Stranica 63 [63]
OCR
35 * Yes,” replied Oliver. (c Ain’t you afraid of it, sir? Ain’t you a-trembling while I speak, sir?” said Mr. Bumble. 6 No!” replied Oliver, boldly. . An answer so different from the one he had expected to elicit, and was in the habit of receiving, staggered Mr. Bumble not a little. He stepped back from the keyhole, drew himself up to his full height, and looked from one to another of the three bystanders in mute astonishment. * Oh, you know, Mr. Bumble, he must be mad,” said Mrs. Sowerberry. “ No bo in half his senses could venture to spea so to you.” “It’s not madness, ma’am,” replied Mr. Bumble, after a few moments of deep meditation; “it’s meat.” c What!” exclaimed Mrs. Sowerberry. cc Meat, ma’am, meat,” replied Bumble, with stern emphasis. “ You’ve over-fed him, ma’am. You’ve raised a artificial soul and spirit in him, ma’am, unbecomin a person of his condition, as the board, Mrs. Sowerberry, who are practical philosophers, will tell you. What have paupers to do with soul or spirit either? It’s quite enough that we let ’em have live bodies. If you had kept the boy on gruel, ma’am, this would never have ret ey: “ Dear, dear!" ejaculated Mrs. Sowerberry, piously raising her eyes to the kitchen ceiling. “ This veh of being liberal !” The liberality of Mrs. Sowerberry to Oliver had consisted in a profuse bestowal upon him of all the dirty odds and ends which nobody else would eat ; so that there was a great deal of meekness and self devotion in her voluntarily remaining under Mr. Bumble’s heavy accusation, of which, to do her justice, she was wholly innocent in thought, word, or deed. “ Ah!" said Mr. Bumble, when the lady brought her eyes down to earth again. “'The only thing that can be done now, that I know of, is to leave him in the cellar for a day or so till he’s a little starved down, and then to take him out, and keep him on = all through his apprenticeship. He comes of a bad family—excitable natures, Mrs. Sowerberry. Both the nurse and doctor said that that mother of his made her way here against difficulties and pain that would have killed any wellwoman weeks before.’’ At this point of Mr. Bumble’s discourse, Oliver just hearing enough to know that same further allusion was being made to his mother, recommenced kicking with a violence which rendered every other sound inaudible. Sowerberry returned at this juncture, and Oliver’s offence having been explained to him, with such exaggerations as the ladies thought best calculated to rouse his ire, he unlocked the cellar-door in a twinkling, and dragged his rebellious apprentice out by the collar, Oliver’s clothes had been torn in the beating he had-received; his face was bruised and scratched, and his hair scattered over his forehead. ‘The angry flush had not disappeared, however; and when he was pulled out of his prison, he scowled boldly on Noah, and looked quite undismayed. “ Now, you are a nice young fellow, ain’t you?” said Sowerberry, giving Oliver a shake, and a sound box on the ear. ‘“‘ He called my mother names,” replied Oliver, sullenly. “Well, and what if he did, you little ungrateful wretch?’ said Mrs. Sowerberry. “She deserved what he said, and worse." “She didn’t !" said Oliver. “She did!” said Mrs. Sowerberry. “Tt’s a lie!" said Oliver. Mrs. Sowerberry burst into a flood of tears. This flood of tears left Sowerberry no alternative. If he had hesitated for one instant to punish Oliver most severely, it must be quite clear to every experienced reader that he would have been, according to all precedents in disputes of matrimon established, a brute, an unnatural husband, an insulting creature, a base imitation of a man, and various other agreeable characters too numerous for recital within the limits of this chapter. To do him justice, he was, as far as his power went,—it was not very extensive,—kindly disposed towards the boy; perhaps because it was his interest to be so, perhaps because his wife disliked him. The ood of tears, however, left him no resource; so he at once gave him a when § which satisfied even Mrs. Sowerberry herself, and rendered Mr. Bumble’s s uent application of the parochial cane rather unnecessary. For the rest of the day he was shut up in the back kitchen, in company with a pump and a slice of bread; and, at night, Mrs. Sowerberry, after making various remarks outside the door, by no means complimentary to the memory of his mother, looked into the room, and, amidst the ordered him up stairs to his dismal bed. . It was not until he was left alone in the silence and stillness of the gloomy Work
