Chapter 16


With my head full of George Barnwell, I was at first disposed to
believe that I must have had some hand in the attack upon my
sister, or at all events that as her near relation, popularly known
to be under obligations to her, I was a more legitimate object of
suspicion than any one else.  But when, in the clearer light of next
morning, I began to reconsider the matter and to hear it discussed
around me on all sides, I took another view of the case, which was
more reasonable.

Joe had been at the Three Jolly Bargemen, smoking his pipe, from a
quarter after eight o'clock to a quarter before ten.  While he was
there, my sister had been seen standing at the kitchen door, and
had exchanged Good Night with a farm-labourer going home.  The man
could not be more particular as to the time at which he saw her (he
got into dense confusion when he tried to be), than that it must
have been before nine.  When Joe went home at five minutes before
ten, he found her struck down on the floor, and promptly called in
assistance.  The fire had not then burnt unusually low, nor was the
snuff of the candle very long; the candle, however, had been blown
out.

Nothing had been taken away from any part of the house.  Neither,
beyond the blowing out of the candle - which stood on a table
between the door and my sister, and was behind her when she stood
facing the fire and was struck - was there any disarrangement of
the kitchen, excepting such as she herself had made, in falling and
bleeding.  But, there was one remarkable piece of evidence on the
spot.  She had been struck with something blunt and heavy, on the
head and spine; after the blows were dealt, something heavy had
been thrown down at her with considerable violence, as she lay on
her face.  And on the ground beside her, when Joe picked her up, was
a convict's leg-iron which had been filed asunder.

Now, Joe, examining this iron with a smith's eye, declared it to
have been filed asunder some time ago.  The hue and cry going off to
the Hulks, and people coming thence to examine the iron, Joe's
opinion was corroborated.  They did not undertake to say when it had
left the prison-ships to which it undoubtedly had once belonged;
but they claimed to know for certain that that particular manacle
had not been worn by either of the two convicts who had escaped last
night.  Further, one of those two was already re-taken, and had not
freed himself of his iron.

Knowing what I knew, I set up an inference of my own here.  I
believed the iron to be my convict's iron - the iron I had seen and
heard him filing at, on the marshes - but my mind did not accuse
him of having put it to its latest use.  For, I believed one of two
other persons to have become possessed of it, and to have turned it
to this cruel account.  Either Orlick, or the strange man who had
shown me the file.

Now, as to Orlick; he had gone to town exactly as he told us when
we picked him up at the turnpike, he had been seen about town all
the evening, he had been in divers companies in several
public-houses, and he had come back with myself and Mr. Wopsle.
There was nothing against him, save the quarrel; and my sister had
quarrelled with him, and with everybody else about her, ten
thousand times.  As to the strange man; if he had come back for his
two bank-notes there could have been no dispute about them, because
my sister was fully prepared to restore them.  Besides, there had
been no altercation; the assailant had come in so silently and
suddenly, that she had been felled before she could look round.

It was horrible to think that I had provided the weapon, however
undesignedly, but I could hardly think otherwise.  I suffered
unspeakable trouble while I considered and reconsidered whether I
should at last dissolve that spell of my childhood, and tell Joe
all the story.  For months afterwards, I every day settled the
question finally in the negative, and reopened and reargued it next
morning.  The contention came, after all, to this; - the secret was
such an old one now, had so grown into me and become a part of
myself, that I could not tear it away.  In addition to the dread
that, having led up to so much mischief, it would be now more
likely than ever to alienate Joe from me if he believed it, I had a
further restraining dread that he would not believe it, but would
assort it with the fabulous dogs and veal-cutlets as a monstrous
invention.  However, I temporized with myself, of course - for, was
I not wavering between right and wrong, when the thing is always
done?  - and resolved to make a full disclosure if I should see any
such new occasion as a new chance of helping in the discovery of
the assailant.

The Constables, and the Bow Street men from London - for, this
happened in the days of the extinct red-waistcoated police - were
about the house for a week or two, and did pretty much what I have
heard and read of like authorities doing in other such cases.  They
took up several obviously wrong people, and they ran their heads
very hard against wrong ideas, and persisted in trying to fit the
circumstances to the ideas, instead of trying to extract ideas from
the circumstances.  Also, they stood about the door of the Jolly
Bargemen, with knowing and reserved looks that filled the whole
neighbourhood with admiration; and they had a mysterious manner of
taking their drink, that was almost as good as taking the culprit.
But not quite, for they never did it.

Long after these constitutional powers had dispersed, my sister lay
very ill in bed.  Her sight was disturbed, so that she saw objects
multiplied, and grasped at visionary teacups and wine-glasses
instead of the realities; her hearing was greatly impaired; her
memory also; and her speech was unintelligible.  When, at last, she
came round so far as to be helped down-stairs, it was still
necessary to keep my slate always by her, that she might indicate
in writing what she could not indicate in speech.  As she was (very
bad handwriting apart) a more than indifferent speller, and as Joe
was a more than indifferent reader, extraordinary complications
arose between them, which I was always called in to solve.  The
administration of mutton instead of medicine, the substitution of
Tea for Joe, and the baker for bacon, were among the mildest of my
own mistakes.

However, her temper was greatly improved, and she was patient.  A
tremulous uncertainty of the action of all her limbs soon became a
part of her regular state, and afterwards, at intervals of two or
three months, she would often put her hands to her head, and would
then remain for about a week at a time in some gloomy aberration of
mind.  We were at a loss to find a suitable attendant for her, until
a circumstance happened conveniently to relieve us.  Mr. Wopsle's
great-aunt conquered a confirmed habit of living into which she had
fallen, and Biddy became a part of our establishment.

It may have been about a month after my sister's reappearance in
the kitchen, when Biddy came to us with a small speckled box
containing the whole of her worldly effects, and became a blessing
to the household.  Above all, she was a blessing to Joe, for the
dear old fellow was sadly cut up by the constant contemplation of
the wreck of his wife, and had been accustomed, while attending on
her of an evening, to turn to me every now and then and say, with
his blue eyes moistened, "Such a fine figure of a woman as she once
were, Pip!"  Biddy instantly taking the cleverest charge of her as
though she had studied her from infancy, Joe became able in some
sort to appreciate the greater quiet of his life, and to get down
to the Jolly Bargemen now and then for a change that did him good.
It was characteristic of the police people that they had all more
or less suspected poor Joe (though he never knew it), and that they
had to a man concurred in regarding him as one of the deepest
spirits they had ever encountered.

Biddy's first triumph in her new office, was to solve a difficulty
that had completely vanquished me.  I had tried hard at it, but had
made nothing of it.  Thus it was:

Again and again and again, my sister had traced upon the slate, a
character that looked like a curious T, and then with the utmost
eagerness had called our attention to it as something she
particularly wanted.  I had in vain tried everything producible that
began with a T, from tar to toast and tub.  At length it had come
into my head that the sign looked like a hammer, and on my lustily
calling that word in my sister's ear, she had begun to hammer on
the table and had expressed a qualified assent.  Thereupon, I had
brought in all our hammers, one after another, but without avail.
Then I bethought me of a crutch, the shape being much the same, and
I borrowed one in the village, and displayed it to my sister with
considerable confidence.  But she shook her head to that extent when
she was shown it, that we were terrified lest in her weak and
shattered state she should dislocate her neck.

When my sister found that Biddy was very quick to understand her,
this mysterious sign reappeared on the slate.  Biddy looked
thoughtfully at it, heard my explanation, looked thoughtfully at my
sister, looked thoughtfully at Joe (who was always represented on
the slate by his initial letter), and ran into the forge, followed
by Joe and me.

"Why, of course!" cried Biddy, with an exultant face.  "Don't you
see?  It's him!"

Orlick, without a doubt!  She had lost his name, and could only
signify him by his hammer.  We told him why we wanted him to come
into the kitchen, and he slowly laid down his hammer, wiped his
brow with his arm, took another wipe at it with his apron, and came
slouching out, with a curious loose vagabond bend in the knees that
strongly distinguished him.

I confess that I expected to see my sister denounce him, and that I
was disappointed by the different result.  She manifested the
greatest anxiety to be on good terms with him, was evidently much
pleased by his being at length produced, and motioned that she
would have him given something to drink.  She watched his
countenance as if she were particularly wishful to be assured that
he took kindly to his reception, she showed every possible desire
to conciliate him, and there was an air of humble propitiation in
all she did, such as I have seen pervade the bearing of a child
towards a hard master.  After that day, a day rarely passed without
her drawing the hammer on her slate, and without Orlick's slouching
in and standing doggedly before her, as if he knew no more than I
did what to make of it.

Chapter 17


I now fell into a regular routine of apprenticeship life, which was
varied, beyond the limits of the village and the marshes, by no
more remarkable circumstance than the arrival of my birthday and my
paying another visit to Miss Havisham.  I found Miss Sarah Pocket
still on duty at the gate, I found Miss Havisham just as I had left
her, and she spoke of Estella in the very same way, if not in the
very same words.  The interview lasted but a few minutes, and she
gave me a guinea when I was going, and told me to come again on my
next birthday.  I may mention at once that this became an annual
custom.  I tried to decline taking the guinea on the first occasion,
but with no better effect than causing her to ask me very angrily,
if I expected more?  Then, and after that, I took it.

So unchanging was the dull old house, the yellow light in the
darkened room, the faded spectre in the chair by the dressing-table
glass, that I felt as if the stopping of the clocks had stopped
Time in that mysterious place, and, while I and everything else
outside it grew older, it stood still.  Daylight never entered the
house as to my thoughts and remembrances of it, any more than as to
the actual fact.  It bewildered me, and under its influence I
continued at heart to hate my trade and to be ashamed of home.

Imperceptibly I became conscious of a change in Biddy, however.  Her
shoes came up at the heel, her hair grew bright and neat, her hands
were always clean.  She was not beautiful - she was common, and
could not be like Estella - but she was pleasant and wholesome and
sweet-tempered.  She had not been with us more than a year (I
remember her being newly out of mourning at the time it struck me),
when I observed to myself one evening that she had curiously
thoughtful and attentive eyes; eyes that were very pretty and very
good.

It came of my lifting up my own eyes from a task I was poring at -
writing some passages from a book, to improve myself in two ways at
once by a sort of stratagem - and seeing Biddy observant of what I
was about.  I laid down my pen, and Biddy stopped in her needlework
without laying it down.

"Biddy," said I, "how do you manage it?  Either I am very stupid, or
you are very clever."

"What is it that I manage?  I don't know," returned Biddy, smiling.

She managed our whole domestic life, and wonderfully too; but I did
not mean that, though that made what I did mean, more surprising.

"How do you manage, Biddy," said I, "to learn everything that I
learn, and always to keep up with me?"  I was beginning to be rather
vain of my knowledge, for I spent my birthday guineas on it, and
set aside the greater part of my pocket-money for similar
investment; though I have no doubt, now, that the little I knew was
extremely dear at the price.

"I might as well ask you," said Biddy, "how you manage?"

"No; because when I come in from the forge of a night, any one can
see me turning to at it.  But you never turn to at it, Biddy."

"I suppose I must catch it - like a cough," said Biddy, quietly;
and went on with her sewing.

Pursuing my idea as I leaned back in my wooden chair and looked at
Biddy sewing away with her head on one side, I began to think her
rather an extraordinary girl.  For, I called to mind now, that she
was equally accomplished in the terms of our trade, and the names
of our different sorts of work, and our various tools.  In short,
whatever I knew, Biddy knew.  Theoretically, she was already as good
a blacksmith as I, or better.

"You are one of those, Biddy," said I, "who make the most of every
chance.  You never had a chance before you came here, and see how
improved you are!"

Biddy looked at me for an instant, and went on with her sewing.  "I
was your first teacher though; wasn't I?" said she, as she sewed.

"Biddy!" I exclaimed, in amazement.  "Why, you are crying!"

"No I am not," said Biddy, looking up and laughing.  "What put that
in your head?"

What could have put it in my head, but the glistening of a tear as
it dropped on her work?  I sat silent, recalling what a drudge she
had been until Mr. Wopsle's great-aunt successfully overcame that
bad habit of living, so highly desirable to be got rid of by some
people.  I recalled the hopeless circumstances by which she had been
surrounded in the miserable little shop and the miserable little
noisy evening school, with that miserable old bundle of
incompetence always to be dragged and shouldered.  I reflected that
even in those untoward times there must have been latent in Biddy
what was now developing, for, in my first uneasiness and discontent
I had turned to her for help, as a matter of course.  Biddy sat
quietly sewing, shedding no more tears, and while I looked at her
and thought about it all, it occurred to me that perhaps I had not
been sufficiently grateful to Biddy.  I might have been too
reserved, and should have patronized her more (though I did not use
that precise word in my meditations), with my confidence.

"Yes, Biddy," I observed, when I had done turning it over, "you
were my first teacher, and that at a time when we little thought of
ever being together like this, in this kitchen."

"Ah, poor thing!" replied Biddy.  It was like her
self-forgetfulness, to transfer the remark to my sister, and to get
up and be busy about her, making her more comfortable; "that's
sadly true!"

"Well!" said I, "we must talk together a little more, as we used to
do.  And I must consult you a little more, as I used to do.  Let us
have a quiet walk on the marshes next Sunday, Biddy, and a long
chat."

My sister was never left alone now; but Joe more than readily
undertook the care of her on that Sunday afternoon, and Biddy and I
went out together.  It was summer-time, and lovely weather.  When we
had passed the village and the church and the churchyard, and were
out on the marshes and began to see the sails of the ships as they
sailed on, I began to combine Miss Havisham and Estella with the
prospect, in my usual way.  When we came to the river-side and sat
down on the bank, with the water rippling at our feet, making it
all more quiet than it would have been without that sound, I
resolved that it was a good time and place for the admission of
Biddy into my inner confidence.

"Biddy," said I, after binding her to secrecy, "I want to be a
gentleman."

"Oh, I wouldn't, if I was you!" she returned.  "I don't think it
would answer."

"Biddy," said I, with some severity, "I have particular reasons for
wanting to be a gentleman."

"You know best, Pip; but don't you think you are happier as you
are?"

"Biddy," I exclaimed, impatiently, "I am not at all happy as I am.
I am disgusted with my calling and with my life.  I have never taken
to either, since I was bound.  Don't be absurd."

"Was I absurd?" said Biddy, quietly raising her eyebrows; "I am
sorry for that; I didn't mean to be.  I only want you to do well,
and to be comfortable."

"Well then, understand once for all that I never shall or can be
comfortable - or anything but miserable - there, Biddy! - unless I
can lead a very different sort of life from the life I lead now."

"That's a pity!" said Biddy, shaking her head with a sorrowful air.

Now, I too had so often thought it a pity, that, in the singular
kind of quarrel with myself which I was always carrying on, I was
half inclined to shed tears of vexation and distress when Biddy
gave utterance to her sentiment and my own.  I told her she was
right, and I knew it was much to be regretted, but still it was not
to be helped.

"If I could have settled down," I said to Biddy, plucking up the
short grass within reach, much as I had once upon a time pulled my
feelings out of my hair and kicked them into the brewery wall:  "if
I could have settled down and been but half as fond of the forge as
I was when I was little, I know it would have been much better for
me.  You and I and Joe would have wanted nothing then, and Joe and I
would perhaps have gone partners when I was out of my time, and I
might even have grown up to keep company with you, and we might
have sat on this very bank on a fine Sunday, quite different
people.  I should have been good enough for you; shouldn't I,
Biddy?"

Biddy sighed as she looked at the ships sailing on, and returned
for answer, "Yes; I am not over-particular."  It scarcely sounded
flattering, but I knew she meant well.

"Instead of that," said I, plucking up more grass and chewing a
blade or two, "see how I am going on.  Dissatisfied, and
uncomfortable, and - what would it signify to me, being coarse and
common, if nobody had told me so!"

Biddy turned her face suddenly towards mine, and looked far more
attentively at me than she had looked at the sailing ships.

"It was neither a very true nor a very polite thing to say," she
remarked, directing her eyes to the ships again.  "Who said it?"

I was disconcerted, for I had broken away without quite seeing
where I was going to.  It was not to be shuffled off now, however,
and I answered, "The beautiful young lady at Miss Havisham's, and
she's more beautiful than anybody ever was, and I admire her
dreadfully, and I want to be a gentleman on her account."  Having
made this lunatic confession, I began to throw my torn-up grass
into the river, as if I had some thoughts of following it.

"Do you want to be a gentleman, to spite her or to gain her over?"
Biddy quietly asked me, after a pause.

"I don't know," I moodily answered.

"Because, if it is to spite her," Biddy pursued, "I should think -
but you know best - that might be better and more independently
done by caring nothing for her words.  And if it is to gain her
over, I should think - but you know best - she was not worth
gaining over."

Exactly what I myself had thought, many times.  Exactly what was
perfectly manifest to me at the moment.  But how could I, a poor
dazed village lad, avoid that wonderful inconsistency into which
the best and wisest of men fall every day?

"It may be all quite true," said I to Biddy, "but I admire her
dreadfully."

In short, I turned over on my face when I came to that, and got a
good grasp on the hair on each side of my head, and wrenched it
well.  All the while knowing the madness of my heart to be so very
mad and misplaced, that I was quite conscious it would have served
my face right, if I had lifted it up by my hair, and knocked it
against the pebbles as a punishment for belonging to such an idiot.

Biddy was the wisest of girls, and she tried to reason no more with
me.  She put her hand, which was a comfortable hand though roughened
by work, upon my hands, one after another, and gently took them out
of my hair.  Then she softly patted my shoulder in a soothing way,
while with my face upon my sleeve I cried a little - exactly as I
had done in the brewery yard - and felt vaguely convinced that I
was very much ill-used by somebody, or by everybody; I can't say
which.

"I am glad of one thing," said Biddy, "and that is, that you have
felt you could give me your confidence, Pip.  And I am glad of
another thing, and that is, that of course you know you may depend
upon my keeping it and always so far deserving it.  If your first
teacher (dear! such a poor one, and so much in need of being taught
herself!) had been your teacher at the present time, she thinks she
knows what lesson she would set.  But It would be a hard one to
learn, and you have got beyond her, and it's of no use now."  So,
with a quiet sigh for me, Biddy rose from the bank, and said, with
a fresh and pleasant change of voice, "Shall we walk a little
further, or go home?"

"Biddy," I cried, getting up, putting my arm round her neck, and
giving her a kiss, "I shall always tell you everything."

"Till you're a gentleman," said Biddy.

"You know I never shall be, so that's always.  Not that I have any
occasion to tell you anything, for you know everything I know - as
I told you at home the other night."

"Ah!" said Biddy, quite in a whisper, as she looked away at the
ships.  And then repeated, with her former pleasant change; "shall
we walk a little further, or go home?"

I said to Biddy we would walk a little further, and we did so, and
the summer afternoon toned down into the summer evening, and it was
very beautiful.  I began to consider whether I was not more
naturally and wholesomely situated, after all, in these
circumstances, than playing beggar my neighbour by candlelight in
the room with the stopped clocks, and being despised by Estella.  I
thought it would be very good for me if I could get her out of my
head, with all the rest of those remembrances and fancies, and
could go to work determined to relish what I had to do, and stick
to it, and make the best of it.  I asked myself the question whether
I did not surely know that if Estella were beside me at that moment
instead of Biddy, she would make me miserable?  I was obliged to
admit that I did know it for a certainty, and I said to myself,
"Pip, what a fool you are!"

We talked a good deal as we walked, and all that Biddy said seemed
right.  Biddy was never insulting, or capricious, or Biddy to-day
and somebody else to-morrow; she would have derived only pain, and
no pleasure, from giving me pain; she would far rather have wounded
her own breast than mine.  How could it be, then, that I did not
like her much the better of the two?

"Biddy," said I, when we were walking homeward, "I wish you could
put me right."

"I wish I could!" said Biddy.

"If I could only get myself to fall in love with you - you don't
mind my speaking so openly to such an old acquaintance?"

"Oh dear, not at all!" said Biddy.  "Don't mind me."

"If I could only get myself to do it, that would be the thing for
me."

"But you never will, you see," said Biddy.

