slight smile crossed his long face as he thought of the half-hour he could spend leisurely perusing titles and perhaps reading a passage or two.  Lately he'd been feeling like he was carrying a great weight upon his shoulders.  This little bookstore hopefully would cheer him up.

And that was when he heard it.

Voices, raised as if in disagreement, came from the back of the shop.  At first he chose to ignore it, but as the argument escalated, he became concerned.

Making his way around a few scattered books on the worn floorboards, he walked toward the back room.  Two figures dressed in nineteenth-century costumes angrily faced each other.  One held a sprig of holly in his clenched fist.

"I had great expectations for you!"

"What the dickens does that mean?"

"What, you want a tale?  Right, then. 'It was the best of times, it was the worst—'

"You're an artful dodger."

"And I don't beg for 'more food, please,' just to put a twist to the story."

"You're a pip."

"Bah, humbug!"

The alarmed customer grabbed the holly from the gentleman with the frosty countenance and long nose before he had a chance to strike the other shabbily-dressed man in the heart, with its pointed stem.

As they stood staring back at him, a woman with messy hair dressed in a long skirt and blouse came up from behind and said to the arguing gentlemen, "I must ask you to leave."

Each of the arguing men tipped his hat toward her in deference and vanished like a bit of smoke rising from the floor, dissipating as it spiraled toward the tin ceiling.

The customer's jaw dropped and he turned to the lady.  She shrugged her thin shoulders and said, "Seems they feel at home here, but now I'm falling on hard times because of them."

He decided to quickly take his leave and find another bookstore to spend his precious half-hour.

As he opened the front door and the bell jangled, he turned to say good-bye to the owner.  She was preening in front of a cracked floor-length mirror on the side wall, wearing a bit of yellowed gauze veil on her head.

Yes, oh yes! He knew those people.  They had a mutual friend, so to speak.

He called out, "Good-bye, Miss Havisham," and closed the door tightly behind him.  In his hand he still clutched the sprig of holly, for one never knew what unsavory characters would leap out.

A finger tapped his shoulder. "Mr. Marley?"

The man froze.  He did not need to see the long black robe, the boney finger, the hidden face in the folds of the hood.  His fingers dropped the holly branch.  It was time for him to go back.  And where he was going, there was no use for such a thing.