Oliver got up, walked across the room, and stooped for one instant to raise the pitcher. When he turned his head, the box was gone. He had scarcely washed himself and made everything tidy by emptying the basin out of the window, agreeably to the Jew’s directions, than the Dodger returned, accompanied by a very sprightly young friend whom Oliver had seen smoking on the previous night, and who was now formally introduced to him as Charley Bates. The four sat down to breakfast upon the coffee and some hot rolls and ham which the Dodger had brought home in the crown of his hat. “Well,” said the Jew, glancing slyly at Oliver, and addressing himself to the Dodger, “I hope you’ve been at work this morning, my dears.” “Hard,” replied the Dodger. “As nails,” added Charley Bates. “Good boys, good boys!” said the Jew. “What have _you_ got, Dodger!” “A couple of pocket-books,” replied that young gentleman. “Lined?” inquired the Jew with trembling eagerness. “Pretty well,” replied the Dodger, producing two pocket-books, one green and the other red. “Not so heavy as they might be,” said the Jew, after looking at the insides carefully; “but very neat and nicely made. Ingenious workman, ain’t he, Oliver?” “Very, indeed, sir,” said Oliver. At which Mr. Charles Bates laughed uproariously, very much to the amazement of Oliver, who saw nothing to laugh at, in anything that had passed. “And what have you got, my dear?” said Fagin to Charley Bates. “Wipes,” replied Master Bates: at the same time producing four pocket-handkerchiefs. “Well,” said the Jew, inspecting them closely; “They’re very good ones—very. You haven’t marked them well, though, Charley; so the marks shall be picked out with a needle, and we’ll teach Oliver how to do it. Shall us, Oliver, eh?—Ha! ha! ha!” “If you please, sir,” said Oliver. “You’d like to be able to make pocket-handkerchiefs as easy as Charley Bates, wouldn’t you, my dear?” said the Jew. “Very much indeed, if you’ll teach me, sir,” replied Oliver. Master Bates saw something so exquisitely ludicrous in this reply that he burst into another laugh; which laugh meeting the coffee he was drinking, and carrying it down some wrong channel, very nearly terminated in his premature suffocation. “He is so jolly green!” said Charley when he recovered, as an apology to the company for his unpolite behaviour. The Dodger said nothing, but he smoothed Oliver’s hair down over his eyes, and said he’d know better by-and-by; upon which the old gentleman, observing Oliver’s colour mounting, changed the subject by asking whether there had been much of a crowd at the execution that morning. This made him wonder more and more, for it was plain from the replies of the two boys that they had both been there, and Oliver naturally wondered how they could possibly have found time to be so very industrious.