The coach rattled away, over nearly the same ground as that which
Oliver had traversed when he first entered London in company with
the Dodger; and, turning a different way when it reached the
Angel at Islington, stopped at length before a neat house, in a
quiet shady street near Pentonville. Here, a bed was prepared,
without loss of time, in which Mr. Brownlow saw his young charge
carefully and comfortably deposited; and here, he was tended with
a kindness and solicitude that knew no bounds.

But, for many days, Oliver remained insensible to all the
goodness of his new friends. The sun rose and sank, and rose and
sank again, and many times after that; and still the boy lay
stretched on his uneasy bed, dwindling away beneath the dry and
wasting heat of fever. The worm does not work more surely on the
dead body, than does this slow creeping fire upon the living
frame.

Weak, and thin, and pallid, he awoke at last from what seemed to
have been a long and troubled dream. Feebly raising himself in
the bed, with his head resting on his trembling arm, he looked
anxiously around.

'What room is this? Where have I been brought to?' said Oliver.
'This is not the place I went to sleep in.'

He uttered these words in a feeble voice, being very faint and
weak; but they were overheard at once. The curtain at the bed's
head was hastily drawn back, and a motherly old lady, very neatly
and precisely dressed, rose as she undrew it, from an arm-chair
close by, in which she had been sitting at needle-work.