Page:Oliver Twist (1838) vol. 3.djvu/263

 respectable and pleasant a person he may be to play cards with at conweniency) circumstanced as you are."

"Especially when the exclusive young man has got a friend stopping with him that's arrived sooner than was expected from foreign parts, and is too modest to want to be presented to the Judges on his return," added Mr. Kags.

There was a short silence, after which Toby Crackit, seeming to abandon as hopeless any further effort to maintain his usual devil-may-care swagger, turned to Chitling and said

"When was Fagin took then?"

"Just at dinner-time—two o'clock this afternoon," was the reply. "Charley and I made our lucky up the wash'us chimney, and Bolter got into the empty water-butt, head downwards, but his legs was so precious long that they stuck out at the top, and so they took him too."

"And Bet?"

"Poor Bet! She went to see the body, to speak to who it was," replied Chitling, his countenance falling more and more, "and went of mad, screaming and raving, and beating her head