![]() 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, unless we would all go to pieces in company.’ The first is your number one, the second my number one. To keep my little business all snug, I depend upon you. ‘To be able to do that, you depend upon me. ‘Only to show you my meaning clearly,’ said the Jew, raising his eyebrows. ‘What do yer talk about such things for?’ To keep in the easy road, and keep it at a distance, is object number one with you.’ ‘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. 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. 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!’ ‘Only think,’ said Fagin, shrugging his shoulders, and stretching out his hands ‘only consider. 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.’ ‘I’m of the same importance to you, as you are to yourself.’ Bolter, who was largely endowed with the quality of selfishness. ‘Well! You can’t take care of yourself, number one, without taking care of me, number one.’ For instance, it’s your object to take care of number one-meaning yourself.’ ‘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. ‘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.’ Some conjurers say that number three is the magic number, and some say number seven. ‘There oughn’t to be, if there is,’ replied Mr. Pooh! pooh! There ain’t such a thing in nature.’ ‘When a man’s his own enemy, it’s only because he’s too much his own friend not because he’s careful for everybody but himself. ‘Some people are nobody’s enemies but their own, yer know.’ ‘Except sometimes,’ replied Morris Bolter, assuming the air of a man of the world. ‘He hasn’t as good a one as himself anywhere.’ ![]() ![]() ‘Every man’s his own friend, my dear,’ replied Fagin, with his most insinuating grin. Claypole, otherwise Bolter, when, by virtue of the compact entered into between them, he had removed next day to Fagin’s house. ‘And so it was you that was your own friend, was it?’ asked Mr. You should visit Browse Happy and update your internet browser today! The embedded audio player requires a modern internet browser. ![]()
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