“Don’t,” cried Oliver, struggling. “Let go of me. Who is it? What are you stopping me for?”
The only reply to this, was a great number of loud lamentations from the young woman who had embraced him; and who had a little basket and a street-door key in her hand.
“Oh my gracious!” said the young woman, “I have found him! Oh! Oliver! Oliver! Oh you naughty boy, to make me suffer such distress on your account! Come home, dear, come. Oh, I’ve found him. Thank gracious goodness heavins, I’ve found him!” With these incoherent exclamations, the young woman burst into another fit of crying, and got so dreadfully hysterical, that a couple of women who came up at the moment asked a butcher’s boy with a shiny head of hair anointed with suet, who was also looking on, whether he didn’t think he had better run for the doctor. To which, the butcher’s boy: who appeared of a lounging, not to say indolent disposition: replied, that he thought not.
“Oh, no, no, never mind,” said the young woman, grasping Oliver’s hand; “I’m better now. Come home directly, you cruel boy! Come!”
“What’s the matter, ma’am?” inquired one of the women.
“Oh, ma’am,” replied the young woman, “he ran away, near a month ago, from his parents, who are hard-working and respectable people; and went and joined a set of thieves and bad characters; and almost broke his mother’s heart.”
“Young wretch!” said one woman.
“Go home, do, you little brute,” said the other.
“I am not,” replied Oliver, greatly alarmed. “I don’t know her. I haven’t any sister, or father and mother either. I’m an orphan; I live at Pentonville.”
“Only hear him, how he braves it out!” cried the young woman.
“Why, it’s Nancy!” exclaimed Oliver; who now saw her face for the first time; and started back, in irrepressible astonishment.
“You see he knows me!” cried Nancy, appealing to the bystanders. “He can’t help himself. Make him come home, there’s good people, or he’ll kill his dear mother and father, and break my heart!”
“What the devil’s this?” said a man, bursting out of a beer-shop, with a white dog at his heels; “young Oliver! Come home to your poor mother, you young dog! Come home directly.”
“I don’t belong to them. I don’t know them. Help! help!” cried Oliver, struggling in the man’s powerful grasp.
“Help!” repeated the man. “Yes; I’ll help you, you young rascal! What books are these? You’ve been a stealing ’em, have you? Give ’em here.” With these words, the man tore the volumes from his grasp, and struck him on the head.
“That’s right!” cried a looker-on, from a garret-window. “That’s the only way of bringing him to his senses!”
“To be sure!” cried a sleepy-faced carpenter, casting an approving look at the garret-window.
“It’ll do him good!” said the two women.
“And he shall have it, too!” rejoined the man, administering another blow, and seizing Oliver by the collar. “Come on, you young villain! Here, Bull’s-eye, mind him, boy! Mind him!”
Weak with recent illness; stupefied by the blows and the suddenness of the attack; terrified by the fierce growling of the dog, and the brutality of the man; overpowered by the conviction of the bystanders that he really was the hardened little wretch he was described to be; what could one poor child do! Darkness had set in; it was a low neighbourhood; no help was near; resistance was useless. In another moment he was dragged into a labyrinth of dark narrow courts, and was forced along them at a pace which rendered the few cries he dared to give utterance to, unintelligible. It was of little moment, indeed, whether they were intelligible or no; for there was nobody to care for them, had they been ever so plain.
The gas-lamps were lighted; Mrs. Bedwin was waiting anxiously at the open door; the servant had run up the street twenty times to see if there were any traces of Oliver; and still the two old gentlemen sat, perseveringly, in the dark parlour, with the watch between them.
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Chapter XVI
Relates What became of Oliver Twist, after He had been Claimed by Nancy