"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.
"I've found him! Oh, Oliver, Oliver! Oh, you naughty boy to make me suffer such distress on your account! Come home, dear, come. Oh, I've found him! Thank gracious goodness heavens, I've found him!"
The young woman burst out crying, and a couple of women standing by asked what was the matter.
"Oh, ma'am," replied the young woman, "he ran away from his parents, and went and joined a set of thieves and bad characters, and almost broke his mother's heart."
"Young wretch!" said one woman.
"Go home, do, you little brute," said the other.
"I'm not," replied Oliver, greatly alarmed. "I don't know her. I haven't any sister or father or mother. I'm an orphan; I live at Pentonville."
"Oh, only hear him, how he braves it out," cried the young woman. "Make him come home, or he'll kill his dear mother and father, and break my heart!"
"What the devil's this?" said a man, bursting out of a beer-shop, with a white dog at his heels. "Young Oliver! Come home to your poor mother, you young dog!"