In due time they arrived at the Jew’s abode, where they found Toby Crackit and Mr. Chitling intent upon their fifteenth game at cribbage, which it is scarcely necessary to say the latter gentleman lost, and with it his fifteenth and last sixpence, much to the amusement of his young friends. Mr. Crackit, apparently somewhat ashamed at being found relaxing himself with a gentleman so much his inferior in station and mental endowments, yawned, and, inquiring after Sikes, took up his hat to go. “Has nobody been, Toby?” asked the Jew. “Not a living leg,” answered Mr. Crackit, pulling up his collar: “it’s been as dull as swipes. You ought to stand something handsome, Fagin, to recompense me for keeping house so long. Damme, I’m as flat as a jury-man, and should have gone to sleep as fast as Newgate, if I hadn’t had the good natur’ to amuse this youngster. Horrid dull, I’m blessed if I an’t.” With these and other ejaculations of the same kind, Mr. Toby Crackit swept up his winnings, and crammed them into his waistcoat pocket with a haughty air, as though such small pieces of silver were wholly beneath the consideration of a man of his figure, and swaggered out of the room with so much elegance and gentility, that Mr. Chitling, bestowing numerous admiring glances on his legs and boots till they were out of sight, assured the company that he considered his acquaintance cheap at fifteen sixpences an interview, and that he didn’t value his losses the snap of a little finger. “Wot a rum chap you are, Tom!” said Master Bates, highly amused by this declaration. “Not a bit of it,” replied Mr. Chitling: “am I, Fagin?” “A very clever fellow, my dear,” said the Jew, patting him on the shoulder, and winking to his other pupils. “And Mr. Crackit _is_ a heavy swell, an’t he, Fagin?” asked Tom. “No doubt at all of that, my dear,” replied the Jew. “And it _is_ a creditable thing to have his acquaintance, an’t it, Fagin?” pursued Tom. “Very much so, indeed, my dear,” replied the Jew. “They’re only jealous, Tom, because he won’t give it to them.” “Ah!” cried Tom, triumphantly, “that’s where it is. He has cleaned me out; but I can go and earn some more when I like,—can’t I, Fagin?” “To be sure you can,” replied the Jew; “and the sooner you go, the better, Tom; so make up your loss at once, and don’t lose any more time. Dodger, Charley, it’s time you were on the lay:—come, it’s near ten, and nothing done yet.”