It did not appear quite so unlikely to me that evening, as it would
have done if we had discussed it a few hours before.  I therefore
observed I was not quite sure of that.  But Biddy said she was, and
she said it decisively.  In my heart I believed her to be right; and
yet I took it rather ill, too, that she should be so positive on
the point.

When we came near the churchyard, we had to cross an embankment,
and get over a stile near a sluice gate.  There started up, from the
gate, or from the rushes, or from the ooze (which was quite in his
stagnant way), Old Orlick.

"Halloa!" he growled, "where are you two going?"

"Where should we be going, but home?"

"Well then," said he, "I'm jiggered if I don't see you home!"

This penalty of being jiggered was a favourite supposititious case
of his.  He attached no definite meaning to the word that I am aware
of, but used it, like his own pretended Christian name, to affront
mankind, and convey an idea of something savagely damaging.  When I
was younger, I had had a general belief that if he had jiggered me
personally, he would have done it with a sharp and twisted hook.

Biddy was much against his going with us, and said to me in a
whisper, "Don't let him come; I don't like him."  As I did not like
him either, I took the liberty of saying that we thanked him, but
we didn't want seeing home.  He received that piece of information
with a yell of laughter, and dropped back, but came slouching after
us at a little distance.

Curious to know whether Biddy suspected him of having had a hand in
that murderous attack of which my sister had never been able to
give any account, I asked her why she did not like him.

"Oh!" she replied, glancing over her shoulder as he slouched after
us, "because I - I am afraid he likes me."

"Did he ever tell you he liked you?" I asked, indignantly.

"No," said Biddy, glancing over her shoulder again, "he never told
me so; but he dances at me, whenever he can catch my eye."

However novel and peculiar this testimony of attachment, I did not
doubt the accuracy of the interpretation.  I was very hot indeed
upon Old Orlick's daring to admire her; as hot as if it were an
outrage on myself.

"But it makes no difference to you, you know," said Biddy, calmly.

"No, Biddy, it makes no difference to me; only I don't like it; I
don't approve of it."

"Nor I neither," said Biddy.  "Though that makes no difference to
you."

"Exactly," said I; "but I must tell you I should have no opinion of
you, Biddy, if he danced at you with your own consent."

I kept an eye on Orlick after that night, and, whenever
circumstances were favourable to his dancing at Biddy, got before
him, to obscure that demonstration.  He had struck root in Joe's
establishment, by reason of my sister's sudden fancy for him, or I
should have tried to get him dismissed.  He quite understood and
reciprocated my good intentions, as I had reason to know
thereafter.

And now, because my mind was not confused enough before, I
complicated its confusion fifty thousand-fold, by having states and
seasons when I was clear that Biddy was immeasurably better than
Estella, and that the plain honest working life to which I was
born, had nothing in it to be ashamed of, but offered me sufficient
means of self-respect and happiness.  At those times, I would decide
conclusively that my disaffection to dear old Joe and the forge,
was gone, and that I was growing up in a fair way to be partners
with Joe and to keep company with Biddy - when all in a moment some
confounding remembrance of the Havisham days would fall upon me,
like a destructive missile, and scatter my wits again.  Scattered
wits take a long time picking up; and often, before I had got them
well together, they would be dispersed in all directions by one
stray thought, that perhaps after all Miss Havisham was going to
make my fortune when my time was out.

If my time had run out, it would have left me still at the height
of my perplexities, I dare say.  It never did run out, however, but
was brought to a premature end, as I proceed to relate.

Chapter 18


It was in the fourth year of my apprenticeship to Joe, and it was a
Saturday night.  There was a group assembled round the fire at the
Three Jolly Bargemen, attentive to Mr. Wopsle as he read the
newspaper aloud.  Of that group I was one.

A highly popular murder had been committed, and Mr. Wopsle was
imbrued in blood to the eyebrows.  He gloated over every abhorrent
adjective in the description, and identified himself with every
witness at the Inquest.  He faintly moaned, "I am done for," as the
victim, and he barbarously bellowed, "I'll serve you out," as the
murderer.  He gave the medical testimony, in pointed imitation of
our local practitioner; and he piped and shook, as the aged
turnpike-keeper who had heard blows, to an extent so very paralytic
as to suggest a doubt regarding the mental competency of that
witness.  The coroner, in Mr. Wopsle's hands, became Timon of Athens;
the beadle, Coriolanus.  He enjoyed himself thoroughly, and we all
enjoyed ourselves, and were delightfully comfortable.  In this cozy
state of mind we came to the verdict Wilful Murder.

Then, and not sooner, I became aware of a strange gentleman leaning
over the back of the settle opposite me, looking on.  There was an
expression of contempt on his face, and he bit the side of a great
forefinger as he watched the group of faces.

"Well!" said the stranger to Mr. Wopsle, when the reading was done,
"you have settled it all to your own satisfaction, I have no
doubt?"

Everybody started and looked up, as if it were the murderer.  He
looked at everybody coldly and sarcastically.

"Guilty, of course?" said he.  "Out with it.  Come!"

"Sir," returned Mr. Wopsle, "without having the honour of your
acquaintance, I do say Guilty."  Upon this, we all took courage to
unite in a confirmatory murmur.

"I know you do," said the stranger; "I knew you would.  I told you
so.  But now I'll ask you a question.  Do you know, or do you not
know, that the law of England supposes every man to be innocent,
until he is proved - proved - to be guilty?"

"Sir," Mr. Wopsle began to reply, "as an Englishman myself, I--"

"Come!" said the stranger, biting his forefinger at him.  "Don't
evade the question.  Either you know it, or you don't know it.  Which
is it to be?"

He stood with his head on one side and himself on one side, in a
bullying interrogative manner, and he threw his forefinger at Mr.
Wopsle - as it were to mark him out - before biting it again.

"Now!" said he.  "Do you know it, or don't you know it?"

"Certainly I know it," replied Mr. Wopsle.

"Certainly you know it.  Then why didn't you say so at first?  Now,
I'll ask you another question;" taking possession of Mr. Wopsle, as
if he had a right to him.  "Do you know that none of these witnesses
have yet been cross-examined?"

Mr. Wopsle was beginning, "I can only say--" when the stranger
stopped him.

"What?  You won't answer the question, yes or no?  Now, I'll try you
again."  Throwing his finger at him again.  "Attend to me.  Are you
aware, or are you not aware, that none of these witnesses have yet
been cross-examined?  Come, I only want one word from you.  Yes, or
no?"

Mr. Wopsle hesitated, and we all began to conceive rather a poor
opinion of him.

"Come!" said the stranger, "I'll help you.  You don't deserve help,
but I'll help you.  Look at that paper you hold in your hand.  What
is it?"

"What is it?" repeated Mr. Wopsle, eyeing it, much at a loss.

"Is it," pursued the stranger in his most sarcastic and suspicious
manner, "the printed paper you have just been reading from?"

"Undoubtedly."

"Undoubtedly.  Now, turn to that paper, and tell me whether it
distinctly states that the prisoner expressly said that his legal
advisers instructed him altogether to reserve his defence?"

"I read that just now," Mr. Wopsle pleaded.

"Never mind what you read just now, sir; I don't ask you what you
read just now.  You may read the Lord's Prayer backwards, if you
like - and, perhaps, have done it before to-day.  Turn to the paper.
No, no, no my friend; not to the top of the column; you know better
than that; to the bottom, to the bottom."  (We all began to think Mr.
Wopsle full of subterfuge.)  "Well?  Have you found it?"

"Here it is," said Mr. Wopsle.

"Now, follow that passage with your eye, and tell me whether it
distinctly states that the prisoner expressly said that he was
instructed by his legal advisers wholly to reserve his defence?
Come!  Do you make that of it?"

Mr. Wopsle answered, "Those are not the exact words."

"Not the exact words!" repeated the gentleman, bitterly.  "Is that
the exact substance?"

"Yes," said Mr. Wopsle.

"Yes," repeated the stranger, looking round at the rest of the
company with his right hand extended towards the witness, Wopsle.
"And now I ask you what you say to the conscience of that man who,
with that passage before his eyes, can lay his head upon his pillow
after having pronounced a fellow-creature guilty, unheard?"

We all began to suspect that Mr. Wopsle was not the man we had
thought him, and that he was beginning to be found out.

"And that same man, remember," pursued the gentleman, throwing his
finger at Mr. Wopsle heavily; "that same man might be summoned as a
juryman upon this very trial, and, having thus deeply committed
himself, might return to the bosom of his family and lay his head
upon his pillow, after deliberately swearing that he would well and
truly try the issue joined between Our Sovereign Lord the King and
the prisoner at the bar, and would a true verdict give according to
the evidence, so help him God!"

We were all deeply persuaded that the unfortunate Wopsle had gone
too far, and had better stop in his reckless career while there was
yet time.

The strange gentleman, with an air of authority not to be disputed,
and with a manner expressive of knowing something secret about
every one of us that would effectually do for each individual if he
chose to disclose it, left the back of the settle, and came into
the space between the two settles, in front of the fire, where he
remained standing:  his left hand in his pocket, and he biting the
forefinger of his right.

"From information I have received," said he, looking round at us as
we all quailed before him, "I have reason to believe there is a
blacksmith among you, by name Joseph - or Joe - Gargery.  Which is
the man?"

"Here is the man," said Joe.

The strange gentleman beckoned him out of his place, and Joe went.

"You have an apprentice," pursued the stranger, "commonly known as
Pip?  Is he here?"

"I am here!" I cried.

The stranger did not recognize me, but I recognized him as the
gentleman I had met on the stairs, on the occasion of my second
visit to Miss Havisham.  I had known him the moment I saw him
looking over the settle, and now that I stood confronting him with
his hand upon my shoulder, I checked off again in detail, his large
head, his dark complexion, his deep-set eyes, his bushy black
eyebrows, his large watch-chain, his strong black dots of beard and
whisker, and even the smell of scented soap on his great hand.

"I wish to have a private conference with you two," said he, when
he had surveyed me at his leisure.  "It will take a little time.
Perhaps we had better go to your place of residence.  I prefer not
to anticipate my communication here; you will impart as much or as
little of it as you please to your friends afterwards; I have
nothing to do with that."

Amidst a wondering silence, we three walked out of the Jolly
Bargemen, and in a wondering silence walked home.  While going
along, the strange gentleman occasionally looked at me, and
occasionally bit the side of his finger.  As we neared home, Joe
vaguely acknowledging the occasion as an impressive and ceremonious
one, went on ahead to open the front door.  Our conference was held
in the state parlour, which was feebly lighted by one candle.

It began with the strange gentleman's sitting down at the table,
drawing the candle to him, and looking over some entries in his
pocket-book.  He then put up the pocket-book and set the candle a
little aside:  after peering round it into the darkness at Joe and
me, to ascertain which was which.

"My name," he said, "is Jaggers, and I am a lawyer in London.  I am
pretty well known.  I have unusual business to transact with you,
and I commence by explaining that it is not of my originating.  If
my advice had been asked, I should not have been here.  It was not
asked, and you see me here.  What I have to do as the confidential
agent of another, I do.  No less, no more."

Finding that he could not see us very well from where he sat, he
got up, and threw one leg over the back of a chair and leaned upon
it; thus having one foot on the seat of the chair, and one foot on
the ground.

"Now, Joseph Gargery, I am the bearer of an offer to relieve you of
this young fellow your apprentice.  You would not object to cancel
his indentures, at his request and for his good?  You would want
nothing for so doing?"

"Lord forbid that I should want anything for not standing in Pip's
way," said Joe, staring.


"Lord forbidding is pious, but not to the purpose," returned Mr
Jaggers.  "The question is, Would you want anything?  Do you want
anything?"

"The answer is," returned Joe, sternly, "No."

I thought Mr. Jaggers glanced at Joe, as if he considered him a fool
for his disinterestedness.  But I was too much bewildered between
breathless curiosity and surprise, to be sure of it.

"Very well," said Mr. Jaggers.  "Recollect the admission you have
made, and don't try to go from it presently."

"Who's a-going to try?" retorted Joe.

"I don't say anybody is.  Do you keep a dog?"

"Yes, I do keep a dog."

"Bear in mind then, that Brag is a good dog, but Holdfast is a
better.  Bear that in mind, will you?" repeated Mr. Jaggers, shutting
his eyes and nodding his head at Joe, as if he were forgiving him
something.  "Now, I return to this young fellow.  And the
communication I have got to make is, that he has great
expectations."

Joe and I gasped, and looked at one another.

"I am instructed to communicate to him," said Mr. Jaggers, throwing
his finger at me sideways, "that he will come into a handsome
property.  Further, that it is the desire of the present possessor
of that property, that he be immediately removed from his present
sphere of life and from this place, and be brought up as a
gentleman - in a word, as a young fellow of great expectations."

My dream was out; my wild fancy was surpassed by sober reality;
Miss Havisham was going to make my fortune on a grand scale.

"Now, Mr. Pip," pursued the lawyer, "I address the rest of what I
have to say, to you.  You are to understand, first, that it is the
request of the person from whom I take my instructions, that you
always bear the name of Pip.  You will have no objection, I dare
say, to your great expectations being encumbered with that easy
condition.  But if you have any objection, this is the time to
mention it."

My heart was beating so fast, and there was such a singing in my
ears, that I could scarcely stammer I had no objection.

"I should think not!  Now you are to understand, secondly, Mr. Pip,
that the name of the person who is your liberal benefactor remains
a profound secret, until the person chooses to reveal it.  I am
empowered to mention that it is the intention of the person to
reveal it at first hand by word of mouth to yourself.  When or where
that intention may be carried out, I cannot say; no one can say.  It
may be years hence.  Now, you are distinctly to understand that you
are most positively prohibited from making any inquiry on this
head, or any allusion or reference, however distant, to any
individual whomsoever as the individual, in all the communications
you may have with me.  If you have a suspicion in your own breast,
keep that suspicion in your own breast.  It is not the least to the
purpose what the reasons of this prohibition are; they may be the
strongest and gravest reasons, or they may be mere whim.  This is
not for you to inquire into.  The condition is laid down.  Your
acceptance of it, and your observance of it as binding, is the only
remaining condition that I am charged with, by the person from whom
I take my instructions, and for whom I am not otherwise
responsible.  That person is the person from whom you derive your
expectations, and the secret is solely held by that person and by
me.  Again, not a very difficult condition with which to encumber
such a rise in fortune; but if you have any objection to it, this
is the time to mention it.  Speak out."

Once more, I stammered with difficulty that I had no objection.

"I should think not!  Now, Mr. Pip, I have done with stipulations."
Though he called me Mr. Pip, and began rather to make up to me, he
still could not get rid of a certain air of bullying suspicion; and
even now he occasionally shut his eyes and threw his finger at me
while he spoke, as much as to express that he knew all kinds of
things to my disparagement, if he only chose to mention them.  "We
come next, to mere details of arrangement.  You must know that,
although I have used the term "expectations" more than once, you
are not endowed with expectations only.  There is already lodged in
my hands, a sum of money amply sufficient for your suitable
education and maintenance.  You will please consider me your
guardian.  Oh!" for I was going to thank him, "I tell you at once, I
am paid for my services, or I shouldn't render them.  It is
considered that you must be better educated, in accordance with
your altered position, and that you will be alive to the importance
and necessity of at once entering on that advantage."

I said I had always longed for it.

"Never mind what you have always longed for, Mr. Pip," he retorted;
"keep to the record.  If you long for it now, that's enough.  Am I
answered that you are ready to be placed at once, under some proper
tutor?  Is that it?"

I stammered yes, that was it.

"Good.  Now, your inclinations are to be consulted.  I don't think
that wise, mind, but it's my trust.  Have you ever heard of any
tutor whom you would prefer to another?"

I had never heard of any tutor but Biddy and Mr. Wopsle's greataunt;
so, I replied in the negative.

"There is a certain tutor, of whom I have some knowledge, who I
think might suit the purpose," said Mr. Jaggers.  "I don't recommend
him, observe; because I never recommend anybody.  The gentleman I
speak of, is one Mr. Matthew Pocket."

Ah!  I caught at the name directly.  Miss Havisham's relation.  The
Matthew whom Mr. and Mrs. Camilla had spoken of.  The Matthew whose
place was to be at Miss Havisham's head, when she lay dead, in her
bride's dress on the bride's table.

"You know the name?" said Mr. Jaggers, looking shrewdly at me, and
then shutting up his eyes while he waited for my answer.

My answer was, that I had heard of the name.

"Oh!" said he.  "You have heard of the name.  But the question is,
what do you say of it?"

I said, or tried to say, that I was much obliged to him for his
recommendation--

"No, my young friend!" he interrupted, shaking his great head very
slowly.  "Recollect yourself!"

Not recollecting myself, I began again that I was much obliged to
him for his recommendation--

"No, my young friend," he interrupted, shaking his head and
frowning and smiling both at once; "no, no, no; it's very well
done, but it won't do; you are too young to fix me with it.
Recommendation is not the word, Mr. Pip.  Try another."

Correcting myself, I said that I was much obliged to him for his
mention of Mr. Matthew Pocket--

"That's more like it!" cried Mr. Jaggers.

- And (I added), I would gladly try that gentleman.

"Good.  You had better try him in his own house.  The way shall be
prepared for you, and you can see his son first, who is in London.
When will you come to London?"

I said (glancing at Joe, who stood looking on, motionless), that I
supposed I could come directly.

"First," said Mr. Jaggers, "you should have some new clothes to come
in, and they should not be working clothes.  Say this day week.
You'll want some money.  Shall I leave you twenty guineas?"

He produced a long purse, with the greatest coolness, and counted
them out on the table and pushed them over to me.  This was the
first time he had taken his leg from the chair.  He sat astride of
the chair when he had pushed the money over, and sat swinging his
purse and eyeing Joe.

"Well, Joseph Gargery?  You look dumbfoundered?"

"I am!" said Joe, in a very decided manner.

"It was understood that you wanted nothing for yourself, remember?"

"It were understood," said Joe.  "And it are understood.  And it ever
will be similar according."

"But what," said Mr. Jaggers, swinging his purse, "what if it was in
my instructions to make you a present, as compensation?"

"As compensation what for?" Joe demanded.

"For the loss of his services."

Joe laid his hand upon my shoulder with the touch of a woman.  I
have often thought him since, like the steam-hammer, that can crush
a man or pat an egg-shell, in his combination of strength with
gentleness.  "Pip is that hearty welcome," said Joe, "to go free
with his services, to honour and fortun', as no words can tell him.
But if you think as Money can make compensation to me for the loss
of the little child - what come to the forge - and ever the best of
friends!--"

O dear good Joe, whom I was so ready to leave and so unthankful to,
I see you again, with your muscular blacksmith's arm before your
eyes, and your broad chest heaving, and your voice dying away.  O
dear good faithful tender Joe, I feel the loving tremble of your
hand upon my arm, as solemnly this day as if it had been the rustle
of an angel's wing!

But I encouraged Joe at the time.  I was lost in the mazes of my
future fortunes, and could not retrace the by-paths we had trodden
together.  I begged Joe to be comforted, for (as he said) we had
ever been the best of friends, and (as I said) we ever would be so.
Joe scooped his eyes with his disengaged wrist, as if he were bent
on gouging himself, but said not another word.

Mr. Jaggers had looked on at this, as one who recognized in Joe the
village idiot, and in me his keeper.  When it was over, he said,
weighing in his hand the purse he had ceased to swing:

"Now, Joseph Gargery, I warn you this is your last chance.  No half
measures with me.  If you mean to take a present that I have it in
charge to make you, speak out, and you shall have it.  If on the
contrary you mean to say--" Here, to his great amazement, he was
stopped by Joe's suddenly working round him with every
demonstration of a fell pugilistic purpose.

"Which I meantersay," cried Joe, "that if you come into my place
bull-baiting and badgering me, come out!  Which I meantersay as sech
if you're a man, come on!  Which I meantersay that what I say, I
meantersay and stand or fall by!"

