The Cricket on the Hearth

"Caleb was no sorcerer, but in the only magic art that still remains to us, the magic of devoted, deathless love, Nature had been the mistress of his study; and from her teaching, all the wonder came." The third of Charles Dickens' much-loved series of Christmas Books. John Peerybingle lives with his far-younger wife, Dot, their baby and the nanny, Tilly Slowboy. Into their lives and their home come Caleb Plummer, a poor toymaker and his blind daughter Bertha. Plummer's son, Edward, travelled to South America and is thought to have died there, leaving his sweetheart, May, with no option other than to marry Caleb's miserly employer, Mr Tackleton. Christmas, however, is not a time for such misery, and the cricket which lives in the Peerybingles' house, acting as a barometer of their fortunes, sems to suggest that better times are ahead...