“Are you sure?” cried the Jew: with a still fiercer look than before: and a threatening attitude.
“Upon my word I was not, sir,” replied Oliver, earnestly. “I was not, indeed, sir.”
“Tush, tush, my dear!” said the Jew, abruptly resuming his old manner, and playing with the knife a little, before he laid it down; as if to induce the belief that he had caught it up, in mere sport. “Of course I know that, my dear. I only tried to frighten you. You’re a brave boy. Ha! ha! you’re a brave boy, Oliver.” The Jew rubbed his hands with a chuckle, but glanced uneasily at the box, notwithstanding.
“Did you see any of these pretty things, my dear?” said the Jew, laying his hand upon it after a short pause.
“Yes, sir,” replied Oliver.
“Ah!” said the Jew, turning rather pale. “They—they’re mine, Oliver; my little property. All I have to live upon, in my old age. The folks call me a miser, my dear. Only a miser; that’s all.”
Oliver thought the old gentleman must be a decided miser to live in such a dirty place, with so many watches; but, thinking that perhaps his fondness for the Dodger and the other boys, cost him a good deal of money, he only cast a deferential look at the Jew, and asked if he might get up.
“Certainly, my dear, certainly,” replied the old gentleman. “Stay. There’s a pitcher of water in the corner by the door. Bring it here; and I’ll give you a basin to wash in, my dear.”
Oliver got up; walked across the room; and stooped for an instant to raise the pitcher. When he turned his head, the box was gone.
He had scarcely washed himself, and made everything tidy, by emptying the basin out of the window, agreeably to the Jew’s directions, when the Dodger returned: accompanied by a very sprightly young friend, whom Oliver had seen smoking on the previous night, and who was now formally introduced to him as Charley Bates. The four sat down, to breakfast, on the coffee, and some hot rolls and ham which the Dodger had brought home in the crown of his hat.
“Well,” said the Jew, glancing slyly at Oliver, and addressing himself to the Dodger, “I hope you’ve been at work this morning, my dears?”
“Hard,” replied the Dodger.
“As Nails,” added Charley Bates.
“Good boys, good boys!” said the Jew. “What have you got, Dodger?”
“A couple of pocket-books,” replied that young gentleman.
“Lined?” inquired the Jew, with eagerness.
“Pretty well,” replied the Dodger, producing two pocket-books; one green, and the other red.
“Not so heavy as they might be,” said the Jew, after looking at the insides carefully; “but very neat and nicely made. Ingenious workman, ain’t he, Oliver?”
“Very, indeed, sir,” said Oliver. At which Mr. Charles Bates laughed uproariously; very much to the amazement of Oliver, who saw nothing to laugh at, in anything that had passed.
“And what have you got, my dear?” said Fagin to Charley Bates.
“Wipes,” replied Master Bates; at the same time producing four pocket-handkerchiefs.
“Well,” said the Jew, inspecting them closely; “they are very good ones, very. You haven’t marked them well, though, Charley; so the marks shall be picked out with a needle, and we’ll teach Oliver how to do it. Shall us, Oliver, eh? Ha! ha! ha!”
“If you please, sir,” said Oliver.
“You’d like to be able to make pocket-handkerchiefs as easy as Charley Bates, wouldn’t you, my dear?” said the Jew.
“Very much indeed, if you’ll teach me, sir,” replied Oliver.
Master Bates saw something so exquisitely ludicrous in this reply, that he burst into another laugh; which laugh, meeting the coffee he was drinking, and carrying it down the wrong channel, very nearly terminated in his premature suffocation.
“He is so jolly green!” said Charley when he recovered, as an apology to the company for his unpolite behaviour.
The Dodger said nothing, but he smoothed Oliver’s hair over his eyes, and said he’d know better, by and by; upon which the old gentleman, observing Oliver’s colour mounting, changed the subject by asking whether there had been much of a crowd at the execution that morning? This made him wonder more and more; for it was plain from the replies of the two boys that they had both been there; and Oliver naturally wondered how they could possibly have found time to be so very industrious.