I drew Joe away, and he immediately became placable; merely stating
to me, in an obliging manner and as a polite expostulatory notice
to any one whom it might happen to concern, that he were not a
going to be bull-baited and badgered in his own place.  Mr. Jaggers
had risen when Joe demonstrated, and had backed near the door.
Without evincing any inclination to come in again, he there
delivered his valedictory remarks.  They were these:

"Well, Mr. Pip, I think the sooner you leave here - as you are to be
a gentleman - the better.  Let it stand for this day week, and you
shall receive my printed address in the meantime.  You can take a
hackney-coach at the stage-coach office in London, and come
straight to me.  Understand, that I express no opinion, one way or
other, on the trust I undertake.  I am paid for undertaking it, and
I do so.  Now, understand that, finally.  Understand that!"

He was throwing his finger at both of us, and I think would have
gone on, but for his seeming to think Joe dangerous, and going off.

Something came into my head which induced me to run after him, as
he was going down to the Jolly Bargemen where he had left a hired
carriage.

"I beg your pardon, Mr. Jaggers."

"Halloa!" said he, facing round, "what's the matter?"

"I wish to be quite right, Mr. Jaggers, and to keep to your
directions; so I thought I had better ask.  Would there be any
objection to my taking leave of any one I know, about here, before
I go away?"

"No," said he, looking as if he hardly understood me.

"I don't mean in the village only, but up-town?"

"No," said he.  "No objection."

I thanked him and ran home again, and there I found that Joe had
already locked the front door and vacated the state parlour, and
was seated by the kitchen fire with a hand on each knee, gazing
intently at the burning coals.  I too sat down before the fire and
gazed at the coals, and nothing was said for a long time.

My sister was in her cushioned chair in her corner, and Biddy sat
at her needlework before the fire, and Joe sat next Biddy, and I
sat next Joe in the corner opposite my sister.  The more I looked
into the glowing coals, the more incapable I became of looking at
Joe; the longer the silence lasted, the more unable I felt to
speak.

At length I got out, "Joe, have you told Biddy?"

"No, Pip," returned Joe, still looking at the fire, and holding his
knees tight, as if he had private information that they intended to
make off somewhere, "which I left it to yourself, Pip."

"I would rather you told, Joe."

"Pip's a gentleman of fortun' then," said Joe, "and God bless him
in it!"

Biddy dropped her work, and looked at me.  Joe held his knees and
looked at me.  I looked at both of them.  After a pause, they both
heartily congratulated me; but there was a certain touch of sadness
in their congratulations, that I rather resented.

I took it upon myself to impress Biddy (and through Biddy, Joe)
with the grave obligation I considered my friends under, to know
nothing and say nothing about the maker of my fortune.  It would all
come out in good time, I observed, and in the meanwhile nothing was
to be said, save that I had come into great expectations from a
mysterious patron.  Biddy nodded her head thoughtfully at the fire
as she took up her work again, and said she would be very
particular; and Joe, still detaining his knees, said, "Ay, ay, I'll
be ekervally partickler, Pip;" and then they congratulated me
again, and went on to express so much wonder at the notion of my
being a gentleman, that I didn't half like it.

Infinite pains were then taken by Biddy to convey to my sister some
idea of what had happened.  To the best of my belief, those efforts
entirely failed.  She laughed and nodded her head a great many
times, and even repeated after Biddy, the words "Pip" and
"Property."  But I doubt if they had more meaning in them than an
election cry, and I cannot suggest a darker picture of her state of
mind.

I never could have believed it without experience, but as Joe and
Biddy became more at their cheerful ease again, I became quite
gloomy.  Dissatisfied with my fortune, of course I could not be; but
it is possible that I may have been, without quite knowing it,
dissatisfied with myself.

Anyhow, I sat with my elbow on my knee and my face upon my hand,
looking into the fire, as those two talked about my going away, and
about what they should do without me, and all that.  And whenever I
caught one of them looking at me, though never so pleasantly (and
they often looked at me - particularly Biddy), I felt offended:  as
if they were expressing some mistrust of me.  Though Heaven knows
they never did by word or sign.

At those times I would get up and look out at the door; for, our
kitchen door opened at once upon the night, and stood open on
summer evenings to air the room.  The very stars to which I then
raised my eyes, I am afraid I took to be but poor and humble stars
for glittering on the rustic objects among which I had passed my
life.

"Saturday night," said I, when we sat at our supper of
bread-and-cheese and beer.  "Five more days, and then the day before
the day!  They'll soon go."

"Yes, Pip," observed Joe, whose voice sounded hollow in his beer
mug.  "They'll soon go."

"Soon, soon go," said Biddy.

"I have been thinking, Joe, that when I go down town on Monday, and
order my new clothes, I shall tell the tailor that I'll come and
put them on there, or that I'll have them sent to Mr. Pumblechook's.
It would be very disagreeable to be stared at by all the people
here."

"Mr. and Mrs. Hubble might like to see you in your new genteel figure
too, Pip," said Joe, industriously cutting his bread, with his
cheese on it, in the palm of his left hand, and glancing at my
untasted supper as if he thought of the time when we used to
compare slices.  "So might Wopsle.  And the Jolly Bargemen might take
it as a compliment."

"That's just what I don't want, Joe.  They would make such a
business of it - such a coarse and common business - that I
couldn't bear myself."

"Ah, that indeed, Pip!" said Joe.  "If you couldn't abear
yourself--"

Biddy asked me here, as she sat holding my sister's plate, "Have
you thought about when you'll show yourself to Mr. Gargery, and your
sister, and me?  You will show yourself to us; won't you?"

"Biddy," I returned with some resentment, "you are so exceedingly
quick that it's difficult to keep up with you."

("She always were quick," observed Joe.)

"If you had waited another moment, Biddy, you would have heard me
say that I shall bring my clothes here in a bundle one evening -
most likely on the evening before I go away."

Biddy said no more.  Handsomely forgiving her, I soon exchanged an
affectionate good-night with her and Joe, and went up to bed.  When
I got into my little room, I sat down and took a long look at it,
as a mean little room that I should soon be parted from and raised
above, for ever, It was furnished with fresh young remembrances
too, and even at the same moment I fell into much the same confused
division of mind between it and the better rooms to which I was
going, as I had been in so often between the forge and Miss
Havisham's, and Biddy and Estella.

The sun had been shining brightly all day on the roof of my attic,
and the room was warm.  As I put the window open and stood looking
out, I saw Joe come slowly forth at the dark door below, and take a
turn or two in the air; and then I saw Biddy come, and bring him a
pipe and light it for him.  He never smoked so late, and it seemed
to hint to me that he wanted comforting, for some reason or other.

He presently stood at the door immediately beneath me, smoking his
pipe, and Biddy stood there too, quietly talking to him, and I knew
that they talked of me, for I heard my name mentioned in an
endearing tone by both of them more than once.  I would not have
listened for more, if I could have heard more:  so, I drew away from
the window, and sat down in my one chair by the bedside, feeling it
very sorrowful and strange that this first night of my bright
fortunes should be the loneliest I had ever known.

Looking towards the open window, I saw light wreaths from Joe's
pipe floating there, and I fancied it was like a blessing from Joe
- not obtruded on me or paraded before me, but pervading the air we
shared together.  I put my light out, and crept into bed; and it was
an uneasy bed now, and I never slept the old sound sleep in it any
more.

Chapter 19


Morning made a considerable difference in my general prospect of
Life, and brightened it so much that it scarcely seemed the same.
What lay heaviest on my mind, was, the consideration that six days
intervened between me and the day of departure; for, I could not
divest myself of a misgiving that something might happen to London
in the meanwhile, and that, when I got there, it would be either
greatly deteriorated or clean gone.

Joe and Biddy were very sympathetic and pleasant when I spoke of
our approaching separation; but they only referred to it when I
did.  After breakfast, Joe brought out my indentures from the press
in the best parlour, and we put them in the fire, and I felt that I
was free.  With all the novelty of my emancipation on me, I went to
church with Joe, and thought, perhaps the clergyman wouldn't have
read that about the rich man and the kingdom of Heaven, if he had
known all.

After our early dinner I strolled out alone, purposing to finish
off the marshes at once, and get them done with.  As I passed the
church, I felt (as I had felt during service in the morning) a
sublime compassion for the poor creatures who were destined to go
there, Sunday after Sunday, all their lives through, and to lie
obscurely at last among the low green mounds.  I promised myself
that I would do something for them one of these days, and formed a
plan in outline for bestowing a dinner of roast-beef and
plumpudding, a pint of ale, and a gallon of condescension, upon
everybody in the village.

If I had often thought before, with something allied to shame, of
my companionship with the fugitive whom I had once seen limping
among those graves, what were my thoughts on this Sunday, when the
place recalled the wretch, ragged and shivering, with his felon
iron and badge!  My comfort was, that it happened a long time ago,
and that he had doubtless been transported a long way off, and that
he was dead to me, and might be veritably dead into the bargain.

No more low wet grounds, no more dykes and sluices, no more of
these grazing cattle - though they seemed, in their dull manner, to
wear a more respectful air now, and to face round, in order that
they might stare as long as possible at the possessor of such great
expectations - farewell, monotonous acquaintances of my childhood,
henceforth I was for London and greatness:  not for smith's work in
general and for you!  I made my exultant way to the old Battery,
and, lying down there to consider the question whether Miss
Havisham intended me for Estella, fell asleep.

When I awoke, I was much surprised to find Joe sitting beside me,
smoking his pipe.  He greeted me with a cheerful smile on my opening
my eyes, and said:

"As being the last time, Pip, I thought I'd foller."

"And Joe, I am very glad you did so."

"Thankee, Pip."

"You may be sure, dear Joe," I went on, after we had shaken hands,
"that I shall never forget you."

"No, no, Pip!" said Joe, in a comfortable tone, "I'm sure of that.
Ay, ay, old chap!  Bless you, it were only necessary to get it well
round in a man's mind, to be certain on it.  But it took a bit of
time to get it well round, the change come so oncommon plump;
didn't it?"

Somehow, I was not best pleased with Joe's being so mightily secure
of me.  I should have liked him to have betrayed emotion, or to have
said, "It does you credit, Pip," or something of that sort.
Therefore, I made no remark on Joe's first head:  merely saying as
to his second, that the tidings had indeed come suddenly, but that
I had always wanted to be a gentleman, and had often and often
speculated on what I would do, if I were one.

"Have you though?" said Joe.  "Astonishing!"

"It's a pity now, Joe," said I, "that you did not get on a little
more, when we had our lessons here; isn't it?"

"Well, I don't know," returned Joe.  "I'm so awful dull.  I'm only
master of my own trade.  It were always a pity as I was so awful
dull; but it's no more of a pity now, than it was - this day
twelvemonth - don't you see?"

What I had meant was, that when I came into my property and was
able to do something for Joe, it would have been much more
agreeable if he had been better qualified for a rise in station.  He
was so perfectly innocent of my meaning, however, that I thought I
would mention it to Biddy in preference.

So, when we had walked home and had had tea, I took Biddy into our
little garden by the side of the lane, and, after throwing out in a
general way for the elevation of her spirits, that I should never
forget her, said I had a favour to ask of her.

"And it is, Biddy," said I, "that you will not omit any opportunity
of helping Joe on, a little."

"How helping him on?" asked Biddy, with a steady sort of glance.

"Well!  Joe is a dear good fellow - in fact, I think he is the
dearest fellow that ever lived - but he is rather backward in some
things.  For instance, Biddy, in his learning and his manners."

Although I was looking at Biddy as I spoke, and although she opened
her eyes very wide when I had spoken, she did not look at me.

"Oh, his manners! won't his manners do, then?" asked Biddy,
plucking a black-currant leaf.

"My dear Biddy, they do very well here--"

"Oh! they do very well here?" interrupted Biddy, looking closely at
the leaf in her hand.

"Hear me out - but if I were to remove Joe into a higher sphere, as
I shall hope to remove him when I fully come into my property, they
would hardly do him justice."

"And don't you think he knows that?" asked Biddy.

It was such a very provoking question (for it had never in the most
distant manner occurred to me), that I said, snappishly, "Biddy,
what do you mean?"

Biddy having rubbed the leaf to pieces between her hands - and the
smell of a black-currant bush has ever since recalled to me that
evening in the little garden by the side of the lane - said, "Have
you never considered that he may be proud?"

"Proud?" I repeated, with disdainful emphasis.

"Oh! there are many kinds of pride," said Biddy, looking full at me
and shaking her head; "pride is not all of one kind--"

"Well?  What are you stopping for?" said I.

"Not all of one kind," resumed Biddy.  "He may be too proud to let
any one take him out of a place that he is competent to fill, and
fills well and with respect.  To tell you the truth, I think he is:
though it sounds bold in me to say so, for you must know him far
better than I do."

"Now, Biddy," said I, "I am very sorry to see this in you.  I did
not expect to see this in you.  You are envious, Biddy, and
grudging.  You are dissatisfied on account of my rise in fortune,
and you can't help showing it."

"If you have the heart to think so," returned Biddy, "say so.  Say
so over and over again, if you have the heart to think so."

"If you have the heart to be so, you mean, Biddy," said I, in a
virtuous and superior tone; "don't put it off upon me.  I am very
sorry to see it, and it's a - it's a bad side of human nature.  I
did intend to ask you to use any little opportunities you might
have after I was gone, of improving dear Joe.  But after this, I ask
you nothing.  I am extremely sorry to see this in you, Biddy," I
repeated.  "It's a - it's a bad side of human nature."

"Whether you scold me or approve of me," returned poor Biddy, "you
may equally depend upon my trying to do all that lies in my power,
here, at all times.  And whatever opinion you take away of me, shall
make no difference in my remembrance of you.  Yet a gentleman should
not be unjust neither," said Biddy, turning away her head.

I again warmly repeated that it was a bad side of human nature (in
which sentiment, waiving its application, I have since seen reason
to think I was right), and I walked down the little path away from
Biddy, and Biddy went into the house, and I went out at the garden
gate and took a dejected stroll until supper-time; again feeling it
very sorrowful and strange that this, the second night of my bright
fortunes, should be as lonely and unsatisfactory as the first.

But, morning once more brightened my view, and I extended my
clemency to Biddy, and we dropped the subject.  Putting on the best
clothes I had, I went into town as early as I could hope to find
the shops open, and presented myself before Mr. Trabb, the tailor:
who was having his breakfast in the parlour behind his shop, and
who did not think it worth his while to come out to me, but called
me in to him.

"Well!" said Mr. Trabb, in a hail-fellow-well-met kind of way.  "How
are you, and what can I do for you?"

Mr. Trabb had sliced his hot roll into three feather beds, and was
slipping butter in between the blankets, and covering it up.  He was
a prosperous old bachelor, and his open window looked into a
prosperous little garden and orchard, and there was a prosperous
iron safe let into the wall at the side of his fireplace, and I did
not doubt that heaps of his prosperity were put away in it in bags.

"Mr. Trabb," said I, "it's an unpleasant thing to have to mention,
because it looks like boasting; but I have come into a handsome
property."

A change passed over Mr. Trabb.  He forgot the butter in bed, got up
from the bedside, and wiped his fingers on the table-cloth,
exclaiming, "Lord bless my soul!"

"I am going up to my guardian in London," said I, casually drawing
some guineas out of my pocket and looking at them; "and I want a
fashionable suit of clothes to go in.  I wish to pay for them," I
added - otherwise I thought he might only pretend to make them -
"with ready money."

"My dear sir," said Mr. Trabb, as he respectfully bent his body,
opened his arms, and took the liberty of touching me on the outside
of each elbow, "don't hurt me by mentioning that.  May I venture to
congratulate you?  Would you do me the favour of stepping into the
shop?"

Mr. Trabb's boy was the most audacious boy in all that countryside.
When I had entered he was sweeping the shop, and he had sweetened
his labours by sweeping over me.  He was still sweeping when I came
out into the shop with Mr. Trabb, and he knocked the broom against
all possible corners and obstacles, to express (as I understood it)
equality with any blacksmith, alive or dead.

"Hold that noise," said Mr. Trabb, with the greatest sternness, "or
I'll knock your head off!  Do me the favour to be seated, sir.  Now,
this," said Mr. Trabb, taking down a roll of cloth, and tiding it
out in a flowing manner over the counter, preparatory to getting
his hand under it to show the gloss, "is a very sweet article.  I
can recommend it for your purpose, sir, because it really is extra
super.  But you shall see some others.  Give me Number Four, you!"
(To the boy, and with a dreadfully severe stare:  foreseeing the
danger of that miscreant's brushing me with it, or making some
other sign of familiarity.)

Mr. Trabb never removed his stern eye from the boy until he had
deposited number four on the counter and was at a safe distance
again.  Then, he commanded him to bring number five, and number
eight.  "And let me have none of your tricks here," said Mr. Trabb,
"or you shall repent it, you young scoundrel, the longest day you
have to live."

Mr. Trabb then bent over number four, and in a sort of deferential
confidence recommended it to me as a light article for summer wear,
an article much in vogue among the nobility and gentry, an article
that it would ever be an honour to him to reflect upon a
distinguished fellow-townsman's (if he might claim me for a
fellow-townsman) having worn.  "Are you bringing numbers five and
eight, you vagabond," said Mr. Trabb to the boy after that, "or
shall I kick you out of the shop and bring them myself?"

I selected the materials for a suit, with the assistance of Mr.
Trabb's judgment, and re-entered the parlour to be measured.  For,
although Mr. Trabb had my measure already, and had previously been
quite contented with it, he said apologetically that it "wouldn't
do under existing circumstances, sir - wouldn't do at all."  So, Mr.
Trabb measured and calculated me, in the parlour, as if I were an
estate and he the finest species of surveyor, and gave himself such
a world of trouble that I felt that no suit of clothes could
possibly remunerate him for his pains.  When he had at last done and
had appointed to send the articles to Mr. Pumblechook's on the
Thursday evening, he said, with his hand upon the parlour lock, "I
know, sir, that London gentlemen cannot be expected to patronize
local work, as a rule; but if you would give me a turn now and then
in the quality of a townsman, I should greatly esteem it.  Good
morning, sir, much obliged.  - Door!"

The last word was flung at the boy, who had not the least notion
what it meant.  But I saw him collapse as his master rubbed me out
with his hands, and my first decided experience of the stupendous
power of money, was, that it had morally laid upon his back,
Trabb's boy.

After this memorable event, I went to the hatter's, and the
bootmaker's, and the hosier's, and felt rather like Mother
Hubbard's dog whose outfit required the services of so many trades.
I also went to the coach-office and took my place for seven o'clock
on Saturday morning.  It was not necessary to explain everywhere
that I had come into a handsome property; but whenever I said
anything to that effect, it followed that the officiating tradesman
ceased to have his attention diverted through the window by the
High-street, and concentrated his mind upon me.  When I had ordered
everything I wanted, I directed my steps towards Pumblechook's,
and, as I approached that gentleman's place of business, I saw him
standing at his door.

He was waiting for me with great impatience.  He had been out early
in the chaise-cart, and had called at the forge and heard the
news.  He had prepared a collation for me in the Barnwell parlour,
and he too ordered his shopman to "come out of the gangway" as my
sacred person passed.

"My dear friend," said Mr. Pumblechook, taking me by both hands,
when he and I and the collation were alone, "I give you joy of your
good fortune.  Well deserved, well deserved!"

This was coming to the point, and I thought it a sensible way of
expressing himself.

"To think," said Mr. Pumblechook, after snorting admiration at me
for some moments, "that I should have been the humble instrument of
leading up to this, is a proud reward."

I begged Mr. Pumblechook to remember that nothing was to be ever
said or hinted, on that point.

"My dear young friend," said Mr. Pumblechook, "if you will allow me
to call you so--"

I murmured "Certainly," and Mr. Pumblechook took me by both hands
again, and communicated a movement to his waistcoat, which had an
emotional appearance, though it was rather low down, "My dear young
friend, rely upon my doing my little all in your absence, by
keeping the fact before the mind of Joseph.  - Joseph!" said Mr.
Pumblechook, in the way of a compassionate adjuration.  "Joseph!!
Joseph!!!"  Thereupon he shook his head and tapped it, expressing
his sense of deficiency in Joseph.

