Oliver Twist (Barnes & Noble Classics) - Charles Dickens [34]
The undertaker, who had just put up the shutters of his shop, was making some entries in his day-book by the light of a most appropriate dismal candle, when Mr. Bumble entered.
“Aha!” said the undertaker: looking up from the book, and pausing in the middle of a word; “is that you, Bumble?”
“No one else, Mr. Sowerberry,” replied the beadle. “Here! I’ve brought the boy.” Oliver made a bow.
“Oh! that’s the boy, is it?” said the undertaker: raising the candle above his head, to get a better view of Oliver. “Mrs. Sowerberry, will you have the goodness to come here a moment, my dear?”
Mrs. Sowerberry emerged from a little room behind the shop, and presented the form of a short, thin, squeezed-up woman, with a vixenish countenance.
“My dear,” said Mr. Sowerberry, deferentially, “this is the boy from the workhouse that I told you of.” Oliver bowed again.
“Dear me!” said the undertaker’s wife, “he’s very small.”
“Why, he is rather small,” replied Mr. Bumble: looking at Oliver as if it were his fault that he was no bigger; “he is small. There’s no denying it. But he’ll grow, Mrs. Sowerberry—he’ll grow.”
“Ah! I dare say he will,” replied the lady pettishly, “on our victuals and our drink. I see no saving in parish children, not I; for they always cost more to keep, than they’re worth. However, men always think they know best. There! Get down stairs, little bag o’ bones.” With this, the undertaker’s wife opened a side door, and pushed Oliver down a steep flight of stairs into a stone cell, damp and dark: forming the anteroom to the coal-cellar, and denominated “kitchen:” wherein sat a slatternly girl, in shoes down at heel, and blue worsted stockings very much out of repair.
“Here, Charlotte,” said Mrs. Sowerberry, who had followed Oliver down, “give this boy some of the cold bits that were put by for Trip. He hasn’t come home since the morning, so he may go without ‘em. I dare say the boy isn’t too dainty to eat ’em,—are you, boy?”
Oliver, whose eyes had glistened at the mention of meat, and who was trembling with eagerness to devour it, replied in the negative; and a plateful of coarse broken victuals was set before him.
I wish some well-fed philosopher, whose meat and drink turn to gall within him; whose blood is ice, whose heart is iron; could have seen Oliver Twist clutching at the dainty viands that the dog had neglected. I wish he could have witnessed the horrible avidity with which Oliver tore the bits asunder with all the ferocity of famine. There is only one thing I should like better; and that would be to see the Philosopher making the same sort of meal himself, with the same relish.
“Well,” said the undertaker’s wife, when Oliver had finished his supper: which she had regarded in silent horror, and with fearful auguries of his future appetite: “have you done?”
There being nothing eatable within his reach, Oliver replied in the affirmative.
“Then come with me,” said Mrs. Sowerberry: taking up a dim and dirty lamp, and leading the way up stairs; “your bed’s under the counter. You don’t mind sleeping among the coffins, I suppose? But it doesn’t much matter whether you do or don’t, for you can’t sleep anywhere else. Come; don’t keep me here all night!”
Oliver lingered no longer, but meekly followed his new mistress.
CHAPTER V
Oliver mingles with new associates. Going to a funeral for the first time, he forms an unfavourable notion of his master’s business.
Oliver, being left to himself in the undertaker’s shop, set the lamp down on a workman’s bench, and gazed timidly about him with a feeling of awe and dread, which many people a good deal older than he, will be at no loss to understand. An unfinished coffin on black tressels, which stood in the middle of the shop, looked so gloomy and death-like that a cold tremble came over him, every time his eyes wandered in the direction of the dismal object: from which he almost expected to see some frightful