Page:Oliver Twist (1838) vol. 3.djvu/142

 "Not for the world," replied the Jew. "Are you mad, my dear?—stark mad, that you'd walk into the very place where—No, Charley, no—one is enough to lose at a time."

"You don't mean to go yourself, I suppose?" said Charley with a humorous leer.

"That wouldn't quite fit," replied Fagin shaking his head.

"Then why don't you send this new cove?" asked Master Bates, laying his hand on Noah's arm; "nobody knows him."

"Why, if he didn't mind," observed the Jew.

"Mind!" interposed Charley. "What should he have to mind?"

"Really nothing, my dear," said Fagin, turning to Mr. Bolter, "really nothing."

"Oh, I dare say about that, yer know," observed Noah, backing towards the door, and shaking his head with a kind of sober alarm. "No, no—none of that, It's not in my department, that isn't."

"Wot department has he got, Fagin?" inquired Master Bates, surveying Noah's lank