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49 The mandate was obeyed, and the indignant Mr. Brownlow was conveyed out, with the book in one hand, and the bamboo cane in the other, in a perfect phrenzy of and defiance. He reached the , and it vanished in a moment. Little Oliver Twist lay on his back on the pavement, with his shirt unbuttoned, and his temples bathed with water: his face a deadly white, and a cold tremble convulsmg his whole frame. 6 Poor boy, poor boy!" said Mr. Brownlow, bending over him. “Call a coach, somebody, pray, directly !” A coach was obtained, and Oliver, havng been carefully laid on one seat, the old gentleman got in and sat himself on the a cc May I accom ou?” said the bookstall keeper, Woking Hi A “ Bless me, yes, my dear friend,” said Mr. Brownlow, quickly. “1 forgot you. Dear, dear! I’ve got this unhappy book still. Jumpin. Poor fellow! there’s no time to lose.” The book-stall keeper got into the coach, and away they drove. Te — CHAPTER THE TWELFTII. In which Oliver is taken better care of than he ever was before, with some particulars concerning a certain picture, THE coach rattled away down Mount Pleasant and up Exmouth-street, — over nearly the same ground as that which Oliver had traversed when he first entered London in company with the Dodger, —and, turning a difierent way when it reached the Angel at Islington, stopped at length before a neat house in a quiet shady street near Pentonville. Here a bed was procured without loss of time, in which Mr. Brownlow saw his young charge carefully and comfortably deposited; and here he was attended with a kindness and solicitude which knew no bounds. But for many days Oliver remained insensible to all the goodness of his new friends ; the sun rose and sunk, and rose and sunk again, and many times after that, and still the boy lay stretched upon his uneasy bed, dwindling away beneath the dry and wasting heat of fever,—that heat which, like the subtle acid that gnaws into the very heart of hardest iron, burns only to corrode and to Cee The worm does % his work more surely on the dead G body, than does this slow, creeping fire upon the living frame. Weak, and thin, and pallid, he awoke at last from what seemed to have been a long and troubled dream. TF ecbly raising himself in the bed, with his head resting on his trembling arm, he looked anxiously round, “What room is this'—where have I been brought to?” said Oliver. “This is not the place [ went to sleep in.” He uttered these words in a feeble voice, being very faint and weak ; but they were overheard at once, for the curtain at the bed’s head was hastily drawn back, and a motherly old lady, very neatly and precisely dressed, rose as she undrew it, from an arm-chair close by, in which she had been sitting at needle-work. ‘Hush, my dear,” said the old lady softly. ‘ You must be very quiet, or you will be ill again, and you have been very bad,—as bad as bad could be, pretty nigh. Lie down again, there’s a dear.” With these words the old lady very gently placed Oliver’s head upon the pillow, and, smoothing back his hair from his forehead, looked so kindly and lovingly in his face, that he could not help placing his little withered hand upon hers, and drawing it round his neck. “Save us!” said the old lady, with tears in her eyes, “ what a grateful little dear it is. Pretty creetur, what would his mother feel if she had sat by him as I have, and could see him now!” ‘Perhaps she does see me,” whispered Oliver, folding his hands together; “ perhaps she has sat by me,ma’am. I almost feel as if she had.” “That was the fever, my dear,” said the old lady mildly. “IT suppose it was,” replied Oliver thoughtfully, “because Heaven is a long way off, and they are too happy there, to come down to the bedside of a poor boy. But if she knew I was ill, she must have pitied me even there, for she was very ill herself before she died. She ean’t know anything about me though,” added Oliver afteramoment’s silence, “ for ifshe had seen me heat, it would have made her sorrowful; and her face has always looked sweet and happy when I have dreamt of her.” The old lady made no reply to this, but wiping her eyes first, and her spectacles, which lay on the counterpane, afterwards, as if they were part and parcel of those features, brought some cool stuff for Oli ver to drink, and then, patting him on the cheek, told him he must lie very quiet, or he would be ill again.
