Oliver Twist (Barnes & Noble Classics) - Charles Dickens [76]
The Jew thrust his head out of the room door when Sikes had left it; looked after him as he walked up the dark passage; shook his clenched fist; muttered a deep curse; and then, with a horrible grin, re-seated himself at the table; where he was soon deeply absorbed in the interesting pages of the Hue-and-Cry.13
Meanwhile, Oliver Twist, little dreaming that he was within so very short a distance of the merry old gentleman, was on his way to the book-stall. When he got into Clerkenwell, he accidentally turned down a bye-street which was not exactly in his way; but not discovering his mistake until he had got halfway down it, and knowing it must lead in the right direction, he did not think it worth while to turn back; and so marched on, as quickly as he could, with the books under his arm.
He was walking along, thinking how happy and contented he ought to feel; and how much he would give for only one look at poor little Dick, who, starved and beaten, might be weeping bitterly at that very moment; when he was startled by a young woman screaming out very loud, “Oh, my dear brother!” And he had hardly looked up, to see what the matter was, when he was stopped by having a pair of arms thrown tight round his neck.
“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’ve found him! Oh! Oliver! Oliver! Oh you naughty boy, to make me suffer sich 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 by-standers. “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!