"But my dear young friend," said Mr. Pumblechook, "you must be
hungry, you must be exhausted.  Be seated.  Here is a chicken had
round from the Boar, here is a tongue had round from the Boar,
here's one or two little things had round from the Boar, that I
hope you may not despise.  But do I," said Mr. Pumblechook, getting
up again the moment after he had sat down, "see afore me, him as I
ever sported with in his times of happy infancy?  And may I - may
I - ?"

This May I, meant might he shake hands?  I consented, and he was
fervent, and then sat down again.

"Here is wine," said Mr. Pumblechook.  "Let us drink, Thanks to
Fortune, and may she ever pick out her favourites with equal
judgment!  And yet I cannot," said Mr. Pumblechook, getting up again,
"see afore me One - and likewise drink to One - without again
expressing - May I - may I - ?"

I said he might, and he shook hands with me again, and emptied his
glass and turned it upside down.  I did the same; and if I had
turned myself upside down before drinking, the wine could not have
gone more direct to my head.

Mr. Pumblechook helped me to the liver wing, and to the best slice
of tongue (none of those out-of-the-way No Thoroughfares of Pork
now), and took, comparatively speaking, no care of himself at all.
"Ah! poultry, poultry!  You little thought," said Mr. Pumblechook,
apostrophizing the fowl in the dish, "when you was a young
fledgling, what was in store for you.  You little thought you was to
be refreshment beneath this humble roof for one as - Call it a
weakness, if you will," said Mr. Pumblechook, getting up again, "but
may I?  may I - ?"

It began to be unnecessary to repeat the form of saying he might,
so he did it at once.  How he ever did it so often without wounding
himself with my knife, I don't know.

"And your sister," he resumed, after a little steady eating, "which
had the honour of bringing you up by hand!  It's a sad picter, to
reflect that she's no longer equal to fully understanding the
honour.  May--"

I saw he was about to come at me again, and I stopped him.

"We'll drink her health," said I.

"Ah!" cried Mr. Pumblechook, leaning back in his chair, quite
flaccid with admiration, "that's the way you know 'em, sir!"  (I
don't know who Sir was, but he certainly was not I, and there was
no third person present); "that's the way you know the nobleminded,
sir!  Ever forgiving and ever affable.  It might," said the servile
Pumblechook, putting down his untasted glass in a hurry and getting
up again, "to a common person, have the appearance of repeating -
but may I - ?"

When he had done it, he resumed his seat and drank to my sister.
"Let us never be blind," said Mr. Pumblechook, "to her faults of
temper, but it is to be hoped she meant well."

At about this time, I began to observe that he was getting flushed
in the face; as to myself, I felt all face, steeped in wine and
smarting.

I mentioned to Mr. Pumblechook that I wished to have my new clothes
sent to his house, and he was ecstatic on my so distinguishing him.
I mentioned my reason for desiring to avoid observation in the
village, and he lauded it to the skies.  There was nobody but
himself, he intimated, worthy of my confidence, and - in short,
might he?  Then he asked me tenderly if I remembered our boyish
games at sums, and how we had gone together to have me bound
apprentice, and, in effect, how he had ever been my favourite fancy
and my chosen friend?  If I had taken ten times as many glasses of
wine as I had, I should have known that he never had stood in that
relation towards me, and should in my heart of hearts have
repudiated the idea.  Yet for all that, I remember feeling convinced
that I had been much mistaken in him, and that he was a sensible
practical good-hearted prime fellow.

By degrees he fell to reposing such great confidence in me, as to
ask my advice in reference to his own affairs.  He mentioned that
there was an opportunity for a great amalgamation and monopoly of
the corn and seed trade on those premises, if enlarged, such as had
never occurred before in that, or any other neighbourhood.  What
alone was wanting to the realization of a vast fortune, he
considered to be More Capital.  Those were the two little words,
more capital.  Now it appeared to him (Pumblechook) that if that
capital were got into the business, through a sleeping partner, sir
- which sleeping partner would have nothing to do but walk in, by
self or deputy, whenever he pleased, and examine the books - and
walk in twice a year and take his profits away in his pocket, to
the tune of fifty per cent.  - it appeared to him that that might be
an opening for a young gentleman of spirit combined with property,
which would be worthy of his attention.  But what did I think?  He
had great confidence in my opinion, and what did I think?  I gave it
as my opinion.  "Wait a bit!"  The united vastness and distinctness
of this view so struck him, that he no longer asked if he might
shake hands with me, but said he really must - and did.

We drank all the wine, and Mr. Pumblechook pledged himself over and
over again to keep Joseph up to the mark (I don't know what mark),
and to render me efficient and constant service (I don't know what
service).  He also made known to me for the first time in my life,
and certainly after having kept his secret wonderfully well, that
he had always said of me, "That boy is no common boy, and mark me,
his fortun' will be no common fortun'."  He said with a tearful
smile that it was a singular thing to think of now, and I said so
too.  Finally, I went out into the air, with a dim perception that
there was something unwonted in the conduct of the sunshine, and
found that I had slumberously got to the turn-pike without having
taken any account of the road.

There, I was roused by Mr. Pumblechook's hailing me.  He was a long
way down the sunny street, and was making expressive gestures for
me to stop.  I stopped, and he came up breathless.

"No, my dear friend," said he, when he had recovered wind for
speech.  "Not if I can help it.  This occasion shall not entirely
pass without that affability on your part. - May I, as an old
friend and well-wisher?  May I?"

We shook hands for the hundredth time at least, and he ordered a
young carter out of my way with the greatest indignation.  Then, he
blessed me and stood waving his hand to me until I had passed the
crook in the road; and then I turned into a field and had a long
nap under a hedge before I pursued my way home.

I had scant luggage to take with me to London, for little of the
little I possessed was adapted to my new station.  But, I began
packing that same afternoon, and wildly packed up things that I
knew I should want next morning, in a fiction that there was not a
moment to be lost.

So, Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday, passed; and on Friday morning
I went to Mr. Pumblechook's, to put on my new clothes and pay my
visit to Miss Havisham.  Mr. Pumblechook's own room was given up to
me to dress in, and was decorated with clean towels expressly for
the event.  My clothes were rather a disappointment, of course.
Probably every new and eagerly expected garment ever put on since
clothes came in, fell a trifle short of the wearer's expectation.
But after I had had my new suit on, some half an hour, and had gone
through an immensity of posturing with Mr. Pumblechook's very
limited dressing-glass, in the futile endeavour to see my legs, it
seemed to fit me better.  It being market morning at a neighbouring
town some ten miles off, Mr. Pumblechook was not at home.  I had not
told him exactly when I meant to leave, and was not likely to shake
hands with him again before departing.  This was all as it should
be, and I went out in my new array:  fearfully ashamed of having to
pass the shopman, and suspicious after all that I was at a personal
disadvantage, something like Joe's in his Sunday suit.

I went circuitously to Miss Havisham's by all the back ways, and
rang at the bell constrainedly, on account of the stiff long
fingers of my gloves.  Sarah Pocket came to the gate, and positively
reeled back when she saw me so changed; her walnut-shell
countenance likewise, turned from brown to green and yellow.

"You?" said she.  "You, good gracious!  What do you want?"

"I am going to London, Miss Pocket," said I, "and want to say
good-bye to Miss Havisham."

I was not expected, for she left me locked in the yard, while she
went to ask if I were to be admitted.  After a very short delay, she
returned and took me up, staring at me all the way.

Miss Havisham was taking exercise in the room with the long spread
table, leaning on her crutch stick.  The room was lighted as of
yore, and at the sound of our entrance, she stopped and turned.  She
was then just abreast of the rotted bride-cake.

"Don't go, Sarah," she said.  "Well, Pip?"

"I start for London, Miss Havisham, to-morrow," I was exceedingly
careful what I said, "and I thought you would kindly not mind my
taking leave of you."

"This is a gay figure, Pip," said she, making her crutch stick play
round me, as if she, the fairy godmother who had changed me, were
bestowing the finishing gift.

"I have come into such good fortune since I saw you last, Miss
Havisham," I murmured.  "And I am so grateful for it, Miss
Havisham!"

"Ay, ay!" said she, looking at the discomfited and envious Sarah,
with delight.  "I have seen Mr. Jaggers.  I have heard about it, Pip.
So you go to-morrow?"

"Yes, Miss Havisham."

"And you are adopted by a rich person?"

"Yes, Miss Havisham."

"Not named?"

"No, Miss Havisham."

"And Mr. Jaggers is made your guardian?"

"Yes, Miss Havisham."

She quite gloated on these questions and answers, so keen was her
enjoyment of Sarah Pocket's jealous dismay.  "Well!" she went on;
"you have a promising career before you.  Be good - deserve it - and
abide by Mr. Jaggers's instructions."  She looked at me, and looked
at Sarah, and Sarah's countenance wrung out of her watchful face a
cruel smile.  "Good-bye, Pip! - you will always keep the name of
Pip, you know."

"Yes, Miss Havisham."

"Good-bye, Pip!"

She stretched out her hand, and I went down on my knee and put it
to my lips.  I had not considered how I should take leave of her; it
came naturally to me at the moment, to do this.  She looked at Sarah
Pocket with triumph in her weird eyes, and so I left my fairy
godmother, with both her hands on her crutch stick, standing in the
midst of the dimly lighted room beside the rotten bridecake that
was hidden in cobwebs.

Sarah Pocket conducted me down, as if I were a ghost who must be
seen out.  She could not get over my appearance, and was in the last
degree confounded.  I said "Good-bye, Miss Pocket;" but she merely
stared, and did not seem collected enough to know that I had
spoken.  Clear of the house, I made the best of my way back to
Pumblechook's, took off my new clothes, made them into a bundle,
and went back home in my older dress, carrying it - to speak the
truth - much more at my ease too, though I had the bundle to carry.

And now, those six days which were to have run out so slowly, had
run out fast and were gone, and to-morrow looked me in the face
more steadily than I could look at it.  As the six evenings had
dwindled away, to five, to four, to three, to two, I had become
more and more appreciative of the society of Joe and Biddy.  On this
last evening, I dressed my self out in my new clothes, for their
delight, and sat in my splendour until bedtime.  We had a hot supper
on the occasion, graced by the inevitable roast fowl, and we had
some flip to finish with.  We were all very low, and none the higher
for pretending to be in spirits.

I was to leave our village at five in the morning, carrying my
little hand-portmanteau, and I had told Joe that I wished to walk
away all alone.  I am afraid - sore afraid - that this purpose
originated in my sense of the contrast there would be between me
and Joe, if we went to the coach together.  I had pretended with
myself that there was nothing of this taint in the arrangement; but
when I went up to my little room on this last night, I felt
compelled to admit that it might be so, and had an impulse upon me
to go down again and entreat Joe to walk with me in the morning.  I
did not.

All night there were coaches in my broken sleep, going to wrong
places instead of to London, and having in the traces, now dogs,
now cats, now pigs, now men - never horses.  Fantastic failures of
journeys occupied me until the day dawned and the birds were
singing.  Then, I got up and partly dressed, and sat at the window
to take a last look out, and in taking it fell asleep.

Biddy was astir so early to get my breakfast, that, although I did
not sleep at the window an hour, I smelt the smoke of the kitchen
fire when I started up with a terrible idea that it must be late in
the afternoon.  But long after that, and long after I had heard the
clinking of the teacups and was quite ready, I wanted the
resolution to go down stairs.  After all, I remained up there,
repeatedly unlocking and unstrapping my small portmanteau and
locking and strapping it up again, until Biddy called to me that I
was late.

It was a hurried breakfast with no taste in it.  I got up from the
meal, saying with a sort of briskness, as if it had only just
occurred to me, "Well!  I suppose I must be off!" and then I kissed
my sister who was laughing and nodding and shaking in her usual
chair, and kissed Biddy, and threw my arms around Joe's neck.  Then
I took up my little portmanteau and walked out.  The last I saw of
them was, when I presently heard a scuffle behind me, and looking
back, saw Joe throwing an old shoe after me and Biddy throwing
another old shoe.  I stopped then, to wave my hat, and dear old Joe
waved his strong right arm above his head, crying huskily
"Hooroar!" and Biddy put her apron to her face.

I walked away at a good pace, thinking it was easier to go than I
had supposed it would be, and reflecting that it would never have
done to have had an old shoe thrown after the coach, in sight of
all the High-street.  I whistled and made nothing of going.  But the
village was very peaceful and quiet, and the light mists were
solemnly rising, as if to show me the world, and I had been so
innocent and little there, and all beyond was so unknown and great,
that in a moment with a strong heave and sob I broke into tears.  It
was by the finger-post at the end of the village, and I laid my
hand upon it, and said, "Good-bye O my dear, dear friend!"

Heaven knows we need never be ashamed of our tears, for they are
rain upon the blinding dust of earth, overlying our hard hearts.  I
was better after I had cried, than before - more sorry, more aware
of my own ingratitude, more gentle.  If I had cried before, I should
have had Joe with me then.

So subdued I was by those tears, and by their breaking out again in
the course of the quiet walk, that when I was on the coach, and it
was clear of the town, I deliberated with an aching heart whether I
would not get down when we changed horses and walk back, and have
another evening at home, and a better parting.  We changed, and I
had not made up my mind, and still reflected for my comfort that it
would be quite practicable to get down and walk back, when we
changed again.  And while I was occupied with these deliberations, I
would fancy an exact resemblance to Joe in some man coming along
the road towards us, and my heart would beat high.  - As if he could
possibly be there!

We changed again, and yet again, and it was now too late and too
far to go back, and I went on.  And the mists had all solemnly risen
now, and the world lay spread before me.

THIS IS THE END OF THE FIRST STAGE OF PIP'S EXPECTATIONS.

Chapter 20


The journey from our town to the metropolis, was a journey of about
five hours.  It was a little past mid-day when the fourhorse
stage-coach by which I was a passenger, got into the ravel of
traffic frayed out about the Cross Keys, Wood-street, Cheapside,
London.

We Britons had at that time particularly settled that it was
treasonable to doubt our having and our being the best of
everything:  otherwise, while I was scared by the immensity of
London, I think I might have had some faint doubts whether it was
not rather ugly, crooked, narrow, and dirty.

Mr. Jaggers had duly sent me his address; it was, Little Britain,
and he had written after it on his card, "just out of Smithfield,
and close by the coach-office."  Nevertheless, a hackney-coachman,
who seemed to have as many capes to his greasy great-coat as he was
years old, packed me up in his coach and hemmed me in with a
folding and jingling barrier of steps, as if he were going to take
me fifty miles.  His getting on his box, which I remember to have
been decorated with an old weather-stained pea-green hammercloth
moth-eaten into rags, was quite a work of time.  It was a wonderful
equipage, with six great coronets outside, and ragged things behind
for I don't know how many footmen to hold on by, and a harrow below
them, to prevent amateur footmen from yielding to the temptation.

I had scarcely had time to enjoy the coach and to think how like a
straw-yard it was, and yet how like a rag-shop, and to wonder why
the horses' nose-bags were kept inside, when I observed the
coachman beginning to get down, as if we were going to stop
presently.  And stop we presently did, in a gloomy street, at
certain offices with an open door, whereon was painted MR. JAGGERS.

"How much?" I asked the coachman.

The coachman answered, "A shilling - unless you wish to make it
more."

I naturally said I had no wish to make it more.

"Then it must be a shilling," observed the coachman.  "I don't want
to get into trouble.  I know him!"  He darkly closed an eye at Mr
Jaggers's name, and shook his head.

When he had got his shilling, and had in course of time completed
the ascent to his box, and had got away (which appeared to relieve
his mind), I went into the front office with my little portmanteau
in my hand and asked, Was Mr. Jaggers at home?

"He is not," returned the clerk.  "He is in Court at present.  Am I
addressing Mr. Pip?"

I signified that he was addressing Mr. Pip.

"Mr. Jaggers left word would you wait in his room.  He couldn't say
how long he might be, having a case on.  But it stands to reason,
his time being valuable, that he won't be longer than he can help."

With those words, the clerk opened a door, and ushered me into an
inner chamber at the back.  Here, we found a gentleman with one eye,
in a velveteen suit and knee-breeches, who wiped his nose with his
sleeve on being interrupted in the perusal of the newspaper.

"Go and wait outside, Mike," said the clerk.

I began to say that I hoped I was not interrupting - when the clerk
shoved this gentleman out with as little ceremony as I ever saw
used, and tossing his fur cap out after him, left me alone.

Mr. Jaggers's room was lighted by a skylight only, and was a most
dismal place; the skylight, eccentrically pitched like a broken
head, and the distorted adjoining houses looking as if they had
twisted themselves to peep down at me through it.  There were not so
many papers about, as I should have expected to see; and there were
some odd objects about, that I should not have expected to see -
such as an old rusty pistol, a sword in a scabbard, several
strange-looking boxes and packages, and two dreadful casts on a
shelf, of faces peculiarly swollen, and twitchy about the nose.  Mr.
Jaggers's own high-backed chair was of deadly black horse-hair,
with rows of brass nails round it, like a coffin; and I fancied I
could see how he leaned back in it, and bit his forefinger at the
clients.  The room was but small, and the clients seemed to have had
a habit of backing up against the wall:  the wall, especially
opposite to Mr. Jaggers's chair, being greasy with shoulders.  I
recalled, too, that the one-eyed gentleman had shuffled forth
against the wall when I was the innocent cause of his being turned
out.

I sat down in the cliental chair placed over against Mr. Jaggers's
chair, and became fascinated by the dismal atmosphere of the place.
I called to mind that the clerk had the same air of knowing
something to everybody else's disadvantage, as his master had.  I
wondered how many other clerks there were up-stairs, and whether
they all claimed to have the same detrimental mastery of their
fellow-creatures.  I wondered what was the history of all the odd
litter about the room, and how it came there.  I wondered whether
the two swollen faces were of Mr. Jaggers's family, and, if he were
so unfortunate as to have had a pair of such ill-looking relations,
why he stuck them on that dusty perch for the blacks and flies to
settle on, instead of giving them a place at home.  Of course I had
no experience of a London summer day, and my spirits may have been
oppressed by the hot exhausted air, and by the dust and grit that
lay thick on everything.  But I sat wondering and waiting in Mr.
Jaggers's close room, until I really could not bear the two casts
on the shelf above Mr. Jaggers's chair, and got up and went out.

When I told the clerk that I would take a turn in the air while I
waited, he advised me to go round the corner and I should come into
Smithfield.  So, I came into Smithfield; and the shameful place,
being all asmear with filth and fat and blood and foam, seemed to
stick to me.  So, I rubbed it off with all possible speed by turning
into a street where I saw the great black dome of Saint Paul's
bulging at me from behind a grim stone building which a bystander
said was Newgate Prison.  Following the wall of the jail, I found
the roadway covered with straw to deaden the noise of passing
vehicles; and from this, and from the quantity of people standing
about, smelling strongly of spirits and beer, I inferred that the
trials were on.

While I looked about me here, an exceedingly dirty and partially
drunk minister of justice asked me if I would like to step in and
hear a trial or so:  informing me that he could give me a front
place for half-a-crown, whence I should command a full view of the
Lord Chief Justice in his wig and robes - mentioning that awful
personage like waxwork, and presently offering him at the reduced
price of eighteenpence.  As I declined the proposal on the plea of
an appointment, he was so good as to take me into a yard and show
me where the gallows was kept, and also where people were publicly
whipped, and then he showed me the Debtors' Door, out of which
culprits came to be hanged:  heightening the interest of that
dreadful portal by giving me to understand that "four on 'em" would
come out at that door the day after to-morrow at eight in the
morning, to be killed in a row.  This was horrible, and gave me a
sickening idea of London:  the more so as the Lord Chief Justice's
proprietor wore (from his hat down to his boots and up again to his
pocket-handkerchief inclusive) mildewed clothes, which had
evidently not belonged to him originally, and which, I took it into
my head, he had bought cheap of the executioner.  Under these
circumstances I thought myself well rid of him for a shilling.

