Accordingly, with a clean white apron tied over her gown, and her curl-papers tucked up under a straw bonnet,—both articles of dress being provided from the Jew’s inexhaustible stock,—Miss Nancy prepared to issue forth on her errand.
“Stop a minute, my dear,” said the Jew, producing a little covered basket. “Carry that in one hand. It looks more respectable, my dear.”
“Give her a door-key to carry in her t’ other one, Fagin,” said Sikes; “it looks real and genivine like.”
“Yes, yes, my dear, so it does,” said the Jew, hanging a large street-door key on the forefinger of the young lady’s right hand. “There; very good! Very good indeed, my dear!” said the Jew, rubbing his hands.
“Oh, my brother! My poor, dear, sweet, innocent little brother!” exclaimed Nancy, bursting into tears, and wringing the little basket and the street-door key in agony of distress. “What has become of him! Where have they taken him to! Oh, do have pity, and tell me what’s been done with the dear boy, gentlemen; do gentlemen, if you please, gentlemen!”
Having uttered these words in a most lamentable and heartbroken tone: to the immeasurable delight of her hearers: Miss Nancy paused, winked to the company, nodded smilingly round, and disappeared.
“Ah, she’s a clever girl, my dears,” said the Jew, turning round to his young friends, and shaking his head gravely, as if in mute admonition to them to follow the bright example they had just beheld.
“She’s a honour to her sex,” said Mr. Sikes, filling his glass, and smiting the table with his enormous fist. “Here’s her health, and wishing they was all like her!”
While these, and many other encomiums, were being passed on the accomplished Nancy, that young lady made the best of her way to the police-office; whither, notwithstanding a little natural timidity consequent upon walking through the streets alone and unprotected, she arrived in perfect safety shortly afterwards.
Entering by the back way, she tapped softly with the key at one of the cell-doors, and listened. There was no sound within: she coughed and listened again. Still there was no reply: so she spoke.
“Nolly, dear?” murmured Nancy in a gentle voice; “Nolly?”
There was nobody inside but a miserable shoeless criminal, who had been taken up for playing the flute, and who, the offence against society having been clearly proved, had been very properly committed by Mr. Fang to the House of Correction for one month; with the appropriate and amusing remark that since he had so much breath to spare, it would be more wholesomely expended on the treadmill than in a musical instrument. He made no answer: being occupied mentally bewailing the loss of the flute, which had been confiscated for the use of the county: so Nancy passed on to the next cell, and knocked there.
“Well!” cried a faint and feeble voice.
“Is there a little boy here?” inquired Nancy, with a preliminary sob.
“No,” replied the voice; “God forbid.”
This was a vagrant of sixty-five, who was going to prison for not playing the flute; or, in other words, for begging in the streets, and doing nothing for his livelihood. In the next cell was another man, who was going to the same prison for hawking tin saucepans without license; thereby doing something for his living, in defiance of the Stamp-office.
But, as neither of these criminals answered to the name of Oliver, or knew anything about him, Nancy made straight up to the bluff officer in the striped waistcoat; and with the most piteous wailings and lamentations, rendered more piteous by a prompt and efficient use of the street-door key and the little basket, demanded her own dear brother.
“I haven’t got him, my dear,” said the old man.
“Where is he?” screamed Nancy, in a distracted manner.
“Why, the gentleman’s got him,” replied the officer.
“What gentleman? Oh, gracious heavens! What gentleman?” exclaimed Nancy.
In reply to this incoherent questioning, the old man informed the deeply affected sister that Oliver had been taken ill in the office, and discharged in consequence of a witness having proved the robbery to have been committed by another boy, not in custody; and that the prosecutor had carried him away, in an insensible condition, to his own residence: of and concerning which, all the informant knew was, that it was somewhere at Pentonville, he having heard that word mentioned in the directions to the coachman.