Page:Oliver Twist (1838) vol. 2.djvu/63

Rh copper farthing's worth of it! What does he do, ma'am, but ask for a few coals, if itsit's [sic] only a pocket-handkerchief full, he says! Coals!—what would he do with coals?—Toast his cheese with 'em, and then come back for more. That's the way with these people, ma'am;—give 'em a apron full of coals to-day, and they'll come back for another the day after to-morrow, as brazen as alabaster." The matron expressed her entire concurrence in this intelligible simile, and the beadle went on. "I never," said Mr. Bumble, "see any thing like the pitch it's got to. The day afore yesterday, a man—you have been a married woman, ma'am, and I may mention it to you—a man, with hardly a rag upon his back (here Mrs. Corney looked at the floor), goes to our overseer's door when he has got company coming to dinner, and says he must be relieved, Mrs. Corney. As he wouldn't go away, and shocked the company very much, our overseer sent him out a pound of potatoes and half a pint of oatmeal. 'My God!' says the