“Nor I,” said Sikes. “I think she’s got a touch of that fever in her blood yet, and it won’t come out—eh?”
“Like enough,” replied the Jew.
“I’ll let her a little blood without troubling the doctor, if she’s took that way again,” said Sikes.
The Jew nodded an expressive approval of this mode of treatment.
“She was hanging about me all day and night too when I was stretched on my back; and you, like a black-hearted wolf as you are, kept yourself aloof,” said Sikes. “We was very poor too all the time, and I think one way or other it’s worried and fretted her, and that being shut up here so long has made her restless—eh?”
“That’s it, my dear,” replied the Jew in a whisper.—“Hush!”
As he uttered these words, the girl herself appeared and resumed her former seat. Her eyes were swollen and red; she rocked herself to and fro, tossed her head, and after a little time, burst out laughing.
“Why, now she’s on the other tack!” exclaimed Sikes, turning a look of excessive surprise upon his companion.
The Jew nodded to him to take no further notice just then, and in a few minutes the girl subsided into her accustomed demeanour. Whispering Sikes that there was no fear of her relapsing, Fagin took up his hat and bade him good-night. He paused when he reached the door, and looking round, asked if somebody would light him down the dark stairs.
“Light him down,” said Sikes, who was filling his pipe. “It’s a pity he should break his neck himself, and disappoint the sightseers. There; show him a light.”