Oldal 113 [113]
73
ed walls and cornices to the ceilings,
which, alt they were black with
neglect and dust, were ornamented in
various ways; from all of which tokens
Oliver concluded that a long time ago,
before the old Jew was born, it had be¬
longed to better people, and had perhaps
been quite gay and handsome, dismal and
as it looked now. —
Spiders had built their webs in the
angles of the walls and ceilings; and
sometimes, when Oliver walked softly
into a room, the mice would scamper
across the floor, and run back terrified to
their holes: with these exceptions, there
was neither sight nor sound of any living
thing ; and often, when it grew dark, and
he was tired of wandering from room to
room, he would crouch in the corner of
the passage by the street-door, to be as
near living people as he could, and to re¬
main there listening and trembling until
the Jew or the boys returned.
In all the rooms the mouldering shut¬
ters were fast closed, and the bars which
held them were screwed tight into the
wood; the only light which was admitted
making its wa ugh round holes at
the top, which made the rooms more
gloomy, and filled them with strange
shadows. ‘There was a back-earret win¬
dow, with rusty bars outside, which had
no shutter, and out of which Oliver often
gazed with a melancholy face for hours
together; but nothing was to be descried
from it but a confused and crowded mass
of house-tops, blackened chimneys, and
gable-ends. Sometimes, indeed, a ragged
begat head might be seen peering over
parapet-wall of a distant house, but it
was quickly withdrawn again ; and as the
window of Oliver’s observatory was nail¬
ed down, and dimmed with the rain and
smoke of years, it was as much as he
could do to make out the forms of the
different objects beyond, without
any attempt to be seen or heard,—which
he had as much chance of being as if he
had been inside the ball of St. Paul’s
Cathedral.
One afternoon, the Dodger and Master
Bates being engaged out that evening,
the first-named young gentleman took it
into his head to evince some anxiety re¬
garding the decoration of his person
(which, to do him justice, was by no
means an habitual weakness with him;)
and, with this end and aim, he conde¬
scendingly commanded Oliver to assist
him in his toilet straightway.
Oliver was but too glad to make him¬
self useful, too happy to have some faces,
however bad, to look upon, and too de¬
sirous to conciliate those about him when
he could honestly do so, to throw any
objection in the way of this proposal; so
he at once expressed his readiness, and,
kneeling on the floor, while the Dodger
sat upon the table so that he could take
his foot in his lap, he applied himself to
a process which Mr. Dawkins design ted
as “japanning his trotter-cases,’ and
which phrase, rendered into plain Eng¬
lish, signifieth cleaning his boots.
Whether it was the sense of freedom
and independence which a rational ani¬
mal may be supposed to feel when he sits
on a table in an easy attitude, smoking a
pipe, swinging one leg carelessly to and
fro, and having his boots cleaned all the
time without even the past trouble of
having taken them off, or the p tive
misery of putting them on, to disturb his
reflections; or whether it was the
ness of the tobacco that soothed the feel¬
ings of the Dodger, or the mildness of the
beer that mollified his thoughts, he was
evidently tinctured for the nonce with a
spice of romance and enthusiasm foreign
to his general nature. He looked down
on Oliver with a thoughtful countenance
for a brief space, and then, raising his
head, and heaving a tle sigh, said,
half in abstraction, half to Master
Bates.
“ What a pity it is he isn’t a prig !”
6 Ah!” said Master Charles Bates.
4 He don’t know what’s good for him.”
The Dodger aged again, and resumed
his pipe, as did Charley Bates, and they
both smoked for some seconds in silence.
“Tsu you don’t even know what
a prig is?" said the Dodger mourn¬
fully.
6 [ think I know that,” replied Oliver,
hastily looking up. “It’s a th— ; you re
one, are you not ?” inquired Oliver, check¬
ing himself. |
“T am,” replied the Dodger. “I’d
scorn to be anything else.” Mr. Daw¬
kins gave his hat a ferocious cock after
delivering this sentiment, and looked at
Master Bates as if to denote that he
would feel obliged by his saying anything
to the contrary. “I am,” repeated the
Dodger; " sos Charley; so’s Fagin;
so’s Sikes, so’s Nancy; so’s Bet; so
we all are, Jown to the dog, and he’s the
downiest one of the lot.” ¬
“And the least given to peaching,”
added Charley Bates.
“ He wouldn’t se much as bark in a
witness-box, for fear of committing him¬
self; no, not if you tied him “ip in one,