"'Have you anything to ask this witness, boy?' said the magistrate.
"'I wouldn't abase myself by descending to hold no conversation with him,' replied the Dodger.
"'Do you hear his worship ask if you've anything to say?' inquired the gaoler, nudging the silent Dodger with his elbow.
"'I beg your pardon,' said the Dodger, looking up with an air of abstraction.
"'Did you mean to say anything, you young shaver?'
"'No,' replied the Dodger, 'not here, for this ain't the shop for justice; besides which, my attorney is a breakfasting this morning with the Wice-President of the House of Commons; but I shall have something to say elsewhere, and so will he, and so will a wery numerous and 'spectable circle of acquaintances as'll make them beaks wish they'd never been born, or that they'd got their footman to hang 'em up to their own hat-pegs afore they let 'em come out this morning to try it upon me. I'll----'
"'There. He's fully committed,' interposed the clerk. 'Take him away.'
"'Oh, ah. I'll come on,' replied the Dodger, brushing his hat with the palm of his hand. 'Ah (to the bench) it's no use your looking frightened; I won't show you no mercy, not a ha'porth of it. You'll pay for this, my fine fellers. I wouldn't be you for something; I wouldn't go free now, if you was to fall down on your knees and ask me. Here, carry me off to prison. Take me away.'
"With these last words, the Dodger suffered himself to be led off by the collar, threatening, till he got into the yard, to make a parliamentary business of it, and then grinning in the officer's face with glee and self approval."
To such scholars as these, all the schools that could be crowded into Newgate would be of no avail. Their biographies are summed up by Magwitch, in "Great Expectations," who, blandly admitting to have been brought up to be "a warmint," says:
"'In gaol and out of gaol, in gaol and out of gaol, in gaol and out of gaol. That's my life. I've been done everything to, pretty well--except hanged. I've been locked up as much as a silver tea-kettle. I've been carted here and carted there, and put out of this town and put out of that town. I've no more notion where I was born than you have, if so much. I first became aware of myself down in Essex, a-thieving turnips for a living. Summun had run away from me--a man, a tinker--and he'd took the fire with him and left me very cold.