How we cite our quotes: (Stave.Paragraph)
Quote #7
"Ha, ha!" laughed the same woman, when old Joe, producing a flannel bag with money in it, told out their several gains upon the ground. "This is the end of it, you see! He frightened every one away from him when he was alive, to profit us when he was dead! Ha, ha, ha!" (4.76)
What's great about this scene is that Scrooge's isolation in life is subverted by the way his house and body are invaded and violated in death. It's like a parody of "letting people in."
Quote #8
"Do you know the Poulterer's, in the next street but one, at the corner?" Scrooge inquired.
"I should hope I did," replied the lad.
"An intelligent boy!" said Scrooge. "A remarkable boy! Do you know whether they've sold the prize Turkey that was hanging up there?—Not the little prize Turkey: the big one?"
"What, the one as big as me?" returned the boy.
"What a delightful boy!" said Scrooge. "It's a pleasure to talk to him. Yes, my buck!" (5.19-23)
So, are we thinking that the strange third-person asides here—"a remarkable boy!", "it's a pleasure to talk to him"—are the result of Scrooge having forgotten how to speak to other humans? Like, his isolation has literally rendered him unable to have a normal conversation, so he just keeps exclaiming things to his face?
Quote #9
He went to church, and walked about the streets, and watched the people hurrying to and fro, and patted children on the head, and questioned beggars, and looked down into the kitchens of houses, and up to the windows, and found that everything could yield him pleasure. He had never dreamed that any walk—that anything—could give him so much happiness. In the afternoon he turned his steps towards his nephew's house. (5.47)
The gradual absorption into life is nicely done in the first sentence. Look at the way the verbs very slowly integrate Scrooge. At first he is still on the outside although finally curious about those around him: he simply "went" and "walked" and "watched". But then he starts to interact by "patting" and "questioning" and "looking into". Even there, he builds the interaction, starting small with the insignificant—children, beggars—and only then moving on to people in houses, and finally to the really important, his nephew.