Mr. Dawkins whistled for a couple of minutes, and then, taking off his hat, scratched his head and nodded thrice. “What do you mean?” said Charley. “Toor rul lol loo, gammon and spinnage, the frog he wouldn’t, and high cockolorum,” said the Dodger, with a slight sneer on his intellectual countenance. This was explanatory, but not satisfactory. Master Bates felt it so, and again said, “What do you mean?” The Dodger made no reply, but putting his hat on again, and gathering the skirts of his long-tailed coat under his arms, thrust his tongue into his cheek, slapped the bridge of his nose some half-dozen times in a familiar but expressive manner, and turning on his heel, slunk down the court. Master Bates followed, with a thoughtful countenance. The noise of footsteps on the creaking stairs a few minutes after the occurrence of this conversation roused the merry old gentleman as he sat over the fire with a saveloy and a small loaf in his left hand, a pocket knife in his right, and a pewter pot on the trivet. There was a rascally smile on his white face as he turned round, and, looking sharply out from under his thick red eyebrows, bent his ear towards the door and listened intently. “Why, how’s this?” muttered the Jew, changing countenance; “only two of ’em! Where’s the third? They can’t have got into trouble. Hark!” The footsteps approached nearer; they reached the landing, the door was slowly opened, and the Dodger and Charley Bates entered and closed it behind them. “Where’s Oliver?” said the furious Jew, rising with a menacing look: “where’s the boy?” The young thieves eyed their preceptor as if they were alarmed at his violence, and looked uneasily at each other, but made no reply. “What’s become of the boy?” said the Jew, seizing the Dodger tightly by the collar, and threatening him with horrid imprecations. “Speak out, or I’ll throttle you!” Mr. Fagin looked so very much in earnest, that Charley Bates, who deemed it prudent in all cases to be on the safe side, and conceived it by no means improbable that it might be his turn to be throttled second, dropped upon his knees, and raised a loud, well-sustained, and continuous roar, something between an insane bull and a speaking-trumpet. “Will you speak?” thundered the Jew, shaking the Dodger so much that his keeping in the big coat at all seemed perfectly miraculous. “Why, the traps have got him, and that’s all about it,” said the Dodger sullenly. “Come, let go o’ me, will you!” and, swinging himself at one jerk clean out of the big coat, which he left in the Jew’s hands, the Dodger snatched up the toasting-fork and made a pass at the merry old gentleman’s waistcoat, which, if it had taken effect, would have let a little more merriment out than could have been easily replaced in a month or two.