I dropped into the office to ask if Mr. Jaggers had come in yet, and
I found he had not, and I strolled out again.  This time, I made the
tour of Little Britain, and turned into Bartholomew Close; and now
I became aware that other people were waiting about for Mr. Jaggers,
as well as I.  There were two men of secret appearance lounging in
Bartholomew Close, and thoughtfully fitting their feet into the
cracks of the pavement as they talked together, one of whom said to
the other when they first passed me, that "Jaggers would do it if
it was to be done."  There was a knot of three men and two women
standing at a corner, and one of the women was crying on her dirty
shawl, and the other comforted her by saying, as she pulled her own
shawl over her shoulders, "Jaggers is for him, 'Melia, and what
more could you have?"  There was a red-eyed little Jew who came into
the Close while I was loitering there, in company with a second
little Jew whom he sent upon an errand; and while the messenger was
gone, I remarked this Jew, who was of a highly excitable
temperament, performing a jig of anxiety under a lamp-post and
accompanying himself, in a kind of frenzy, with the words, "Oh
Jaggerth, Jaggerth, Jaggerth! all otherth ith Cag-Maggerth, give me
Jaggerth!"  These testimonies to the popularity of my guardian made
a deep impression on me, and I admired and wondered more than ever.

At length, as I was looking out at the iron gate of Bartholomew
Close into Little Britain, I saw Mr. Jaggers coming across the road
towards me.  All the others who were waiting, saw him at the same
time, and there was quite a rush at him.  Mr. Jaggers, putting a hand
on my shoulder and walking me on at his side without saying
anything to me, addressed himself to his followers.

First, he took the two secret men.

"Now, I have nothing to say to you," said Mr. Jaggers, throwing his
finger at them.  "I want to know no more than I know.  As to the
result, it's a toss-up.  I told you from the first it was a toss-up.
Have you paid Wemmick?"

"We made the money up this morning, sir," said one of the men,
submissively, while the other perused Mr. Jaggers's face.

"I don't ask you when you made it up, or where, or whether you made
it up at all.  Has Wemmick got it?"

"Yes, sir," said both the men together.

"Very well; then you may go.  Now, I won't have it!" said Mr
Jaggers, waving his hand at them to put them behind him.  "If you
say a word to me, I'll throw up the case."

"We thought, Mr. Jaggers--" one of the men began, pulling off his
hat.

"That's what I told you not to do," said Mr. Jaggers.  "You thought!
I think for you; that's enough for you.  If I want you, I know where
to find you; I don't want you to find me.  Now I won't have it.  I
won't hear a word."

The two men looked at one another as Mr. Jaggers waved them behind
again, and humbly fell back and were heard no more.

"And now you!" said Mr. Jaggers, suddenly stopping, and turning on
the two women with the shawls, from whom the three men had meekly
separated.  - "Oh! Amelia, is it?"

"Yes, Mr. Jaggers."

"And do you remember," retorted Mr. Jaggers, "that but for me you
wouldn't be here and couldn't be here?"

"Oh yes, sir!" exclaimed both women together.  "Lord bless you, sir,
well we knows that!"

"Then why," said Mr. Jaggers, "do you come here?"

"My Bill, sir!" the crying woman pleaded.

"Now, I tell you what!" said Mr. Jaggers.  "Once for all.  If you
don't know that your Bill's in good hands, I know it.  And if you
come here, bothering about your Bill, I'll make an example of both
your Bill and you, and let him slip through my fingers.  Have you
paid Wemmick?"

"Oh yes, sir!  Every farden."

"Very well.  Then you have done all you have got to do.  Say another
word - one single word - and Wemmick shall give you your money
back."

This terrible threat caused the two women to fall off immediately.
No one remained now but the excitable Jew, who had already raised
the skirts of Mr. Jaggers's coat to his lips several times.

"I don't know this man!" said Mr. Jaggers, in the same devastating
strain:  "What does this fellow want?"

"Ma thear Mithter Jaggerth.  Hown brother to Habraham Latharuth?"

"Who's he?" said Mr. Jaggers.  "Let go of my coat."

The suitor, kissing the hem of the garment again before
relinquishing it, replied, "Habraham Latharuth, on thuthpithion of
plate."

"You're too late," said Mr. Jaggers.  "I am over the way."

"Holy father, Mithter Jaggerth!" cried my excitable acquaintance,
turning white, "don't thay you're again Habraham Latharuth!"

"I am," said Mr. Jaggers, "and there's an end of it.  Get out of the
way."

"Mithter Jaggerth!  Half a moment!  My hown cuthen'th gone to Mithter
Wemmick at thith prethent minute, to hoffer him hany termth.
Mithter Jaggerth!  Half a quarter of a moment!  If you'd have the
condethenthun to be bought off from the t'other thide - at hany
thuperior prithe! - money no object! - Mithter Jaggerth - Mithter - !"

My guardian threw his supplicant off with supreme indifference, and
left him dancing on the pavement as if it were red-hot.  Without
further interruption, we reached the front office, where we found
the clerk and the man in velveteen with the fur cap.

"Here's Mike," said the clerk, getting down from his stool, and
approaching Mr. Jaggers confidentially.

"Oh!" said Mr. Jaggers, turning to the man, who was pulling a lock
of hair in the middle of his forehead, like the Bull in Cock Robin
pulling at the bell-rope; "your man comes on this afternoon.  Well?"

"Well, Mas'r Jaggers," returned Mike, in the voice of a sufferer
from a constitutional cold; "arter a deal o' trouble, I've found
one, sir, as might do."

"What is he prepared to swear?"

"Well, Mas'r Jaggers," said Mike, wiping his nose on his fur cap
this time; "in a general way, anythink."

Mr. Jaggers suddenly became most irate.  "Now, I warned you before,"
said he, throwing his forefinger at the terrified client, "that if
you ever presumed to talk in that way here, I'd make an example of
you.  You infernal scoundrel, how dare you tell ME that?"

The client looked scared, but bewildered too, as if he were
unconscious what he had done.

"Spooney!" said the clerk, in a low voice, giving him a stir with
his elbow.  "Soft Head!  Need you say it face to face?"

"Now, I ask you, you blundering booby," said my guardian, very
sternly, "once more and for the last time, what the man you have
brought here is prepared to swear?"

Mike looked hard at my guardian, as if he were trying to learn a
lesson from his face, and slowly replied, "Ayther to character, or
to having been in his company and never left him all the night in
question."

"Now, be careful.  In what station of life is this man?"

Mike looked at his cap, and looked at the floor, and looked at the
ceiling, and looked at the clerk, and even looked at me, before
beginning to reply in a nervous manner, "We've dressed him up
like--" when my guardian blustered out:

"What?  You WILL, will you?"

("Spooney!" added the clerk again, with another stir.)

After some helpless casting about, Mike brightened and began again:

"He is dressed like a 'spectable pieman.  A sort of a pastry-cook."

"Is he here?" asked my guardian.

"I left him," said Mike, "a settin on some doorsteps round the
corner."

"Take him past that window, and let me see him."

The window indicated, was the office window.  We all three went to
it, behind the wire blind, and presently saw the client go by in an
accidental manner, with a murderous-looking tall individual, in a
short suit of white linen and a paper cap.  This guileless
confectioner was not by any means sober, and had a black eye in the
green stage of recovery, which was painted over.

"Tell him to take his witness away directly," said my guardian to
the clerk, in extreme disgust, "and ask him what he means by
bringing such a fellow as that."

My guardian then took me into his own room, and while he lunched,
standing, from a sandwich-box and a pocket flask of sherry (he
seemed to bully his very sandwich as he ate it), informed me what
arrangements he had made for me.  I was to go to "Barnard's Inn," to
young Mr. Pocket's rooms, where a bed had been sent in for my
accommodation; I was to remain with young Mr. Pocket until Monday;
on Monday I was to go with him to his father's house on a visit,
that I might try how I liked it.  Also, I was told what my allowance
was to be - it was a very liberal one - and had handed to me from
one of my guardian's drawers, the cards of certain tradesmen with
whom I was to deal for all kinds of clothes, and such other things
as I could in reason want.  "You will find your credit good, Mr.
Pip," said my guardian, whose flask of sherry smelt like a whole
cask-full, as he hastily refreshed himself, "but I shall by this
means be able to check your bills, and to pull you up if I find you
outrunning the constable.  Of course you'll go wrong somehow, but
that's no fault of mine."

After I had pondered a little over this encouraging sentiment, I
asked Mr. Jaggers if I could send for a coach?  He said it was not
worth while, I was so near my destination; Wemmick should walk
round with me, if I pleased.

I then found that Wemmick was the clerk in the next room.  Another
clerk was rung down from up-stairs to take his place while he was
out, and I accompanied him into the street, after shaking hands
with my guardian.  We found a new set of people lingering outside,
but Wemmick made a way among them by saying coolly yet decisively,
"I tell you it's no use; he won't have a word to say to one of
you;" and we soon got clear of them, and went on side by side.

Chapter 21


Casting my eyes on Mr. Wemmick as we went along, to see what he was
like in the light of day, I found him to be a dry man, rather short
in stature, with a square wooden face, whose expression seemed to
have been imperfectly chipped out with a dull-edged chisel.  There
were some marks in it that might have been dimples, if the material
had been softer and the instrument finer, but which, as it was,
were only dints.  The chisel had made three or four of these
attempts at embellishment over his nose, but had given them up
without an effort to smooth them off.  I judged him to be a bachelor
from the frayed condition of his linen, and he appeared to have
sustained a good many bereavements; for, he wore at least four
mourning rings, besides a brooch representing a lady and a weeping
willow at a tomb with an urn on it.  I noticed, too, that several
rings and seals hung at his watch chain, as if he were quite laden
with remembrances of departed friends.  He had glittering eyes -
small, keen, and black - and thin wide mottled lips.  He had had
them, to the best of my belief, from forty to fifty years.

"So you were never in London before?" said Mr. Wemmick to me.

"No," said I.

"I was new here once," said Mr. Wemmick.  "Rum to think of now!"

"You are well acquainted with it now?"

"Why, yes," said Mr. Wemmick.  "I know the moves of it."

"Is it a very wicked place?" I asked, more for the sake of saying
something than for information.

"You may get cheated, robbed, and murdered, in London.  But there
are plenty of people anywhere, who'll do that for you."

"If there is bad blood between you and them," said I, to soften it
off a little.

"Oh!  I don't know about bad blood," returned Mr. Wemmick; "there's
not much bad blood about.  They'll do it, if there's anything to be
got by it."

"That makes it worse."

"You think so?" returned Mr. Wemmick.  "Much about the same, I should
say."

He wore his hat on the back of his head, and looked straight before
him:  walking in a self-contained way as if there were nothing in
the streets to claim his attention.  His mouth was such a postoffice
of a mouth that he had a mechanical appearance of smiling.  We had
got to the top of Holborn Hill before I knew that it was merely a
mechanical appearance, and that he was not smiling at all.

"Do you know where Mr. Matthew Pocket lives?" I asked Mr. Wemmick.

"Yes," said he, nodding in the direction.  "At Hammersmith, west of
London."

"Is that far?"

"Well!  Say five miles."

"Do you know him?"

"Why, you're a regular cross-examiner!" said Mr. Wemmick, looking at
me with an approving air.  "Yes, I know him.  I know him!"

There was an air of toleration or depreciation about his utterance
of these words, that rather depressed me; and I was still looking
sideways at his block of a face in search of any encouraging note
to the text, when he said here we were at Barnard's Inn.  My
depression was not alleviated by the announcement, for, I had
supposed that establishment to be an hotel kept by Mr. Barnard, to
which the Blue Boar in our town was a mere public-house.  Whereas I
now found Barnard to be a disembodied spirit, or a fiction, and his
inn the dingiest collection of shabby buildings ever squeezed
together in a rank corner as a club for Tom-cats.

We entered this haven through a wicket-gate, and were disgorged by
an introductory passage into a melancholy little square that looked
to me like a flat burying-ground.  I thought it had the most dismal
trees in it, and the most dismal sparrows, and the most dismal
cats, and the most dismal houses (in number half a dozen or so),
that I had ever seen.  I thought the windows of the sets of chambers
into which those houses were divided, were in every stage of
dilapidated blind and curtain, crippled flower-pot, cracked glass,
dusty decay, and miserable makeshift; while To Let To Let To Let,
glared at me from empty rooms, as if no new wretches ever came
there, and the vengeance of the soul of Barnard were being slowly
appeased by the gradual suicide of the present occupants and their
unholy interment under the gravel.  A frouzy mourning of soot and
smoke attired this forlorn creation of Barnard, and it had strewn
ashes on its head, and was undergoing penance and humiliation as a
mere dust-hole.  Thus far my sense of sight; while dry rot and wet
rot and all the silent rots that rot in neglected roof and cellar -
rot of rat and mouse and bug and coaching-stables near at hand
besides - addressed themselves faintly to my sense of smell, and
moaned, "Try Barnard's Mixture."

So imperfect was this realization of the first of my great
expectations, that I looked in dismay at Mr. Wemmick.  "Ah!" said he,
mistaking me; "the retirement reminds you of the country.  So it
does me."

He led me into a corner and conducted me up a flight of stairs -
which appeared to me to be slowly collapsing into sawdust, so that
one of those days the upper lodgers would look out at their doors
and find themselves without the means of coming down - to a set of
chambers on the top floor.  MR. POCKET, JUN., was painted on the
door, and there was a label on the letter-box, "Return shortly."

"He hardly thought you'd come so soon," Mr. Wemmick explained.  "You
don't want me any more?"

"No, thank you," said I.

"As I keep the cash," Mr. Wemmick observed, "we shall most likely
meet pretty often.  Good day."

"Good day."

I put out my hand, and Mr. Wemmick at first looked at it as if he
thought I wanted something.  Then he looked at me, and said,
correcting himself,

"To be sure!  Yes.  You're in the habit of shaking hands?"

I was rather confused, thinking it must be out of the London
fashion, but said yes.

"I have got so out of it!" said Mr. Wemmick - "except at last.  Very
glad, I'm sure, to make your acquaintance.  Good day!"

When we had shaken hands and he was gone, I opened the staircase
window and had nearly beheaded myself, for, the lines had rotted
away, and it came down like the guillotine.  Happily it was so quick
that I had not put my head out.  After this escape, I was content to
take a foggy view of the Inn through the window's encrusting dirt,
and to stand dolefully looking out, saying to myself that London
was decidedly overrated.

Mr. Pocket, Junior's, idea of Shortly was not mine, for I had nearly
maddened myself with looking out for half an hour, and had written
my name with my finger several times in the dirt of every pane in
the window, before I heard footsteps on the stairs.  Gradually there
arose before me the hat, head, neckcloth, waistcoat, trousers,
boots, of a member of society of about my own standing.  He had a
paper-bag under each arm and a pottle of strawberries in one hand,
and was out of breath.

"Mr. Pip?" said he.

"Mr. Pocket?" said I.

"Dear me!" he exclaimed.  "I am extremely sorry; but I knew there
was a coach from your part of the country at midday, and I thought
you would come by that one.  The fact is, I have been out on your
account - not that that is any excuse - for I thought, coming from
the country, you might like a little fruit after dinner, and I went
to Covent Garden Market to get it good."

For a reason that I had, I felt as if my eyes would start out of my
head.  I acknowledged his attention incoherently, and began to think
this was a dream.

"Dear me!" said Mr. Pocket, Junior.  "This door sticks so!"

As he was fast making jam of his fruit by wrestling with the door
while the paper-bags were under his arms, I begged him to allow me
to hold them.  He relinquished them with an agreeable smile, and
combated with the door as if it were a wild beast.  It yielded so
suddenly at last, that he staggered back upon me, and I staggered
back upon the opposite door, and we both laughed.  But still I felt
as if my eyes must start out of my head, and as if this must be a
dream.

"Pray come in," said Mr. Pocket, Junior.  "Allow me to lead the way.
I am rather bare here, but I hope you'll be able to make out
tolerably well till Monday.  My father thought you would get on more
agreeably through to-morrow with me than with him, and might like
to take a walk about London.  I am sure I shall be very happy to
show London to you.  As to our table, you won't find that bad, I
hope, for it will be supplied from our coffee-house here, and (it
is only right I should add) at your expense, such being Mr.
Jaggers's directions.  As to our lodging, it's not by any means
splendid, because I have my own bread to earn, and my father hasn't
anything to give me, and I shouldn't be willing to take it, if he
had.  This is our sitting-room - just such chairs and tables and
carpet and so forth, you see, as they could spare from home.  You
mustn't give me credit for the tablecloth and spoons and castors,
because they come for you from the coffee-house.  This is my little
bedroom; rather musty, but Barnard's is musty.  This is your
bed-room; the furniture's hired for the occasion, but I trust it
will answer the purpose; if you should want anything, I'll go and
fetch it.  The chambers are retired, and we shall be alone together,
but we shan't fight, I dare say.  But, dear me, I beg your pardon,
you're holding the fruit all this time.  Pray let me take these bags
from you.  I am quite ashamed."

As I stood opposite to Mr. Pocket, Junior, delivering him the bags,
One, Two, I saw the starting appearance come into his own eyes that
I knew to be in mine, and he said, falling back:

"Lord bless me, you're the prowling boy!"

"And you," said I, "are the pale young gentleman!"

Chapter 22


The pale young gentleman and I stood contemplating one another in
Barnard's Inn, until we both burst out laughing.  "The idea of its
being you!" said he.  "The idea of its being you!" said I.  And then
we contemplated one another afresh, and laughed again.  "Well!" said
the pale young gentleman, reaching out his hand goodhumouredly,
"it's all over now, I hope, and it will be magnanimous in you if
you'll forgive me for having knocked you about so."

I derived from this speech that Mr. Herbert Pocket (for Herbert was
the pale young gentleman's name) still rather confounded his
intention with his execution.  But I made a modest reply, and we
shook hands warmly.

"You hadn't come into your good fortune at that time?" said Herbert
Pocket.

"No," said I.

"No," he acquiesced:  "I heard it had happened very lately.  I was
rather on the look-out for good-fortune then."

"Indeed?"

"Yes.  Miss Havisham had sent for me, to see if she could take a
fancy to me.  But she couldn't - at all events, she didn't."

I thought it polite to remark that I was surprised to hear that.

"Bad taste," said Herbert, laughing, "but a fact.  Yes, she had sent
for me on a trial visit, and if I had come out of it successfully,
I suppose I should have been provided for; perhaps I should have
been what-you-may-called it to Estella."

"What's that?" I asked, with sudden gravity.

He was arranging his fruit in plates while we talked, which divided
his attention, and was the cause of his having made this lapse of a
word.  "Affianced," he explained, still busy with the fruit.
"Betrothed.  Engaged.  What's-his-named.  Any word of that sort."

"How did you bear your disappointment?" I asked.

"Pooh!" said he, "I didn't care much for it.  She's a Tartar."

"Miss Havisham?"

"I don't say no to that, but I meant Estella.  That girl's hard and
haughty and capricious to the last degree, and has been brought up
by Miss Havisham to wreak revenge on all the male sex."

"What relation is she to Miss Havisham?"

"None," said he.  "Only adopted."

"Why should she wreak revenge on all the male sex?  What revenge?"

"Lord, Mr. Pip!" said he.  "Don't you know?"

"No," said I.

"Dear me!  It's quite a story, and shall be saved till dinner-time.
And now let me take the liberty of asking you a question.  How did
you come there, that day?"

I told him, and he was attentive until I had finished, and then
burst out laughing again, and asked me if I was sore afterwards?  I
didn't ask him if he was, for my conviction on that point was
perfectly established.

"Mr. Jaggers is your guardian, I understand?" he went on.

"Yes."

"You know he is Miss Havisham's man of business and solicitor, and
has her confidence when nobody else has?"

This was bringing me (I felt) towards dangerous ground.  I answered
with a constraint I made no attempt to disguise, that I had seen Mr.
Jaggers in Miss Havisham's house on the very day of our combat, but
never at any other time, and that I believed he had no recollection
of having ever seen me there.

"He was so obliging as to suggest my father for your tutor, and he
called on my father to propose it.  Of course he knew about my
father from his connexion with Miss Havisham.  My father is Miss
Havisham's cousin; not that that implies familiar intercourse
between them, for he is a bad courtier and will not propitiate
her."

