er, but I never dreamt of that one! I shouldn't object to your
baulking either of the pair, dodger, for they are both conceited enough;
but that one is as cool a customer as ever I met with. Got a beard
besides, and presumes upon it. Well done, old 'un! Go on and prosper!'

Brightened by this unexpected commendation, Riah asked were there more
instructions for him?

'No,' said Fledgeby, 'you may toddle now, Judah, and grope about on the
orders you have got.' Dismissed with those pleasing words, the old man
took his broad hat and staff, and left the great presence: more as if he
were some superior creature benignantly blessing Mr Fledgeby, than the
poor dependent on whom he set his foot. Left alone, Mr Fledgeby locked
his outer door, and came back to his fire.

'Well done you!' said Fascination to himself. 'Slow, you may be; sure,
you are!' This he twice or thrice repeated with much complacency, as he
again dispersed the legs of the Turkish trousers and bent the knees.

'A tidy shot that, I flatter myself,' he then soliloquised. 'And a Jew
brought down with it! Now, when I heard the story told at Lammle's, I
didn't make a jump at Riah. Not a hit of it; I got at him by degrees.'
Herein he was quite accurate; it being his habit, not to jump, or
leap, or make an upward spring, at anything in life, but to crawl at
everything.

'I got at him,' pursued Fledgeby, feeling for his whisker, 'by degrees.
If your Lammles or your Lightwoods had got at him anyhow, they would
have asked him the question whether he hadn't something to do with that
gal's disappearance. I knew a better way of going to work. Having got
behind the hedge, and put him in the light, I took a shot at him and
brought him down plump. Oh! It don't count for much, being a Jew, in a
match against ME!'

Another dry twist in place of a smile, made his face crooked here.

'As to Christians,' proceeded Fledgeby, 'look out, fellow-Christians,
particularly you that lodge in Queer Street! I have got the run of Queer
Street now, and you shall see some games there. To work a lot of power
over you and you not know it, knowing as you think yourselves, would
be almost worth laying out money upon. But when it comes to squeezing a
profit out of you into the bargain, it's something like!'

With this apostrophe Mr Fledgeby appropriately proceeded to divest
himself of his Turkish garments, and invest himself with Christian
attire. Pending which operation, and his morning abl