Mr. Bumble regarded Oliver’s piteous and helpless look with some astonishment for a few seconds, hemmed three or four times in a husky manner, and, after muttering something about “that troublesome cough,” bid Oliver dry his eyes and be a good boy; and, once more taking his hand, walked on with him in silence. The undertaker had just put up the shutters of his shop, and was making some entries in his day-book by the light of a most appropriately dismal candle, when Mr. Bumble entered. “Aha!” said the undertaker, looking up from the book, and pausing in the middle of a word; “is that you, Bumble?” “No one else, Mr. Sowerberry,” replied the beadle. “Here, I’ve brought the boy.” Oliver made a bow. “Oh! that’s the boy, is it?” said the undertaker, raising the candle above his head to get a full glimpse of Oliver. “Mrs. Sowerberry! will you come here a moment, my dear?” Mrs. Sowerberry emerged from a little room behind the shop, and presented the form of a short, thin, squeezed-up woman, with a vixenish countenance. “My dear,” said Mr. Sowerberry, deferentially, “this is the boy from the workhouse that I told you of.” Oliver bowed again. “Dear me!” said the undertaker’s wife, “he’s very small.” “Why, he _is_ rather small,” replied Mr. Bumble, looking at Oliver as if it were his fault that he was no bigger; “he _is_ small,—there’s no denying it. But he’ll grow, Mrs. Sowerberry,—he’ll grow.” “Ah! I dare say he will,” replied the lady pettishly, “on our victuals and our drink. I see no saving in parish children, not I; for they always cost more to keep than they’re worth: however, men always think they know best. There, get down stairs, little bag o’ bones.” With this, the undertaker’s wife opened a side door, and pushed Oliver down a steep flight of stairs into a stone cell, damp and dark, forming the ante-room to the coal-cellar, and denominated “the kitchen,” wherein sat a slatternly girl in shoes down at heel, and blue worsted stockings very much out of repair. “Here, Charlotte,” said Mrs. Sowerberry, who had followed Oliver down, “give this boy some of the cold bits that were put by for Trip: he hasn’t come home since the morning, so he may go without ’em. I dare say he isn’t too dainty to eat ’em,—are you, boy?” Oliver, whose eyes had glistened at the mention of meat, and who was trembling with eagerness to devour it, replied in the negative and a plateful of coarse broken victuals was set before him. I wish some well-fed philosopher, whose meat and drink turn to gall within him, whose blood is ice, and whose heart is iron, could have seen Oliver Twist clutching at the dainty viands that the dog had neglected, and witnessed the horrible avidity with which he tore the bits asunder with all the ferocity of famine:—there is only one thing I should like better, and that would be to see him making the same sort of meal himself, with the same relish.