Herbert Pocket had a frank and easy way with him that was very
taking.  I had never seen any one then, and I have never seen any
one since, who more strongly expressed to me, in every look and
tone, a natural incapacity to do anything secret and mean.  There
was something wonderfully hopeful about his general air, and
something that at the same time whispered to me he would never be
very successful or rich.  I don't know how this was.  I became imbued
with the notion on that first occasion before we sat down to
dinner, but I cannot define by what means.

He was still a pale young gentleman, and had a certain conquered
languor about him in the midst of his spirits and briskness, that
did not seem indicative of natural strength.  He had not a handsome
face, but it was better than handsome:  being extremely amiable and
cheerful.  His figure was a little ungainly, as in the days when my
knuckles had taken such liberties with it, but it looked as if it
would always be light and young.  Whether Mr. Trabb's local work
would have sat more gracefully on him than on me, may be a
question; but I am conscious that he carried off his rather old
clothes, much better than I carried off my new suit.

As he was so communicative, I felt that reserve on my part would be
a bad return unsuited to our years.  I therefore told him my small
story, and laid stress on my being forbidden to inquire who my
benefactor was.  I further mentioned that as I had been brought up a
blacksmith in a country place, and knew very little of the ways of
politeness, I would take it as a great kindness in him if he would
give me a hint whenever he saw me at a loss or going wrong.

"With pleasure," said he, "though I venture to prophesy that you'll
want very few hints.  I dare say we shall be often together, and I
should like to banish any needless restraint between us.  Will you
do me the favour to begin at once to call me by my Christian name,
Herbert?"

I thanked him, and said I would.  I informed him in exchange that my
Christian name was Philip.

"I don't take to Philip," said he, smiling, "for it sounds like a
moral boy out of the spelling-book, who was so lazy that he fell
into a pond, or so fat that he couldn't see out of his eyes, or so
avaricious that he locked up his cake till the mice ate it, or so
determined to go a bird's-nesting that he got himself eaten by
bears who lived handy in the neighbourhood.  I tell you what I
should like.  We are so harmonious, and you have been a blacksmith -
would you mind it?"

"I shouldn't mind anything that you propose," I answered, "but I
don't understand you."

"Would you mind Handel for a familiar name?  There's a charming
piece of music by Handel, called the Harmonious Blacksmith."

"I should like it very much."

"Then, my dear Handel," said he, turning round as the door opened,
"here is the dinner, and I must beg of you to take the top of the
table, because the dinner is of your providing."

This I would not hear of, so he took the top, and I faced him.  It
was a nice little dinner - seemed to me then, a very Lord Mayor's
Feast - and it acquired additional relish from being eaten under
those independent circumstances, with no old people by, and with
London all around us.  This again was heightened by a certain gipsy
character that set the banquet off; for, while the table was, as Mr.
Pumblechook might have said, the lap of luxury - being entirely
furnished forth from the coffee-house - the circumjacent region of
sitting-room was of a comparatively pastureless and shifty
character:  imposing on the waiter the wandering habits of putting
the covers on the floor (where he fell over them), the melted
butter in the armchair, the bread on the bookshelves, the cheese in
the coalscuttle, and the boiled fowl into my bed in the next room -
where I found much of its parsley and butter in a state of
congelation when I retired for the night.  All this made the feast
delightful, and when the waiter was not there to watch me, my
pleasure was without alloy.

We had made some progress in the dinner, when I reminded Herbert of
his promise to tell me about Miss Havisham.

"True," he replied.  "I'll redeem it at once.  Let me introduce the
topic, Handel, by mentioning that in London it is not the custom to
put the knife in the mouth - for fear of accidents - and that while
the fork is reserved for that use, it is not put further in than
necessary.  It is scarcely worth mentioning, only it's as well to do
as other people do.  Also, the spoon is not generally used
over-hand, but under.  This has two advantages.  You get at your
mouth better (which after all is the object), and you save a good
deal of the attitude of opening oysters, on the part of the right
elbow."

He offered these friendly suggestions in such a lively way, that we
both laughed and I scarcely blushed.

"Now," he pursued, "concerning Miss Havisham.  Miss Havisham, you
must know, was a spoilt child.  Her mother died when she was a baby,
and her father denied her nothing.  Her father was a country
gentleman down in your part of the world, and was a brewer.  I don't
know why it should be a crack thing to be a brewer; but it is
indisputable that while you cannot possibly be genteel and bake,
you may be as genteel as never was and brew.  You see it every day."

"Yet a gentleman may not keep a public-house; may he?" said I.

"Not on any account," returned Herbert; "but a public-house may
keep a gentleman.  Well!  Mr. Havisham was very rich and very proud.
So was his daughter."

"Miss Havisham was an only child?" I hazarded.

"Stop a moment, I am coming to that.  No, she was not an only child;
she had a half-brother.  Her father privately married again - his
cook, I rather think."

"I thought he was proud," said I.

"My good Handel, so he was.  He married his second wife privately,
because he was proud, and in course of time she died.  When she was
dead, I apprehend he first told his daughter what he had done, and
then the son became a part of the family, residing in the house you
are acquainted with.  As the son grew a young man, he turned out
riotous, extravagant, undutiful - altogether bad.  At last his
father disinherited him; but he softened when he was dying, and
left him well off, though not nearly so well off as Miss Havisham.
- Take another glass of wine, and excuse my mentioning that society
as a body does not expect one to be so strictly conscientious in
emptying one's glass, as to turn it bottom upwards with the rim on
one's nose."

I had been doing this, in an excess of attention to his recital.  I
thanked him, and apologized.  He said, "Not at all," and resumed.

"Miss Havisham was now an heiress, and you may suppose was looked
after as a great match.  Her half-brother had now ample means again,
but what with debts and what with new madness wasted them most
fearfully again.  There were stronger differences between him and
her, than there had been between him and his father, and it is
suspected that he cherished a deep and mortal grudge against her,
as having influenced the father's anger.  Now, I come to the cruel
part of the story - merely breaking off, my dear Handel, to remark
that a dinner-napkin will not go into a tumbler."

Why I was trying to pack mine into my tumbler, I am wholly unable
to say.  I only know that I found myself, with a perseverance worthy
of a much better cause, making the most strenuous exertions to
compress it within those limits.  Again I thanked him and
apologized, and again he said in the cheerfullest manner, "Not at
all, I am sure!" and resumed.

"There appeared upon the scene - say at the races, or the public
balls, or anywhere else you like - a certain man, who made love to
Miss Havisham.  I never saw him, for this happened five-and-twenty
years ago (before you and I were, Handel), but I have heard my
father mention that he was a showy-man, and the kind of man for the
purpose.  But that he was not to be, without ignorance or prejudice,
mistaken for a gentleman, my father most strongly asseverates;
because it is a principle of his that no man who was not a true
gentleman at heart, ever was, since the world began, a true
gentleman in manner.  He says, no varnish can hide the grain of the
wood; and that the more varnish you put on, the more the grain will
express itself.  Well!  This man pursued Miss Havisham closely, and
professed to be devoted to her.  I believe she had not shown much
susceptibility up to that time; but all the susceptibility she
possessed, certainly came out then, and she passionately loved him.
There is no doubt that she perfectly idolized him.  He practised on
her affection in that systematic way, that he got great sums of
money from her, and he induced her to buy her brother out of a
share in the brewery (which had been weakly left him by his father)
at an immense price, on the plea that when he was her husband he
must hold and manage it all.  Your guardian was not at that time in
Miss Havisham's councils, and she was too haughty and too much in
love, to be advised by any one.  Her relations were poor and
scheming, with the exception of my father; he was poor enough, but
not time-serving or jealous.  The only independent one among them,
he warned her that she was doing too much for this man, and was
placing herself too unreservedly in his power.  She took the first
opportunity of angrily ordering my father out of the house, in his
presence, and my father has never seen her since."

I thought of her having said, "Matthew will come and see me at last
when I am laid dead upon that table;" and I asked Herbert whether
his father was so inveterate against her?

"It's not that," said he, "but she charged him, in the presence of
her intended husband, with being disappointed in the hope of
fawning upon her for his own advancement, and, if he were to go to
her now, it would look true - even to him - and even to her.  To
return to the man and make an end of him.  The marriage day was
fixed, the wedding dresses were bought, the wedding tour was
planned out, the wedding guests were invited.  The day came, but not
the bridegroom.  He wrote her a letter--"

"Which she received," I struck in, "when she was dressing for her
marriage?  At twenty minutes to nine?"

"At the hour and minute," said Herbert, nodding, "at which she
afterwards stopped all the clocks.  What was in it, further than
that it most heartlessly broke the marriage off, I can't tell you,
because I don't know.  When she recovered from a bad illness that
she had, she laid the whole place waste, as you have seen it, and
she has never since looked upon the light of day."

"Is that all the story?" I asked, after considering it.

"All I know of it; and indeed I only know so much, through piecing
it out for myself; for my father always avoids it, and, even when
Miss Havisham invited me to go there, told me no more of it than it
was absolutely requisite I should understand.  But I have forgotten
one thing.  It has been supposed that the man to whom she gave her
misplaced confidence, acted throughout in concert with her
half-brother; that it was a conspiracy between them; and that they
shared the profits."

"I wonder he didn't marry her and get all the property," said I.

"He may have been married already, and her cruel mortification may
have been a part of her half-brother's scheme," said Herbert.

"Mind!  I don't know that."

"What became of the two men?" I asked, after again considering the
subject.

"They fell into deeper shame and degradation - if there can be
deeper - and ruin."

"Are they alive now?"

"I don't know."

"You said just now, that Estella was not related to Miss Havisham,
but adopted.  When adopted?"

Herbert shrugged his shoulders.  "There has always been an Estella,
since I have heard of a Miss Havisham.  I know no more.  And now,
Handel," said he, finally throwing off the story as it were, "there
is a perfectly open understanding between us.  All that I know about
Miss Havisham, you know."

"And all that I know," I retorted, "you know."

"I fully believe it.  So there can be no competition or perplexity
between you and me.  And as to the condition on which you hold your
advancement in life - namely, that you are not to inquire or
discuss to whom you owe it - you may be very sure that it will
never be encroached upon, or even approached, by me, or by any one
belonging to me."

In truth, he said this with so much delicacy, that I felt the
subject done with, even though I should be under his father's roof
for years and years to come.  Yet he said it with so much meaning,
too, that I felt he as perfectly understood Miss Havisham to be my
benefactress, as I understood the fact myself.

It had not occurred to me before, that he had led up to the theme
for the purpose of clearing it out of our way; but we were so much
the lighter and easier for having broached it, that I now perceived
this to be the case.  We were very gay and sociable, and I asked
him, in the course of conversation, what he was?  He replied, "A
capitalist - an Insurer of Ships."  I suppose he saw me glancing
about the room in search of some tokens of Shipping, or capital,
for he added, "In the City."

I had grand ideas of the wealth and importance of Insurers of Ships
in the City, and I began to think with awe, of having laid a young
Insurer on his back, blackened his enterprising eye, and cut his
responsible head open.  But, again, there came upon me, for my
relief, that odd impression that Herbert Pocket would never be very
successful or rich.

"I shall not rest satisfied with merely employing my capital in
insuring ships.  I shall buy up some good Life Assurance shares, and
cut into the Direction.  I shall also do a little in the mining way.
None of these things will interfere with my chartering a few
thousand tons on my own account.  I think I shall trade," said he,
leaning back in his chair, "to the East Indies, for silks, shawls,
spices, dyes, drugs, and precious woods.  It's an interesting
trade."

"And the profits are large?" said I.

"Tremendous!" said he.

I wavered again, and began to think here were greater expectations
than my own.

"I think I shall trade, also," said he, putting his thumbs in his
waistcoat pockets, "to the West Indies, for sugar, tobacco, and
rum.  Also to Ceylon, specially for elephants' tusks."

"You will want a good many ships," said I.

"A perfect fleet," said he.

Quite overpowered by the magnificence of these transactions, I
asked him where the ships he insured mostly traded to at present?

"I haven't begun insuring yet," he replied.  "I am looking about
me."

Somehow, that pursuit seemed more in keeping with Barnard's Inn.  I
said (in a tone of conviction), "Ah-h!"

"Yes.  I am in a counting-house, and looking about me."

"Is a counting-house profitable?" I asked.

"To - do you mean to the young fellow who's in it?" he asked, in
reply.

"Yes; to you."

"Why, n-no:  not to me."  He said this with the air of one carefully
reckoning up and striking a balance.  "Not directly profitable.  That
is, it doesn't pay me anything, and I have to - keep myself."

This certainly had not a profitable appearance, and I shook my head
as if I would imply that it would be difficult to lay by much
accumulative capital from such a source of income.

"But the thing is," said Herbert Pocket, "that you look about you.
That's the grand thing.  You are in a counting-house, you know, and
you look about you."

It struck me as a singular implication that you couldn't be out of
a counting-house, you know, and look about you; but I silently
deferred to his experience.

"Then the time comes," said Herbert, "when you see your opening.
And you go in, and you swoop upon it and you make your capital, and
then there you are!  When you have once made your capital, you have
nothing to do but employ it."

This was very like his way of conducting that encounter in the
garden; very like.  His manner of bearing his poverty, too, exactly
corresponded to his manner of bearing that defeat.  It seemed to me
that he took all blows and buffets now, with just the same air as
he had taken mine then.  It was evident that he had nothing around
him but the simplest necessaries, for everything that I remarked
upon turned out to have been sent in on my account from the
coffee-house or somewhere else.

Yet, having already made his fortune in his own mind, he was so
unassuming with it that I felt quite grateful to him for not being
puffed up.  It was a pleasant addition to his naturally pleasant
ways, and we got on famously.  In the evening we went out for a walk
in the streets, and went half-price to the Theatre; and next day we
went to church at Westminster Abbey, and in the afternoon we walked
in the Parks; and I wondered who shod all the horses there, and
wished Joe did.

On a moderate computation, it was many months, that Sunday, since I
had left Joe and Biddy.  The space interposed between myself and
them, partook of that expansion, and our marshes were any distance
off.  That I could have been at our old church in my old
church-going clothes, on the very last Sunday that ever was, seemed
a combination of impossibilities, geographical and social, solar
and lunar.  Yet in the London streets, so crowded with people and so
brilliantly lighted in the dusk of evening, there were depressing
hints of reproaches for that I had put the poor old kitchen at home
so far away; and in the dead of night, the footsteps of some
incapable impostor of a porter mooning about Barnard's Inn, under
pretence of watching it, fell hollow on my heart.

On the Monday morning at a quarter before nine, Herbert went to the
counting-house to report himself - to look about him, too, I
suppose - and I bore him company.  He was to come away in an hour or
two to attend me to Hammersmith, and I was to wait about for him.
It appeared to me that the eggs from which young Insurers were
hatched, were incubated in dust and heat, like the eggs of
ostriches, judging from the places to which those incipient giants
repaired on a Monday morning.  Nor did the counting-house where
Herbert assisted, show in my eyes as at all a good Observatory;
being a back second floor up a yard, of a grimy presence in all
particulars, and with a look into another back second floor, rather
than a look out.

I waited about until it was noon, and I went upon 'Change, and I
saw fluey men sitting there under the bills about shipping, whom I
took to be great merchants, though I couldn't understand why they
should all be out of spirits.  When Herbert came, we went and had
lunch at a celebrated house which I then quite venerated, but now
believe to have been the most abject superstition in Europe, and
where I could not help noticing, even then, that there was much
more gravy on the tablecloths and knives and waiters' clothes, than
in the steaks.  This collation disposed of at a moderate price
(considering the grease:  which was not charged for), we went back
to Barnard's Inn and got my little portmanteau, and then took coach
for Hammersmith.  We arrived there at two or three o'clock in the
afternoon, and had very little way to walk to Mr. Pocket's house.
Lifting the latch of a gate, we passed direct into a little garden
overlooking the river, where Mr. Pocket's children were playing
about.  And unless I deceive myself on a point where my interests or
prepossessions are certainly not concerned, I saw that Mr. and Mrs.
Pocket's children were not growing up or being brought up, but were
tumbling up.

Mrs. Pocket was sitting on a garden chair under a tree, reading,
with her legs upon another garden chair; and Mrs. Pocket's two
nursemaids were looking about them while the children played.
"Mamma," said Herbert, "this is young Mr. Pip."  Upon which Mrs.
Pocket received me with an appearance of amiable dignity.

"Master Alick and Miss Jane," cried one of the nurses to two of the
children, "if you go a-bouncing up against them bushes you'll fall
over into the river and be drownded, and what'll your pa say then?"

At the same time this nurse picked up Mrs. Pocket's handkerchief,
and said, "If that don't make six times you've dropped it, Mum!"
Upon which Mrs. Pocket laughed and said, "Thank you, Flopson," and
settling herself in one chair only, resumed her book.  Her
countenance immediately assumed a knitted and intent expression as
if she had been reading for a week, but before she could have read
half a dozen lines, she fixed her eyes upon me, and said, "I hope
your mamma is quite well?"  This unexpected inquiry put me into such
a difficulty that I began saying in the absurdest way that if there
had been any such person I had no doubt she would have been quite
well and would have been very much obliged and would have sent her
compliments, when the nurse came to my rescue.

"Well!" she cried, picking up the pocket handkerchief, "if that
don't make seven times!  What ARE you a-doing of this afternoon,
Mum!"  Mrs. Pocket received her property, at first with a look of
unutterable surprise as if she had never seen it before, and then
with a laugh of recognition, and said, "Thank you, Flopson," and
forgot me, and went on reading.

I found, now I had leisure to count them, that there were no fewer
than six little Pockets present, in various stages of tumbling up.
I had scarcely arrived at the total when a seventh was heard, as in
the region of air, wailing dolefully.

"If there ain't Baby!" said Flopson, appearing to think it most
surprising.  "Make haste up, Millers."

Millers, who was the other nurse, retired into the house, and by
degrees the child's wailing was hushed and stopped, as if it were a
young ventriloquist with something in its mouth.  Mrs. Pocket read
all the time, and I was curious to know what the book could be.

We were waiting, I supposed, for Mr. Pocket to come out to us; at
any rate we waited there, and so I had an opportunity of observing
the remarkable family phenomenon that whenever any of the children
strayed near Mrs. Pocket in their play, they always tripped
themselves up and tumbled over her - always very much to her
momentary astonishment, and their own more enduring lamentation.  I
was at a loss to account for this surprising circumstance, and
could not help giving my mind to speculations about it, until
by-and-by Millers came down with the baby, which baby was handed to
Flopson, which Flopson was handing it to Mrs. Pocket, when she too
went fairly head foremost over Mrs. Pocket, baby and all, and was
caught by Herbert and myself.

"Gracious me, Flopson!" said Mrs. Pocket, looking off her book for a
moment, "everybody's tumbling!"

"Gracious you, indeed, Mum!" returned Flopson, very red in the
face; "what have you got there?"

"I got here, Flopson?" asked Mrs. Pocket.

"Why, if it ain't your footstool!" cried Flopson.  "And if you keep
it under your skirts like that, who's to help tumbling?  Here!  Take
the baby, Mum, and give me your book."

Mrs. Pocket acted on the advice, and inexpertly danced the infant a
little in her lap, while the other children played about it.  This
had lasted but a very short time, when Mrs. Pocket issued summary
orders that they were all to be taken into the house for a nap.
Thus I made the second discovery on that first occasion, that the
nurture of the little Pockets consisted of alternately tumbling up
and lying down.

Under these circumstances, when Flopson and Millers had got the
children into the house, like a little flock of sheep, and Mr.
Pocket came out of it to make my acquaintance, I was not much
surprised to find that Mr. Pocket was a gentleman with a rather
perplexed expression of face, and with his very grey hair
disordered on his head, as if he didn't quite see his way to
putting anything straight.

