“What’s become of the boy?” said the Jew, seizing the Dodger tightly by the collar, and threatening him with horrid imprecations. “Speak out, or I’ll throttle you!”
Mr. Fagin looked so very much in earnest, that Charley Bates, who deemed it prudent in all cases to be on the safe side, and conceived it by no means improbable that it might be his turn to be throttled second, dropped upon his knees, and raised a loud, well-sustained, and continuous roar, something between an insane bull and a speaking-trumpet.
“Will you speak?” thundered the Jew, shaking the Dodger so much that his keeping in the big coat at all seemed perfectly miraculous.
“Why, the traps have got him, and that’s all about it,” said the Dodger sullenly. “Come, let go o’ me, will you!” and, swinging himself at one jerk clean out of the big coat, which he left in the Jew’s hands, the Dodger snatched up the toasting-fork and made a pass at the merry old gentleman’s waistcoat, which, if it had taken effect, would have let a little more merriment out than could have been easily replaced in a month or two.
The Jew stepped back in this emergency with more agility than could have been anticipated in a man of his apparent decrepitude, and, seizing up the pot, prepared to hurl it at his assailant’s head. But Charley Bates at this moment calling his attention by a perfectly terrific howl, he suddenly altered its destination, and flung it full at that young gentleman.
“Why, what the blazes is in the wind now!” growled a deep voice. “Who pitched that ’ere at me? It’s well it’s the beer, and not the pot, as hit me, or I’d have settled somebody. I might have know’d, as nobody but an infernal, rich, plundering, thundering old Jew could afford to throw away any drink but water, and not that, unless he done the River company every quarter. Wot’s it all about, Fagin? D—me, if my neckankecher an’t lined with beer. Come in, you sneaking warmint; wot are you stopping outside for, as if you was ashamed of your master. Come in!”
The man who growled out these words was a stoutly-built fellow of about five-and-thirty, in a black velveteen coat, very soiled drab breeches, lace-up half-boots, and grey cotton stockings, which enclosed a very bulky pair of legs, with large swelling calves,—the kind of legs which in such costume always look in an unfinished and incomplete state without a set of fetters to garnish them. He had a brown hat on his head, and a dirty belcher handkerchief round his neck, with the long frayed ends of which he smeared the beer from his face as he spoke: disclosing, when he had done so, a broad heavy countenance with a beard of three days’ growth, and two scowling eyes, one of which displayed various parti-coloured symptoms of having been recently damaged by a blow.
“Come in, d’ye hear?” growled this engaging-looking ruffian. A white shaggy dog, with his face scratched and torn in twenty different places, skulked into the room.
“Why didn’t you come in afore?” said the man. “You’re getting too proud to own me afore company, are you? Lie down!”
This command was accompanied with a kick which sent the animal to the other end of the room. He appeared well used to it, however; for he coiled himself up in a corner, very quietly without uttering a sound, and, winking his very ill-looking eyes about twenty times in a minute, appeared to occupy himself in taking a survey of the apartment.