CHAPTER XXII.
THE BURGLARY.
“Hallo!” cried a loud, hoarse voice, directly they had set foot in the passage.
“Don’t make such a row,” said Sikes, bolting the door. “Shew a glim, Toby.”
“Aha! my pal,” cried the same voice; “a glim, Barney, a glim! Shew the gentleman in, Barney; and wake up first, if convenient.”
The speaker appeared to throw a boot-jack, or some such article, at the person he addressed, to rouse him from his slumbers; for the noise of a wooden body falling violently was heard, and then an indistinct muttering, as of a man between asleep and awake.
“Do you hear?” cried the same voice. “There’s Bill Sikes in the passage with nobody to do the civil to him; and you sleeping there, as if you took laudanum with your meals, and nothing stronger. Are you any fresher now, or do you want the iron candlestick to wake you thoroughly?”
A pair of slipshod feet shuffled hastily across the bare floor of the room as this interrogatory was put; and there issued from a door on the right hand, first a feeble candle, and next, the form of the same individual who has been heretofore described as labouring under the infirmity of speaking through his nose, and officiating as waiter at the public-house on Saffron Hill.
“Bister Sikes!” exclaimed Barney, with real or counterfeit joy; “cub id, sir; cub id.”
“Here! you get on first,” said Sikes, putting Oliver in front of him. “Quicker! or I shall tread upon your heels.”