“No more it has,” said Charley. “Why don’t you put yourself under Fagin, Oliver?”
“And make your fortun’ out of hand?” added the Dodger, with a grin.
“And so be able to retire on your property, and do the genteel: as I mean to, in the very next leap-year but four that ever comes, and the forty-second Tuesday in Trinity-week,” said Charley Bates.
“I don’t like it,” rejoined Oliver, timidly; “I wish they would let me go. I—I—would rather go.”
“And Fagin would rather not!” rejoined Charley.
Oliver knew this too well; but thinking it might be dangerous to express his feelings more openly, he only sighed, and went on with his boot-cleaning.
“Go!” exclaimed the Dodger. “Why, where’s your spirit? Don’t you take any pride out of yourself? Would you go and be dependent on your friends?”
“Oh, blow that!” said Master Bates: drawing two or three silk handkerchiefs from his pocket, and tossing them into a cupboard, “that’s too mean; that is.”
“ I couldn’t do it,” said the Dodger, with an air of haughty disgust.
“You can leave your friends, though,” said Oliver with a half smile; “and let them be punished for what you did.”
“That,” rejoined the Dodger, with a wave of his pipe, “That was all out of consideration for Fagin, ’cause the traps know that we work together, and he might have got into trouble if we hadn’t made our lucky; that was the move, wasn’t it, Charley?”