"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 large 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 exclamations the young woman burst into another fit of crying.
"What's the matter, ma'am?" inquired a woman.
"Oh, ma'am," replied the girl, "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 the woman.
"I'm 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."
"Oh, only hear him, how he braves it out!" cried the young woman.
"Why, it's Nancy!" exclaimed Oliver, who had known her at the Jew's, and now saw her face for the first time.
"You see he knows me!" cried Nancy, appealing to the bystanders. "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!"