Oldal 85 [85]
53
rt of mirth.
Dodger.
s Ha! ha! ha!" roared Charley Bates.
“Hold your noise,” remonstrated the
Dodger, looking cautiously round. | “ Do
you want to be grabbed, stupid !"
“T can’t help it,” said Charley, “I can’t
help it. To see him splittmg away at
that pace, and cutting round the corners,
and knocking up against the posts, and
starting on again as if he was made of
iron as well as them, and me with the
wipe in my pocket, singing out arter him
—oh, my eye!” The vivid imagination
of Master Bates presented the scene be¬
fore him in too strong colours. As he
arrived at this apostrophe, he again rolled
upon the door-step and laughed louder
than before.
“What’ll Fagin say?” inquired the
Dodger, taking advantage of the next in¬
terval of breathlessness on the part of his
friend to propound the question.
“ What!” repeated Charley Bates.
“ Ah, what?” said the Dodger.
c Why, what should he say ?” inquired
Charley, stopping rather suddenly in his
merriment, for the Dodger’s manner was
impressive ; § what should he say ?”
r. Dawkins whistled for a couple of
minutes, and then, taking off his hat,
scratched his head and nodded twice.
“ What do you mean?" said Charley.
“Toor rul lul loo, gammon and spin¬
nage, the frog he wouldn’t, and high
cockolorum,” said the Dodger witha slight
sneer on his intellectual countenance.
This was explanatory, but not satisfac¬
tory. Mr. Bates felt it so, and again said,
“ What do you mean ?”
The Dodger made no reply, but putting
his hat on again, and gathering the skirts
of his long-tailed coat under his arms,
thrust his tongue into his cheek, slapped
the bridge of his nose some half-dozen
times in a familiar but expressive manner,
and then, turning on his heel, slunk down
the court. Mr. Bates followed, with a
thoughtful countenance.
The noise of footsteps on the creaking
stairs a few minutes after the occurrence
of this conversation rousea the merry old
gentleman as he sat over the fire with a
saveloy anc a small loaf in his left hand,
a pocket-knife in his right, ana a pewter
pot on the trivet. ‘There was a rascally
smile on his white face as he turned
round, and, looking sharply out from under
his thick red eyebrows, bent his ear
pay the door and listened intently.
“ Why, how "s this?” muttered the Jew,
changing countenance; “only two of
"em ! Where ’s the third! They can’t
have got into trouble. Hark!”
The footsteps approached nearer ; they
reached the landing, the door was slowly
opened, and the Dodger and Charley
Bates entered and closed it behind them.
s Where’s Oliver, you young hounds ?”
said the furious Jew, rising with a men¬
acing look: “ where’s the boy ?”
The young thieves eyed their preceptor
as if they were alarmed at his violence,
and looked uneasily at each other, but
made no reply. |
*“ What’s become of the boy?" said the
Jew, seizing the Dodger tightly by the
collar, and threatening him with feerid
imprecations. “ Speak out, or I’]] throtlle
ou !”
e Mr. Fagin looked so very much in
earnest, that Charley Bates, who deemed
it prudent in all cases to be on the safe
side, and conceived it by no means im¬
probable that it might be his turn to be
throttled second, dropped upon his knees,
and raised a loud, well-sustained, and
continuous roar, something between an
insane bull and a speaking-trumpet.
6 Will you speak ?”’ thundered the Jew,
shaking the Dodger so much that his
keeping in the big coat at all seemed per¬
res.
66 , the traps have got him, and
that’s all about it,’ said the Dodger sul¬
lenly. “Come, let go o’ me, will yer!”
and, swinging himself at one jens clean
out of the big coat, which he left in the
Jew’s hands, the Dodger snatched up the
toasting-fork and made a pass at the merry
old gentleman’s waistcoat, which if it had
merriment out than could have been easily
replaced in a month or two.
The Jew stepped back in this emer
been anticipated in a man of his apparent
decrepitude, and, seizing up the pot, pre¬
ared to hurl it at his assailant’s head.
ut Charley Bates at this moment calling
his attention by a perfectly terrific howl,
he suddenly altered its destination, and
flung it full at that young gentleman.
c Why, what the blazes is in the wind
now!” growled a deep voice. " Who
pitched that "ere at me? It’s well it’s
the beer and not the pot as hit me, or I’d
have settled somebody. I might have
know’d as nobody but an infernal rich,
plundering, thundering old Jew could
afford to throw away any drink but water,
and not that, unless he done the River