"Will you go along with me, Oliver?" said Mr. Bumble, in a majestic voice.
Oliver was about to say that he would go along with anybody with great readiness, when, glancing upwards, he caught sight of Mrs. Mann, who had got behind the beadle's chair, and was shaking her fist at him with a furious countenance. He took the hint at once, for the fist had been too often impressed upon his body not to be deeply impressed upon his memory.
"Will she go with me?" he inquired.
"No, she can't," replied Mr. Bumble, "but she'll come and see you sometimes."
This was no very great consolation to the child. Young as he was, however, he had sense enough to pretend great regret at going away. It was no very difficult matter for the boy to call the tears into his eyes. Hunger and recent ill-usage are great assistants if you want to cry; and Oliver cried very naturally indeed. Mrs. Mann gave him a thousand embraces, and, what Oliver wanted a great deal more, a piece of bread and butter, lest he should seem too hungry when he got to the workhouse. With the slice of bread in his hand, and the little brown-cloth parish cap on his head, the boy was then led away by Mr. Bumble from the wretched home where one kind word or look had never lighted the gloom of his infant years.
Mr. Bumble walked on with long strides, and little Oliver, firmly grasping his gold-laced cuff, trotted beside him; inquiring at the end of every quarter of a mile whether they were "nearly there." To these interrogations Mr. Bumble returned very brief and snappish replies; for was he not a beadle? But at last they were there, and the boy was looking at his new home with interest not unmixed with dread.
Oliver had not been within the walls of the workhouse a quarter of an hour, and had scarcely completed the slice of bread, when Mr. Bumble, who had handed him over to the care of an old woman, returned, and, telling him it was a board night, took him before that august body forthwith.
"Bow to the Board," said Bumble. Oliver brushed away two or three tears that were lingering in his eyes, and seeing no board but the table, fortunately bowed to that.
"What's your name, boy?" said a gentleman in a high chair.
Oliver was frightened at the sight of so many fat, red-faced gentlemen, and the beadle gave him another tap behind, which made him cry. These two causes made him answer in a very low and hesitating voice; whereupon a gentleman in a white waistcoat said he was a fool,—which was a capital way of raising his spirits and putting him quite at his ease.