Oliver Twist

Chapter 24

TREATS ON A VERY POOR SUBJECT. BUT IS A SHORT ONE, AND MAY BE

FOUND OF IMPORTANCE IN THIS HISTORY

It was no unfit messenger of death, who had disturbed the quiet

of the matron's room. Her body was bent by age; her limbs

trembled with palsy; her face, distorted into a mumbling leer,

resembled more the grotesque shaping of some wild pencil, than

the work of Nature's hand.

Alas! How few of Nature's faces are left alone to gladden us

with their beauty! The cares, and sorrows, and hungerings, of

the world, change them as they change hearts; and it is only when

those passions sleep, and have lost their hold for ever, that the

troubled clouds pass off, and leave Heaven's surface clear. It

is a common thing for the countenances of the dead, even in that

fixed and rigid state, to subside into the long-forgotten

expression of sleeping infancy, and settle into the very look of

early life; so calm, so peaceful, do they grow again, that those

who knew them in their happy childhood, kneel by the coffin's

side in awe, and see the Angel even upon earth.

The old crone tottered along the passages, and up the stairs,

muttering some indistinct answers to the chidings of her

companion; being at length compelled to pause for breath, she

gave the light into her hand, and remained behind to follow as

she might: while the more nimble superior made her way to the

room where the sick woman lay.

It was a bare garret-room, with a dim light burning at the

farther end. There was another old woman watching by the bed;

the parish apothecary's apprentice was standing by the fire,

making a toothpick out of a quill.

'Cold night, Mrs. Corney,' said this young gentleman, as the

matron entered.

'Very cold, indeed, sir,' replied the mistress, in her most civil

tones, and dropping a curtsey as she spoke.

'You should get better coals out of your contractors,' said the

apothecary's deputy, breaking a lump on the top of the fire with

the rusty poker; 'these are not at all the sort of thing for a

cold night.'

'They're the board's choosing, sir,' returned the matron. 'The

least they could do, would be to keep us pretty warm: for our

places are hard enough.'

The conversation was here interrupted by a moan from the sick

woman.

'Oh!' said the young mag, turning his face towards the bed, as if

he had previously quite forgotten the patient, 'it's all U.P.