Page:Oliver Twist (1838) vol. 1.djvu/160

142 closely; "They 're very good ones,—very. You haven't marked them well, though, Charley; so the marks shall be picked out with a needle, and we'll teach Oliver how to do it. Shall us, Oliver, eh?—Ha! ha! ha!" "If you please, sir," said Oliver. "You'd like to be able to make pocket-handkerchiefs as easy as Charley Bates, wouldn't you, my dear?" said the Jew. "Very much indeed, if you'll teach me, sir," replied Oliver. Master Bates saw something so exquisitely ludicrous in this reply that he burst into another laugh; which laugh meeting the coffee he was drinking, and carrying it down some wrong channel, very nearly terminated in his premature suffocation. "He is so jolly green!" said Charley when he recovered, as an apology to the company for his unpolite behaviour. The Dodger said nothing, but he smoothed Oliver's hair down over his eyes, and said he 'd know better by-and-by; upon which the old gentleman, observing Oliver's colour mounting,