Chapter 23


Mr. Pocket said he was glad to see me, and he hoped I was not sorry
to see him.  "For, I really am not," he added, with his son's smile,
"an alarming personage."  He was a young-looking man, in spite of
his perplexities and his very grey hair, and his manner seemed
quite natural.  I use the word natural, in the sense of its being
unaffected; there was something comic in his distraught way, as
though it would have been downright ludicrous but for his own
perception that it was very near being so.  When he had talked with
me a little, he said to Mrs. Pocket, with a rather anxious
contraction of his eyebrows, which were black and handsome,
"Belinda, I hope you have welcomed Mr. Pip?"  And she looked up from
her book, and said, "Yes."  She then smiled upon me in an absent
state of mind, and asked me if I liked the taste of orange-flower
water?  As the question had no bearing, near or remote, on any
foregone or subsequent transaction, I consider it to have been
thrown out, like her previous approaches, in general conversational
condescension.

I found out within a few hours, and may mention at once, that Mrs.
Pocket was the only daughter of a certain quite accidental deceased
Knight, who had invented for himself a conviction that his deceased
father would have been made a Baronet but for somebody's determined
opposition arising out of entirely personal motives - I forget
whose, if I ever knew - the Sovereign's, the Prime Minister's, the
Lord Chancellor's, the Archbishop of Canterbury's, anybody's - and
had tacked himself on to the nobles of the earth in right of this
quite supposititious fact.  I believe he had been knighted himself
for storming the English grammar at the point of the pen, in a
desperate address engrossed on vellum, on the occasion of the
laying of the first stone of some building or other, and for
handing some Royal Personage either the trowel or the mortar.  Be
that as it may, he had directed Mrs. Pocket to be brought up from
her cradle as one who in the nature of things must marry a title,
and who was to be guarded from the acquisition of plebeian domestic
knowledge.

So successful a watch and ward had been established over the young
lady by this judicious parent, that she had grown up highly
ornamental, but perfectly helpless and useless.  With her character
thus happily formed, in the first bloom of her youth she had
encountered Mr. Pocket:  who was also in the first bloom of youth,
and not quite decided whether to mount to the Woolsack, or to roof
himself in with a mitre.  As his doing the one or the other was a
mere question of time, he and Mrs. Pocket had taken Time by the
forelock (when, to judge from its length, it would seem to have
wanted cutting), and had married without the knowledge of the
judicious parent.  The judicious parent, having nothing to bestow or
withhold but his blessing, had handsomely settled that dower upon
them after a short struggle, and had informed Mr. Pocket that his
wife was "a treasure for a Prince."  Mr. Pocket had invested the
Prince's treasure in the ways of the world ever since, and it was
supposed to have brought him in but indifferent interest.  Still,
Mrs. Pocket was in general the object of a queer sort of respectful
pity, because she had not married a title; while Mr. Pocket was the
object of a queer sort of forgiving reproach, because he had never
got one.

Mr. Pocket took me into the house and showed me my room:  which was a
pleasant one, and so furnished as that I could use it with comfort
for my own private sitting-room.  He then knocked at the doors of
two other similar rooms, and introduced me to their occupants, by
name Drummle and Startop.  Drummle, an old-looking young man of a
heavy order of architecture, was whistling.  Startop, younger in
years and appearance, was reading and holding his head, as if he
thought himself in danger of exploding it with too strong a charge
of knowledge.

Both Mr. and Mrs. Pocket had such a noticeable air of being in
somebody else's hands, that I wondered who really was in possession
of the house and let them live there, until I found this unknown
power to be the servants.  It was a smooth way of going on, perhaps,
in respect of saving trouble; but it had the appearance of being
expensive, for the servants felt it a duty they owed to themselves
to be nice in their eating and drinking, and to keep a deal of
company down stairs.  They allowed a very liberal table to Mr. and
Mrs. Pocket, yet it always appeared to me that by far the best part
of the house to have boarded in, would have been the kitchen -
always supposing the boarder capable of self-defence, for, before I
had been there a week, a neighbouring lady with whom the family
were personally unacquainted, wrote in to say that she had seen
Millers slapping the baby.  This greatly distressed Mrs. Pocket, who
burst into tears on receiving the note, and said that it was an
extraordinary thing that the neighbours couldn't mind their own
business.

By degrees I learnt, and chiefly from Herbert, that Mr. Pocket had
been educated at Harrow and at Cambridge, where he had
distinguished himself; but that when he had had the happiness of
marrying Mrs. Pocket very early in life, he had impaired his
prospects and taken up the calling of a Grinder.  After grinding a
number of dull blades - of whom it was remarkable that their
fathers, when influential, were always going to help him to
preferment, but always forgot to do it when the blades had left the
Grindstone - he had wearied of that poor work and had come to
London.  Here, after gradually failing in loftier hopes, he had
"read" with divers who had lacked opportunities or neglected them,
and had refurbished divers others for special occasions, and had
turned his acquirements to the account of literary compilation and
correction, and on such means, added to some very moderate private
resources, still maintained the house I saw.

Mr. and Mrs. Pocket had a toady neighbour; a widow lady of that
highly sympathetic nature that she agreed with everybody, blessed
everybody, and shed smiles and tears on everybody, according to
circumstances.  This lady's name was Mrs. Coiler, and I had the
honour of taking her down to dinner on the day of my installation.
She gave me to understand on the stairs, that it was a blow to dear
Mrs. Pocket that dear Mr. Pocket should be under the necessity of
receiving gentlemen to read with him.  That did not extend to me,
she told me in a gush of love and confidence (at that time, I had
known her something less than five minutes); if they were all like
Me, it would be quite another thing.

"But dear Mrs. Pocket," said Mrs. Coiler, "after her early
disappointment (not that dear Mr. Pocket was to blame in that),
requires so much luxury and elegance--"

"Yes, ma'am," I said, to stop her, for I was afraid she was going
to cry.

"And she is of so aristocratic a disposition--"

"Yes, ma'am," I said again, with the same object as before.

" - that it is hard," said Mrs. Coiler, "to have dear Mr. Pocket's
time and attention diverted from dear Mrs. Pocket."

I could not help thinking that it might be harder if the butcher's
time and attention were diverted from dear Mrs. Pocket; but I said
nothing, and indeed had enough to do in keeping a bashful watch
upon my company-manners.

It came to my knowledge, through what passed between Mrs. Pocket and
Drummle while I was attentive to my knife and fork, spoon, glasses,
and other instruments of self-destruction, that Drummle, whose
Christian name was Bentley, was actually the next heir but one to a
baronetcy.  It further appeared that the book I had seen Mrs. Pocket
reading in the garden, was all about titles, and that she knew the
exact date at which her grandpapa would have come into the book, if
he ever had come at all.  Drummle didn't say much, but in his
limited way (he struck me as a sulky kind of fellow) he spoke as
one of the elect, and recognized Mrs. Pocket as a woman and a
sister.  No one but themselves and Mrs. Coiler the toady neighbour
showed any interest in this part of the conversation, and it
appeared to me that it was painful to Herbert; but it promised to
last a long time, when the page came in with the announcement of a
domestic affliction.  It was, in effect, that the cook had mislaid
the beef.  To my unutterable amazement, I now, for the first time,
saw Mr. Pocket relieve his mind by going through a performance that
struck me as very extraordinary, but which made no impression on
anybody else, and with which I soon became as familiar as the rest.
He laid down the carving-knife and fork - being engaged in carving,
at the moment - put his two hands into his disturbed hair, and
appeared to make an extraordinary effort to lift himself up by it.
When he had done this, and had not lifted himself up at all, he
quietly went on with what he was about.

Mrs. Coiler then changed the subject, and began to flatter me.  I
liked it for a few moments, but she flattered me so very grossly
that the pleasure was soon over.  She had a serpentine way of coming
close at me when she pretended to be vitally interested in the
friends and localities I had left, which was altogether snaky and
fork-tongued; and when she made an occasional bounce upon Startop
(who said very little to her), or upon Drummle (who said less), I
rather envied them for being on the opposite side of the table.

After dinner the children were introduced, and Mrs. Coiler made
admiring comments on their eyes, noses, and legs - a sagacious way
of improving their minds.  There were four little girls, and two
little boys, besides the baby who might have been either, and the
baby's next successor who was as yet neither.  They were brought in
by Flopson and Millers, much as though those two noncommissioned
officers had been recruiting somewhere for children and had
enlisted these:  while Mrs. Pocket looked at the young Nobles that
ought to have been, as if she rather thought she had had the
pleasure of inspecting them before, but didn't quite know what to
make of them.

"Here!  Give me your fork, Mum, and take the baby," said Flopson.
"Don't take it that way, or you'll get its head under the table."

Thus advised, Mrs. Pocket took it the other way, and got its head
upon the table; which was announced to all present by a prodigious
concussion.

"Dear, dear!  Give it me back, Mum," said Flopson; "and Miss Jane,
come and dance to baby, do!"

One of the little girls, a mere mite who seemed to have prematurely
taken upon herself some charge of the others, stepped out of her
place by me, and danced to and from the baby until it left off
crying, and laughed.  Then, all the children laughed, and Mr. Pocket
(who in the meantime had twice endeavoured to lift himself up by
the hair) laughed, and we all laughed and were glad.

Flopson, by dint of doubling the baby at the joints like a Dutch
doll, then got it safely into Mrs. Pocket's lap, and gave it the
nutcrackers to play with:  at the same time recommending Mrs. Pocket
to take notice that the handles of that instrument were not likely
to agree with its eyes, and sharply charging Miss Jane to look
after the same.  Then, the two nurses left the room, and had a
lively scuffle on the staircase with a dissipated page who had
waited at dinner, and who had clearly lost half his buttons at the
gamingtable.

I was made very uneasy in my mind by Mrs. Pocket's falling into a
discussion with Drummle respecting two baronetcies, while she ate a
sliced orange steeped in sugar and wine, and forgetting all about
the baby on her lap:  who did most appalling things with the
nutcrackers.  At length, little Jane perceiving its young brains to
be imperilled, softly left her place, and with many small artifices
coaxed the dangerous weapon away.  Mrs. Pocket finishing her orange
at about the same time, and not approving of this, said to Jane:

"You naughty child, how dare you?  Go and sit down this instant!"

"Mamma dear," lisped the little girl, "baby ood have put hith eyeth
out."

"How dare you tell me so?" retorted Mrs. Pocket.  "Go and sit down in
your chair this moment!"

Mrs. Pocket's dignity was so crushing, that I felt quite abashed:  as
if I myself had done something to rouse it.

"Belinda," remonstrated Mr. Pocket, from the other end of the table,
"how can you be so unreasonable?  Jane only interfered for the
protection of baby."

"I will not allow anybody to interfere," said Mrs. Pocket.  "I am
surprised, Matthew, that you should expose me to the affront of
interference."

"Good God!" cried Mr. Pocket, in an outbreak of desolate
desperation.  "Are infants to be nutcrackered into their tombs, and
is nobody to save them?"

"I will not be interfered with by Jane," said Mrs. Pocket, with a
majestic glance at that innocent little offender.  "I hope I know my
poor grandpapa's position.  Jane, indeed!"

Mr. Pocket got his hands in his hair again, and this time really did
lift himself some inches out of his chair.  "Hear this!" he
helplessly exclaimed to the elements.  "Babies are to be
nutcrackered dead, for people's poor grandpapa's positions!"  Then
he let himself down again, and became silent.

We all looked awkwardly at the table-cloth while this was going on.
A pause succeeded, during which the honest and irrepressible baby
made a series of leaps and crows at little Jane, who appeared to me
to be the only member of the family (irrespective of servants) with
whom it had any decided acquaintance.

"Mr. Drummle," said Mrs. Pocket, "will you ring for Flopson?  Jane,
you undutiful little thing, go and lie down.  Now, baby darling,
come with ma!"

The baby was the soul of honour, and protested with all its might.
It doubled itself up the wrong way over Mrs. Pocket's arm, exhibited
a pair of knitted shoes and dimpled ankles to the company in lieu
of its soft face, and was carried out in the highest state of
mutiny.  And it gained its point after all, for I saw it through the
window within a few minutes, being nursed by little Jane.

It happened that the other five children were left behind at the
dinner-table, through Flopson's having some private engagement, and
their not being anybody else's business.  I thus became aware of the
mutual relations between them and Mr. Pocket, which were exemplified
in the following manner.  Mr. Pocket, with the normal perplexity of
his face heightened and his hair rumpled, looked at them for some
minutes, as if he couldn't make out how they came to be boarding
and lodging in that establishment, and why they hadn't been
billeted by Nature on somebody else.  Then, in a distant, Missionary
way he asked them certain questions - as why little Joe had that
hole in his frill:  who said, Pa, Flopson was going to mend it when
she had time - and how little Fanny came by that whitlow:  who said,
Pa, Millers was going to poultice it when she didn't forget.  Then,
he melted into parental tenderness, and gave them a shilling apiece
and told them to go and play; and then as they went out, with one
very strong effort to lift himself up by the hair he dismissed the
hopeless subject.

In the evening there was rowing on the river.  As Drummle and
Startop had each a boat, I resolved to set up mine, and to cut them
both out.  I was pretty good at most exercises in which countryboys
are adepts, but, as I was conscious of wanting elegance of style
for the Thames - not to say for other waters - I at once engaged to
place myself under the tuition of the winner of a prizewherry who
plied at our stairs, and to whom I was introduced by my new allies.
This practical authority confused me very much, by saying I had the
arm of a blacksmith.  If he could have known how nearly the
compliment lost him his pupil, I doubt if he would have paid it.

There was a supper-tray after we got home at night, and I think we
should all have enjoyed ourselves, but for a rather disagreeable
domestic occurrence.  Mr. Pocket was in good spirits, when a
housemaid came in, and said, "If you please, sir, I should wish to
speak to you."

"Speak to your master?" said Mrs. Pocket, whose dignity was roused
again.  "How can you think of such a thing?  Go and speak to Flopson.
Or speak to me - at some other time."

"Begging your pardon, ma'am," returned the housemaid, "I should
wish to speak at once, and to speak to master."

Hereupon, Mr. Pocket went out of the room, and we made the best of
ourselves until he came back.

"This is a pretty thing, Belinda!" said Mr. Pocket, returning with a
countenance expressive of grief and despair.  "Here's the cook lying
insensibly drunk on the kitchen floor, with a large bundle of fresh
butter made up in the cupboard ready to sell for grease!"

Mrs. Pocket instantly showed much amiable emotion, and said, "This
is that odious Sophia's doing!"

"What do you mean, Belinda?" demanded Mr. Pocket.

"Sophia has told you," said Mrs. Pocket.  "Did I not see her with my
own eyes and hear her with my own ears, come into the room just now
and ask to speak to you?"

"But has she not taken me down stairs, Belinda," returned Mr.
Pocket, "and shown me the woman, and the bundle too?"

"And do you defend her, Matthew," said Mrs. Pocket, "for making
mischief?"

Mr. Pocket uttered a dismal groan.

"Am I, grandpapa's granddaughter, to be nothing in the house?" said
Mrs. Pocket.  "Besides, the cook has always been a very nice
respectful woman, and said in the most natural manner when she came
to look after the situation, that she felt I was born to be a
Duchess."

There was a sofa where Mr. Pocket stood, and he dropped upon it in
the attitude of the Dying Gladiator.  Still in that attitude he
said, with a hollow voice, "Good night, Mr. Pip," when I deemed it
advisable to go to bed and leave him.

Chapter 24


After two or three days, when I had established myself in my room
and had gone backwards and forwards to London several times, and
had ordered all I wanted of my tradesmen, Mr. Pocket and I had a
long talk together.  He knew more of my intended career than I knew
myself, for he referred to his having been told by Mr. Jaggers that
I was not designed for any profession, and that I should be well
enough educated for my destiny if I could "hold my own" with the
average of young men in prosperous circumstances.  I acquiesced, of
course, knowing nothing to the contrary.

He advised my attending certain places in London, for the
acquisition of such mere rudiments as I wanted, and my investing
him with the functions of explainer and director of all my studies.
He hoped that with intelligent assistance I should meet with little
to discourage me, and should soon be able to dispense with any aid
but his.  Through his way of saying this, and much more to similar
purpose, he placed himself on confidential terms with me in an
admirable manner; and I may state at once that he was always so
zealous and honourable in fulfilling his compact with me, that he
made me zealous and honourable in fulfilling mine with him.  If he
had shown indifference as a master, I have no doubt I should have
returned the compliment as a pupil; he gave me no such excuse, and
each of us did the other justice.  Nor, did I ever regard him as
having anything ludicrous about him - or anything but what was
serious, honest, and good - in his tutor communication with me.

When these points were settled, and so far carried out as that I
had begun to work in earnest, it occurred to me that if I could
retain my bedroom in Barnard's Inn, my life would be agreeably
varied, while my manners would be none the worse for Herbert's
society.  Mr. Pocket did not object to this arrangement, but urged
that before any step could possibly be taken in it, it must be
submitted to my guardian.  I felt that this delicacy arose out of
the consideration that the plan would save Herbert some expense, so
I went off to Little Britain and imparted my wish to Mr. Jaggers.

"If I could buy the furniture now hired for me," said I, "and one
or two other little things, I should be quite at home there."

"Go it!" said Mr. Jaggers, with a short laugh.  "I told you you'd get
on.  Well!  How much do you want?"

I said I didn't know how much.

"Come!" retorted Mr. Jaggers.  "How much?  Fifty pounds?"

"Oh, not nearly so much."

"Five pounds?" said Mr. Jaggers.

This was such a great fall, that I said in discomfiture, "Oh! more
than that."

"More than that, eh!" retorted Mr. Jaggers, lying in wait for me,
with his hands in his pockets, his head on one side, and his eyes
on the wall behind me; "how much more?"

"It is so difficult to fix a sum," said I, hesitating.

"Come!" said Mr. Jaggers.  "Let's get at it.  Twice five; will that
do?  Three times five; will that do?  Four times five; will that do?"

I said I thought that would do handsomely.

"Four times five will do handsomely, will it?" said Mr. Jaggers,
knitting his brows.  "Now, what do you make of four times five?"

"What do I make of it?"

"Ah!" said Mr. Jaggers; "how much?"

"I suppose you make it twenty pounds," said I, smiling.

"Never mind what I make it, my friend," observed Mr. Jaggers, with a
knowing and contradictory toss of his head.  "I want to know what
you make it."

"Twenty pounds, of course."

"Wemmick!" said Mr. Jaggers, opening his office door.  "Take Mr. Pip's
written order, and pay him twenty pounds."

This strongly marked way of doing business made a strongly marked
impression on me, and that not of an agreeable kind.  Mr. Jaggers
never laughed; but he wore great bright creaking boots, and, in
poising himself on these boots, with his large head bent down and
his eyebrows joined together, awaiting an answer, he sometimes
caused the boots to creak, as if they laughed in a dry and
suspicious way.  As he happened to go out now, and as Wemmick was
brisk and talkative, I said to Wemmick that I hardly knew what to
make of Mr. Jaggers's manner.

"Tell him that, and he'll take it as a compliment," answered
Wemmick; "he don't mean that you should know what to make of it. -
Oh!" for I looked surprised, "it's not personal; it's professional:
only professional."

Wemmick was at his desk, lunching - and crunching - on a dry hard
biscuit; pieces of which he threw from time to time into his slit
of a mouth, as if he were posting them.

"Always seems to me," said Wemmick, "as if he had set a mantrap and
was watching it.  Suddenly - click - you're caught!"

Without remarking that mantraps were not among the amenities of
life, I said I supposed he was very skilful?

"Deep," said Wemmick, "as Australia."  Pointing with his pen at the
office floor, to express that Australia was understood, for the
purposes of the figure, to be symmetrically on the opposite spot of
the globe.  "If there was anything deeper," added Wemmick, bringing
his pen to paper, "he'd be it."

Then, I said I supposed he had a fine business, and Wemmick said,
"Ca-pi-tal!"  Then I asked if there were many clerks?  to which he
replied:

"We don't run much into clerks, because there's only one Jaggers,
and people won't have him at second-hand.  There are only four of
us.  Would you like to see 'em?  You are one of us, as I may say."

