Stranica 124 [124]
86 OLIVER
TWIST.
CHAPTER THE TWENTY-FIRST.
The expedition.
Ír was a cheerless morning when they
got into the street, blowing and raining
hard, and the clouds looking dull and
stormy. The night had been very wet,
for large pools of water had collected in
the road, and the kennels were overflow¬
ing. There was a faint glimmering of
the coming day in the sky, but it rather
agoravated than relieved the gloom of the
scene, the sombre light only serving to
pale that which the street-lamps afforded,
without shedding any warmer or brighter
tints upon the wet housetops and dreary
streets. There appeared to be nobody
stirring in that quarter of the town, for
ly shut, and the streets through which
pt passed noiseless and empty.
By the time they had turned into the
Bethnal Green road, the day had fairly
begun to break. Many of the lamps were
already extinguished, a few country wag¬
gons were slowly toiling on towards Lon¬
don, and now and then a stage-coach,
covered with mud, rattled briskly by, the
driver bestowing, as he passed, an admo¬
nitory lash upon the heavy waggoner,
who, by keeping on the wrong side of the
road, had endangered his arriving at the
office a quarter of a minute after his time.
The public-houses, with gas-lights burn¬
ing inside, were already open. By de¬
grees other shops began to be unclosed,
and a few scattered people were met with.
Then came straggling groups of labourers
going to their work; then men and wo¬
men with fish-baskets on their heads,
donkey-carts laden with vegetables, chaise¬
carts filled with live-stock or whole car¬
cases of meat, milk-women with pails,
and an unbroken concourse of people
trudging out with various supplies to the
eastern suburbs of the town. As they
approached the City, the noise and traffic
gradually increased; and, when they
threaded the streets between Shoreditch
and Smithfield, it had swelled into a roar
of sound and bustle. It was as light as it
was likely to be till night set in again,
und the busy morning of half the London
population had begun. |
Turning down Sun-street and Crown¬
street, and crossing Finsbury-square, Mr.
Sikes struck, by way of Chiswell-street,
into Barbican, thence into Long-lane, and
so into Smithfield, from which latter place
arose a tumult of discordant sounds that
filled Oliver Twist with surprise and
amazement.
It was market-morning. The ground
was covered nearly ankle-deep with filth
and mire; and a thick steam perpetually
rising from the reeking bodies of the cat¬
tle, and mingling with the fog, which
seemed to rest upon the chimney-tops,
hung heavily above. All the pens in the
centre of the large area, and as many
temporary ones as could be crowded into
the vacant space, were filled with sheep;
and, tied up to posts by the gutter side,
were long lines of beasts and oxen three
or four deep. Countrymen, butchers,
drovers, hawkers, boys, thieves, idlers,
and vagabonds, of every low grade, were
mingled together in a dense mass; the
the bellowing and plunging of beasts, the
bleating of sheep, and grunting and
squeaking of pigs; the cries of hawkers,
the shouts, oaths, and quarrelling on all
sides, the ringing of bells and roar of
voices that issued from every public-house ;
the crowding, pushing, driving beating,
whooping, and yelling; the hideous and
discordant din that resounded from every
corner of the market; and the unwashed,
unshaven, squalid, and dirty figures con¬
stantly running to and fro, and bursting
in and out of the throng, rendered it a
stunning and bewildering scene which
quite confounded the senses.
Mr. Sikes, dragging Oliver after him,
elbowed his way through the thickest of
the crowd, and bestowed very little atten¬
tion upon the numerous sights and sounds
which so astonished the boy. He nodded
twice or thrice to a passing friend; and,
resisting as many invitations to take a
morning dram, pressed steadily onward
until they were clear of the turmoil, and
had made their way through Hosier-lane
into Holborn,
6 Now, young Jun!" said Sikes, surlily,
looking up at the clock of St. Andrew’s
church, “hard upon seven! you must
step out. Come, don’t lag behind already,
Lazy-legs!”
Mr. Sikes accompanied this speech with
a fierce jerk at his little companion’s
wrist; and Oliver, quickening his pace
into a kind of trot, between a fast walk
and a run, kept up with the rapid strides
of the housebreaker as well as he could.
They kept on their course at this rate
until they had passed Hyde-Park corner,
and were on their way to Kensington,
when Sikes relaxed his pace until an
empty cart, which was at some little dis¬
tance behind, came up: when, seein
c Hounslow” written upon it, he ask
the driver, with as much civility as he