Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens Chapter 32 Page 11

‘No, sir.’

‘Then don’t forget it another time.’

‘An ass,’ said the doctor again, after a further silence of some minutes. ‘Even if it had been the right place, and the right fellows had been there, what could I have done, single-handed? And if I had had assistance, I see no good that I should have done, except leading to my own exposure, and an unavoidable statement of the manner in which I have hushed up this business. That would have served me right, though. I am always involving myself in some scrape or other, by acting on impulse. It might have done me good.’

Now, the fact was that the excellent doctor had never acted upon anything but impulse all through his life, and it was no bad compliment