I accepted the offer.  When Mr. Wemmick had put all the biscuit into
the post, and had paid me my money from a cash-box in a safe, the
key of which safe he kept somewhere down his back and produced from
his coat-collar like an iron pigtail, we went up-stairs.  The house
was dark and shabby, and the greasy shoulders that had left their
mark in Mr. Jaggers's room, seemed to have been shuffling up and
down the staircase for years.  In the front first floor, a clerk who
looked something between a publican and a rat-catcher - a large
pale puffed swollen man - was attentively engaged with three or
four people of shabby appearance, whom he treated as
unceremoniously as everybody seemed to be treated who contributed
to Mr. Jaggers's coffers.  "Getting evidence together," said Mr.
Wemmick, as we came out, "for the Bailey."

In the room over that, a little flabby terrier of a clerk with
dangling hair (his cropping seemed to have been forgotten when he
was a puppy) was similarly engaged with a man with weak eyes, whom
Mr. Wemmick presented to me as a smelter who kept his pot always
boiling, and who would melt me anything I pleased - and who was in
an excessive white-perspiration, as if he had been trying his art on
himself.  In a back room, a high-shouldered man with a face-ache tied
up in dirty flannel, who was dressed in old black clothes that bore
the appearance of having been waxed, was stooping over his work of
making fair copies of the notes of the other two gentlemen, for Mr.
Jaggers's own use.

This was all the establishment.  When we went down-stairs again,
Wemmick led me into my guardian's room, and said, "This you've seen
already."

"Pray," said I, as the two odious casts with the twitchy leer upon
them caught my sight again, "whose likenesses are those?"

"These?" said Wemmick, getting upon a chair, and blowing the dust
off the horrible heads before bringing them down.  "These are two
celebrated ones.  Famous clients of ours that got us a world of
credit.  This chap (why you must have come down in the night and
been peeping into the inkstand, to get this blot upon your eyebrow,
you old rascal!) murdered his master, and, considering that he
wasn't brought up to evidence, didn't plan it badly."

"Is it like him?" I asked, recoiling from the brute, as Wemmick
spat upon his eyebrow and gave it a rub with his sleeve.

"Like him?  It's himself, you know.  The cast was made in Newgate,
directly after he was taken down.  You had a particular fancy for
me, hadn't you, Old Artful?" said Wemmick.  He then explained this
affectionate apostrophe, by touching his brooch representing the
lady and the weeping willow at the tomb with the urn upon it, and
saying, "Had it made for me, express!"

"Is the lady anybody?" said I.

"No," returned Wemmick.  "Only his game.  (You liked your bit of
game, didn't you?) No; deuce a bit of a lady in the case, Mr. Pip,
except one - and she wasn't of this slender ladylike sort, and you
wouldn't have caught her looking after this urn - unless there was
something to drink in it."  Wemmick's attention being thus directed
to his brooch, he put down the cast, and polished the brooch with
his pocket-handkerchief.

"Did that other creature come to the same end?" I asked.  "He has
the same look."

"You're right," said Wemmick; "it's the genuine look.  Much as if
one nostril was caught up with a horsehair and a little fish-hook.
Yes, he came to the same end; quite the natural end here, I assure
you.  He forged wills, this blade did, if he didn't also put the
supposed testators to sleep too.  You were a gentlemanly Cove,
though" (Mr. Wemmick was again apostrophizing), "and you said you
could write Greek.  Yah, Bounceable!  What a liar you were!  I never
met such a liar as you!"  Before putting his late friend on his
shelf again, Wemmick touched the largest of his mourning rings and
said, "Sent out to buy it for me, only the day before."

While he was putting up the other cast and coming down from the
chair, the thought crossed my mind that all his personal jewellery
was derived from like sources.  As he had shown no diffidence on the
subject, I ventured on the liberty of asking him the question, when
he stood before me, dusting his hands.

"Oh yes," he returned, "these are all gifts of that kind.  One
brings another, you see; that's the way of it.  I always take 'em.
They're curiosities.  And they're property.  They may not be worth
much, but, after all, they're property and portable.  It don't
signify to you with your brilliant look-out, but as to myself, my
guidingstar always is, "Get hold of portable property"."

When I had rendered homage to this light, he went on to say, in a
friendly manner:

"If at any odd time when you have nothing better to do, you
wouldn't mind coming over to see me at Walworth, I could offer you
a bed, and I should consider it an honour.  I have not much to show
you; but such two or three curiosities as I have got, you might
like to look over; and I am fond of a bit of garden and a
summer-house."

I said I should be delighted to accept his hospitality.

"Thankee," said he; "then we'll consider that it's to come off,
when convenient to you.  Have you dined with Mr. Jaggers yet?"

"Not yet."

"Well," said Wemmick, "he'll give you wine, and good wine.  I'll
give you punch, and not bad punch.  And now I'll tell you something.
When you go to dine with Mr. Jaggers, look at his housekeeper."

"Shall I see something very uncommon?"

"Well," said Wemmick, "you'll see a wild beast tamed.  Not so very
uncommon, you'll tell me.  I reply, that depends on the original
wildness of the beast, and the amount of taming.  It won't lower
your opinion of Mr. Jaggers's powers.  Keep your eye on it."

I told him I would do so, with all the interest and curiosity that
his preparation awakened.  As I was taking my departure, he asked me
if I would like to devote five minutes to seeing Mr. Jaggers "at
it?"

For several reasons, and not least because I didn't clearly know
what Mr. Jaggers would be found to be "at," I replied in the
affirmative.  We dived into the City, and came up in a crowded
policecourt, where a blood-relation (in the murderous sense) of the
deceased with the fanciful taste in brooches, was standing at the
bar, uncomfortably chewing something; while my guardian had a woman
under examination or cross-examination - I don't know which - and
was striking her, and the bench, and everybody present, with awe.
If anybody, of whatsoever degree, said a word that he didn't
approve of, he instantly required to have it "taken down."  If
anybody wouldn't make an admission, he said, "I'll have it out of
you!" and if anybody made an admission, he said, "Now I have got
you!" the magistrates shivered under a single bite of his finger.
Thieves and thieftakers hung in dread rapture on his words, and
shrank when a hair of his eyebrows turned in their direction.  Which
side he was on, I couldn't make out, for he seemed to me to be
grinding the whole place in a mill; I only know that when I stole
out on tiptoe, he was not on the side of the bench; for, he was
making the legs of the old gentleman who presided, quite convulsive
under the table, by his denunciations of his conduct as the
representative of British law and justice in that chair that day.

Chapter 25


Bentley Drummle, who was so sulky a fellow that he even took up a
book as if its writer had done him an injury, did not take up an
acquaintance in a more agreeable spirit.  Heavy in figure, movement,
and comprehension - in the sluggish complexion of his face, and in
the large awkward tongue that seemed to loll about in his mouth as
he himself lolled about in a room - he was idle, proud, niggardly,
reserved, and suspicious.  He came of rich people down in
Somersetshire, who had nursed this combination of qualities until
they made the discovery that it was just of age and a blockhead.
Thus, Bentley Drummle had come to Mr. Pocket when he was a head
taller than that gentleman, and half a dozen heads thicker than
most gentlemen.

Startop had been spoilt by a weak mother and kept at home when he
ought to have been at school, but he was devotedly attached to her,
and admired her beyond measure.  He had a woman's delicacy of
feature, and was - "as you may see, though you never saw her," said
Herbert to me - exactly like his mother.  It was but natural that I
should take to him much more kindly than to Drummle, and that, even
in the earliest evenings of our boating, he and I should pull
homeward abreast of one another, conversing from boat to boat,
while Bentley Drummle came up in our wake alone, under the
overhanging banks and among the rushes.  He would always creep
in-shore like some uncomfortable amphibious creature, even when the
tide would have sent him fast upon his way; and I always think of
him as coming after us in the dark or by the back-water, when our
own two boats were breaking the sunset or the moonlight in
mid-stream.

Herbert was my intimate companion and friend.  I presented him with
a half-share in my boat, which was the occasion of his often coming
down to Hammersmith; and my possession of a halfshare in his
chambers often took me up to London.  We used to walk between the
two places at all hours.  I have an affection for the road yet
(though it is not so pleasant a road as it was then), formed in the
impressibility of untried youth and hope.

When I had been in Mr. Pocket's family a month or two, Mr. and Mrs.
Camilla turned up.  Camilla was Mr. Pocket's sister.  Georgiana, whom
I had seen at Miss Havisham's on the same occasion, also turned up.
she was a cousin - an indigestive single woman, who called her
rigidity religion, and her liver love.  These people hated me with
the hatred of cupidity and disappointment.  As a matter of course,
they fawned upon me in my prosperity with the basest meanness.
Towards Mr. Pocket, as a grown-up infant with no notion of his own
interests, they showed the complacent forbearance I had heard them
express.  Mrs. Pocket they held in contempt; but they allowed the
poor soul to have been heavily disappointed in life, because that
shed a feeble reflected light upon themselves.

These were the surroundings among which I settled down, and applied
myself to my education.  I soon contracted expensive habits, and
began to spend an amount of money that within a few short months I
should have thought almost fabulous; but through good and evil I
stuck to my books.  There was no other merit in this, than my having
sense enough to feel my deficiencies.  Between Mr. Pocket and Herbert
I got on fast; and, with one or the other always at my elbow to
give me the start I wanted, and clear obstructions out of my road,
I must have been as great a dolt as Drummle if I had done less.

I had not seen Mr. Wemmick for some weeks, when I thought I would
write him a note and propose to go home with him on a certain
evening.  He replied that it would give him much pleasure, and that
he would expect me at the office at six o'clock.  Thither I went,
and there I found him, putting the key of his safe down his back as
the clock struck.

"Did you think of walking down to Walworth?" said he.

"Certainly," said I, "if you approve."

"Very much," was Wemmick's reply, "for I have had my legs under the
desk all day, and shall be glad to stretch them.  Now, I'll tell you
what I have got for supper, Mr. Pip.  I have got a stewed steak -
which is of home preparation - and a cold roast fowl - which is
from the cook's-shop.  I think it's tender, because the master of
the shop was a Juryman in some cases of ours the other day, and we
let him down easy.  I reminded him of it when I bought the fowl, and
I said, "Pick us out a good one, old Briton, because if we had
chosen to keep you in the box another day or two, we could easily
have done it."  He said to that, "Let me make you a present of the
best fowl in the shop."  I let him, of course.  As far as it goes,
it's property and portable.  You don't object to an aged parent, I
hope?"

I really thought he was still speaking of the fowl, until he added,
"Because I have got an aged parent at my place."  I then said what
politeness required.

"So, you haven't dined with Mr. Jaggers yet?" he pursued, as we
walked along.

"Not yet."

"He told me so this afternoon when he heard you were coming.  I
expect you'll have an invitation to-morrow.  He's going to ask your
pals, too.  Three of 'em; ain't there?"

Although I was not in the habit of counting Drummle as one of my
intimate associates, I answered, "Yes."

"Well, he's going to ask the whole gang;" I hardly felt
complimented by the word; "and whatever he gives you, he'll give
you good.  Don't look forward to variety, but you'll have
excellence.  And there'sa nother rum thing in his house," proceeded
Wemmick, after a moment's pause, as if the remark followed on the
housekeeper understood; "he never lets a door or window be fastened
at night."

"Is he never robbed?"

"That's it!" returned Wemmick.  "He says, and gives it out publicly,
"I want to see the man who'll rob me."  Lord bless you, I have heard
him, a hundred times if I have heard him once, say to regular
cracksmen in our front office, "You know where I live; now, no bolt
is ever drawn there; why don't you do a stroke of business with me?
Come; can't I tempt you?"  Not a man of them, sir, would be bold
enough to try it on, for love or money."

"They dread him so much?" said I.

"Dread him," said Wemmick.  "I believe you they dread him.  Not but
what he's artful, even in his defiance of them.  No silver, sir.
Britannia metal, every spoon."

"So they wouldn't have much," I observed, "even if they--"

"Ah!  But he would have much," said Wemmick, cutting me short, "and
they know it.  He'd have their lives, and the lives of scores of
'em.  He'd have all he could get.  And it's impossible to say what he
couldn't get, if he gave his mind to it."

I was falling into meditation on my guardian's greatness, when
Wemmick remarked:

"As to the absence of plate, that's only his natural depth, you
know.  A river's its natural depth, and he's his natural depth.  Look
at his watch-chain.  That's real enough."

"It's very massive," said I.

"Massive?" repeated Wemmick.  "I think so.  And his watch is a gold
repeater, and worth a hundred pound if it's worth a penny.  Mr. Pip,
there are about seven hundred thieves in this town who know all
about that watch; there's not a man, a woman, or a child, among
them, who wouldn't identify the smallest link in that chain, and
drop it as if it was red-hot, if inveigled into touching it."

At first with such discourse, and afterwards with conversation of a
more general nature, did Mr. Wemmick and I beguile the time and the
road, until he gave me to understand that we had arrived in the
district of Walworth.

It appeared to be a collection of back lanes, ditches, and little
gardens, and to present the aspect of a rather dull retirement.
Wemmick's house was a little wooden cottage in the midst of plots
of garden, and the top of it was cut out and painted like a battery
mounted with guns.

"My own doing," said Wemmick.  "Looks pretty; don't it?"

I highly commended it, I think it was the smallest house I ever
saw; with the queerest gothic windows (by far the greater part of
them sham), and a gothic door, almost too small to get in at.

"That's a real flagstaff, you see," said Wemmick, "and on Sundays I
run up a real flag.  Then look here.  After I have crossed this
bridge, I hoist it up - so - and cut off the communication."

The bridge was a plank, and it crossed a chasm about four feet wide
and two deep.  But it was very pleasant to see the pride with which
he hoisted it up and made it fast; smiling as he did so, with a
relish and not merely mechanically.

"At nine o'clock every night, Greenwich time," said Wemmick, "the
gun fires.  There he is, you see!  And when you hear him go, I think
you'll say he's a Stinger."

The piece of ordnance referred to, was mounted in a separate
fortress, constructed of lattice-work.  It was protected from the
weather by an ingenious little tarpaulin contrivance in the nature
of an umbrella.

"Then, at the back," said Wemmick, "out of sight, so as not to
impede the idea of fortifications - for it's a principle with me,
if you have an idea, carry it out and keep it up - I don't know
whether that's your opinion--"

I said, decidedly.

" - At the back, there's a pig, and there are fowls and rabbits;
then, I knock together my own little frame, you see, and grow
cucumbers; and you'll judge at supper what sort of a salad I can
raise.  So, sir," said Wemmick, smiling again, but seriously too, as
he shook his head, "if you can suppose the little place besieged,
it would hold out a devil of a time in point of provisions."

Then, he conducted me to a bower about a dozen yards off, but which
was approached by such ingenious twists of path that it took quite
a long time to get at; and in this retreat our glasses were already
set forth.  Our punch was cooling in an ornamental lake, on whose
margin the bower was raised.  This piece of water (with an island in
the middle which might have been the salad for supper) was of a
circular form, and he had constructed a fountain in it, which, when
you set a little mill going and took a cork out of a pipe, played
to that powerful extent that it made the back of your hand quite
wet.

"I am my own engineer, and my own carpenter, and my own plumber,
and my own gardener, and my own Jack of all Trades," said Wemmick,
in acknowledging my compliments.  "Well; it's a good thing, you
know.  It brushes the Newgate cobwebs away, and pleases the Aged.
You wouldn't mind being at once introduced to the Aged, would you?
It wouldn't put you out?"

I expressed the readiness I felt, and we went into the castle.
There, we found, sitting by a fire, a very old man in a flannel
coat:  clean, cheerful, comfortable, and well cared for, but
intensely deaf.

"Well aged parent," said Wemmick, shaking hands with him in a
cordial and jocose way, "how am you?"

"All right, John; all right!" replied the old man.

"Here's Mr. Pip, aged parent," said Wemmick, "and I wish you could
hear his name.  Nod away at him, Mr. Pip; that's what he likes.  Nod
away at him, if you please, like winking!"

"This is a fine place of my son's, sir," cried the old man, while I
nodded as hard as I possibly could.  "This is a pretty
pleasure-ground, sir.  This spot and these beautiful works upon it
ought to be kept together by the Nation, after my son's time, for
the people's enjoyment."

"You're as proud of it as Punch; ain't you, Aged?" said Wemmick,
contemplating the old man, with his hard face really softened;
"there's a nod for you;" giving him a tremendous one; "there's
another for you;" giving him a still more tremendous one; "you like
that, don't you?  If you're not tired, Mr. Pip - though I know it's
tiring to strangers - will you tip him one more?  You can't think
how it pleases him."

I tipped him several more, and he was in great spirits.  We left him
bestirring himself to feed the fowls, and we sat down to our punch
in the arbour; where Wemmick told me as he smoked a pipe that it
had taken him a good many years to bring the property up to its
present pitch of perfection.

"Is it your own, Mr. Wemmick?"

"O yes," said Wemmick, "I have got hold of it, a bit at a time.
It's a freehold, by George!"

"Is it, indeed?  I hope Mr. Jaggers admires it?"

"Never seen it," said Wemmick.  "Never heard of it.  Never seen the
Aged.  Never heard of him.  No; the office is one thing, and private
life is another.  When I go into the office, I leave the Castle
behind me, and when I come into the Castle, I leave the office
behind me.  If it's not in any way disagreeable to you, you'll
oblige me by doing the same.  I don't wish it professionally spoken
about."

Of course I felt my good faith involved in the observance of his
request.  The punch being very nice, we sat there drinking it and
talking, until it was almost nine o'clock.  "Getting near gun-fire,"
said Wemmick then, as he laid down his pipe; "it's the Aged's
treat."

Proceeding into the Castle again, we found the Aged heating the
poker, with expectant eyes, as a preliminary to the performance of
this great nightly ceremony.  Wemmick stood with his watch in his
hand, until the moment was come for him to take the red-hot poker
from the Aged, and repair to the battery.  He took it, and went out,
and presently the Stinger went off with a Bang that shook the crazy
little box of a cottage as if it must fall to pieces, and made
every glass and teacup in it ring.  Upon this, the Aged - who I
believe would have been blown out of his arm-chair but for holding
on by the elbows - cried out exultingly, "He's fired!  I heerd him!"
and I nodded at the old gentleman until it is no figure of speech
to declare that I absolutely could not see him.

The interval between that time and supper, Wemmick devoted to
showing me his collection of curiosities.  They were mostly of a
felonious character; comprising the pen with which a celebrated
forgery had been committed, a distinguished razor or two, some
locks of hair, and several manuscript confessions written under
condemnation - upon which Mr. Wemmick set particular value as being,
to use his own words, "every one of 'em Lies, sir."  These were
agreeably dispersed among small specimens of china and glass,
various neat trifles made by the proprietor of the museum, and some
tobacco-stoppers carved by the Aged.  They were all displayed in
that chamber of the Castle into which I had been first inducted,
and which served, not only as the general sitting-room but as the
kitchen too, if I might judge from a saucepan on the hob, and a
brazen bijou over the fireplace designed for the suspension of a
roasting-jack.

There was a neat little girl in attendance, who looked after the
Aged in the day.  When she had laid the supper-cloth, the bridge was
lowered to give her means of egress, and she withdrew for the
night.  The supper was excellent; and though the Castle was rather
subject to dry-rot insomuch that it tasted like a bad nut, and
though the pig might have been farther off, I was heartily pleased
with my whole entertainment.  Nor was there any drawback on my
little turret bedroom, beyond there being such a very thin ceiling
between me and the flagstaff, that when I lay down on my back in
bed, it seemed as if I had to balance that pole on my forehead all
night.

Wemmick was up early in the morning, and I am afraid I heard him
cleaning my boots.  After that, he fell to gardening, and I saw him
from my gothic window pretending to employ the Aged, and nodding at
him in a most devoted manner.  Our breakfast was as good as the
supper, and at half-past eight precisely we started for Little
Britain.  By degrees, Wemmick got dryer and harder as we went along,
and his mouth tightened into a post-office again.  At last, when we
got to his place of business and he pulled out his key from his
coat-collar, he looked as unconscious of his Walworth property as
if the Castle and the drawbridge and the arbour and the lake and
the fountain and the Aged, had all been blown into space together
by the last discharge of the Stinger.