But I'm dom'd if ar can gang to bed and not tellee, for weedur's sak', to keep the lattle boy from a'
sike scoondrels while there's a harse to hoold in a' Lunnun, or a gootther to lie asleep in!" Repeating these words with great heartiness, and with a solemnity on his jolly face that made it look twice as large as before, he shook hands and went away.
Sikes,' said the Jew, trembling; 'don't speak so loud!'
'Well, well, then--Bill Sikes,' said the Jew, with abject humility.
'Perhaps I am,' replied Sikes; 'I should think you was rather out of sorts too, unless you mean as little harm when you throw pewter pots about, as you do when you blab and--'
Sikes contented himself with tying an imaginary knot under his left ear, and jerking his head over on the right shoulder; a piece of dumb show which the Jew appeared to understand perfectly.
Sikes condescended to take some notice of the young gentlemen; which gracious act led to a conversation, in which the cause and manner of Oliver's capture were circumstantially detailed, with such alterations and improvements on the truth, as to the Dodger appeared most advisable under the circumstances.
'That's very likely,' returned Sikes with a malicious grin.
Sikes in a much lower tone than he had taken since he came in.
William Sikes, happened, one and all, to entertain a violent and deeply-rooted antipathy to going near a police-office on any ground or pretext whatever.
The view taken by Allen and Sikes, amongst other scholars, is doubtless right, that these longer hymns are only technically preludes and show to what disproportionate lengths a simple literacy form can be developed.
The hymn must therefore be later than that date, though Terpander, according to Weir Smyth (16), may have only modified the scale of the lyre; yet while the burlesque character precludes an early date, this feature is far removed, as Allen and Sikes remark, from the silliness of the "Battle of the Frogs and Mice", so that a date in the earlier part of the sixth century is most probable.
The date is widely disputed, for while Ludwich believes it to be a work of the fourth or third century, Allen and Sikes consider a sixth or seventh century date to be possible.