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
