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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 before 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 interval 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 spinnage, the frog he wouldn’t, and high cockolorum,” said the Dodger witha slight sneer on his intellectual countenance. This was explanatory, but not satisfactory. 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 menacing 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 improbable 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 perres. 66 , the traps have got him, and that’s all about it,’ said the Dodger sullenly. “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, preared 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
