stands to reason. Some conjurers say that number three is the
magic number, and some say number seven. It's neither, my friend,
neither. It's number one.

'Ha! ha!' cried Mr. Bolter. 'Number one for ever.'

'In a little community like ours, my dear,' said Fagin, who felt it
necessary to qualify this position, 'we have a general number one,
without considering me too as the same, and all the other young people.'

'Oh, the devil!' exclaimed Mr. Bolter.

'You see,' pursued Fagin, affecting to disregard this interruption, 'we
are so mixed up together, and identified in our interests, that it must
be so. For instance, it's your object to take care of number
one--meaning yourself.'

'Certainly,' replied Mr. Bolter. 'Yer about right there.'

'Well! You can't take care of yourself, number one, without taking
care of me, number one.'

'Number two, you mean,' said Mr. Bolter, who was largely endowed with
the quality of selfishness.

'No, I don't!' retorted Fagin. 'I'm of the same importance to you, as
you are to yourself.'

'I say,' interrupted Mr. Bolter, 'yer a very nice man, and I'm very
fond of yer; but we ain't quite so thick together, as all that comes
to.'

'Only think,' said Fagin, shrugging his shoulders, and stretching out
his hands; 'only consider. You've done what's a very pretty thing, and
what I love you for doing; but what at the same time would put the
cravat round your throat, that's so very easily tied and so very
difficult to unloose--in plain English, the halter!'

Mr. Bolter put his hand to his neckerchief, as if he felt it
inconveniently tight; and murmured an assent, qualified in tone but not
in substance.

'The gallows,' continued Fagin, 'the gallows, my dear, is an ugly
finger-post, which points out a very short and sharp turning that has
stopped many a bold fellow's career on the broad highway. To keep in
the easy road, and keep it at a distance, is object number one with
you.'

'Of course it is,' replied Mr. Bolter. 'What do yer talk about such
things for?'

'Only to show you my meaning clearly,' said the Jew, raising his
eyebrows. 'To be able to do that, you depend upon me. To keep my
little business all snug, I depend upon you. The first is your number
one, the second my number one. The more you value your number one, the
more careful you must be of mine; so we come at last to what I told you
at first--that a regard for number one holds us all together, and must
do so,