LIBRA R,Y 
 
 OF THL 
 
 U N 1VER.SITY 
 
 or ILLl NOIS 
 
 V.I
 
 GREAT EXPECTATIONS 
 
 CHARLES DICKENS. 
 
 IN THEEE VOLUMES. 
 VOL. I. 
 
 LONDON : 
 CHAPMAN AND HALL, 193, PICCADILLY. 
 
 MDCCCLXI. 
 
 [The ri'jltl of translulioii is tesemcl]
 
 Digitized by tine Internet Arciiive 
 
 in 2010 witii funding from 
 
 University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign 
 
 http://www.archive.org/details/greatexpectation01dick
 
 
 AFFECTIONATELY INSCRIBED 
 
 CHAUNCY HARE TOWNSHEND.
 
 GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 My father's family name being Pirrip, and 
 my christian name Philip, my infant tongue 
 could make of both names nothing longer 
 or more explicit than Pip. So, I called my- 
 self Pip, and came to be called Pip. 
 
 I give Pirrip as my father's family name, 
 on the authority of his tombstone and my 
 sister — Mrs. Joe Garger}^, who married the 
 blacksmith. As I never saw my father or 
 my mother, and never saAV any likeness of 
 either of them (for their days were long 
 before the days of photographs), my hrst 
 fancies regarding what they were like, were 
 
 VOL. I. B
 
 2 GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 
 
 unreasonably derived from their tombstones. 
 The shape of the letters on my father's, gave 
 me an odd idea that he was a square, stout, 
 dark man, with curly black hair. From the 
 character and turn of the inscription, " Also 
 Georgiana Wife of the Above,'' I drew a 
 childish conclusion that my mother was 
 freckled and sickly. To five little stone 
 lozenges, each about a foot and a half long, 
 which were arranged in a neat row beside 
 their grave, and were sacred to the memory 
 of five little brothers of mine — who gave up 
 tr}dng to get a living, exceedingly early in 
 tliat universal struo-orle — I am indebted for 
 a belief I religiously entertained that they 
 had all been l^orn on their backs with their 
 hands in their trousers-pockets, and had 
 never taken them out in this state of ex- 
 istence. 
 
 Ours was the marsh country, down by the 
 river, within, as the river Avound, twenty 
 miles of the sea. j\Iy first most viA"id and 
 broad impression of the identity of things, 
 seems to me to have been gained on a 
 memorable raw afternoon towards evening. 
 At such a time I found out for certain, that
 
 GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 3 
 
 this bleak place overgroTvn with nettles 
 was the churchyard ; and that Philip Pirrip, 
 late of this parish, and also Georgiana vdie 
 of the above, were dead and buried ; and 
 that Alexander, Bartholomew, Abraham, 
 Tobias, and Roger, infant children of the 
 aforesaid, were also dead and buried ; and 
 that the dark flat wilderness beyond the 
 churchyard, intersected with dykes and 
 mounds and gates, with scattered cattle 
 feeding on it, was the marshes ; and "that the 
 low leaden line beyond, was the river ; and 
 that the distant savage lair from which the 
 wind was rushing, Avas the sea ; and that the 
 small bundle of shivers arowino^ afraid of it 
 
 o CD 
 
 all and beginning to cry, was Pip. 
 
 " Hold your noise !" cried a terrible voice, 
 as a man started up from among the graves 
 at the side of the church porch. " Keep 
 still you little devil, or I'll cut your throat !"' 
 
 A fearful man, all in coarse grey, with a 
 great iron on his leg. A man vdth no hat, 
 and with broken shoes, and with an old rao- 
 tied round his head. A man who had been 
 soaked in water, and smothered in mud, and 
 lamed by stones, and cut by flints, and stung 
 b2
 
 4 GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 
 
 by nettles, and torn by briars ; who limped, 
 and shivered, and glared and growled ; and 
 whose teeth chattered in his head as he 
 seized me by the chin. 
 
 " ! Don't cut my throat, sir," I pleaded 
 in terror. " Pray don't do it, sir." 
 
 " Tell US your name !" said the man. 
 " Quick !" 
 " Pip, sir." 
 
 " Once more," said the man, staring at 
 me. "Give it mouth !" 
 " Pip. Pip, sir." 
 
 " Show us where you live," said the man. 
 " Pint out the place !" 
 
 I pointed to w^here our village lay, 
 on the flat in-shore among the alder-trees 
 and pollards, a mile or more from the 
 church. 
 
 The man, after looking at me for a mo- 
 ment, turned me upside-down, and emptied 
 my pockets. There was nothing in them 
 but a piece of bread. When the church 
 came to itself — for he was so sudden and 
 strong that he made it go head over heels 
 before me, and I saw the steeple under my 
 feet — when the church came to itself, I say,
 
 GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 5 
 
 I was seated on a higli tombstone, trembling, 
 while he ate the bread ravenously. 
 
 " You young dog," said the man, licking 
 his lips, "what fat cheeks you ha' got." 
 
 I believe they were fat, though I was at 
 that time undersized for my years, and not 
 strong. 
 
 " Darn Me if I couldn't eat 'em," said the 
 man, with a threatening shake of his head, 
 " and if I han't half a mind to't !" 
 
 I earnestly expressed my hope that he 
 wouldn't, and held tighter to the tombstone 
 on which he had put me ; partly, to keep 
 myself upon it ; partly, to keep myself from 
 crying. 
 
 " Now then, lookee here !" said the man. 
 " Where's your mother ?" 
 
 " There, sir !" said I. 
 
 He started, made a short run, and stopped 
 and looked over his shoulder. 
 
 " There, sir !" I timidly explained. " Also 
 Georgiana. That's my mother." 
 
 " Oh !" said he, coming back. "And is 
 that your father alonger your mother ?" 
 
 " Yes, sir," said I ; " him too ; late of this 
 parish."
 
 6 GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 
 
 " Ha !" he muttered then, considering. 
 " Who d'ye live mth — supposin' you're 
 kindly let to live, which I han't made up 
 my mind about?" 
 
 " My sister, sir — Mrs. Joe Gargery — wife 
 of Joe Gargery, the blacksmith, sir." 
 
 " Blacksmith, eh ?" said he. And looked 
 down at his leg. 
 
 After darkly looking at his leg and at me 
 several times, he came closer to my tomb- 
 stone, took me by both arms, and tilted me 
 back as far as he could hold me ; so that 
 his eyes looked most powerfully do^vn into 
 mine, and mine looked most helplessly up 
 into his. 
 
 " Now lookee here," he said, "the ques- 
 tion being whether you're to be let to live. 
 You know what a file is." 
 
 " Yes, sir." 
 
 " And you know what wittles is." 
 
 " Yes, sir." 
 
 After each question he tilted me over a 
 httle more, so as to give me a greater sense 
 of helplessness and danger. 
 
 " You get me a file." He tilted me again. 
 " And you get me Avdttles." He tilted me
 
 GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 7 
 
 asfain. " Yon brino; 'em both to me." He 
 tilted me again. " Or I'll have your heart 
 and liver out." He tilted me again. 
 
 I was dreadfully frightened, and so giddy 
 that I clung to him with both hands, and 
 said, " If you would kindly please to let me 
 keep upright, sir, perhaps I shouldn't be 
 sick, and perhaps I could attend more." 
 
 He gave me a most tremendous dip and 
 roll, so that the church jumped over its own 
 weather-cock. Then, he held me by the 
 arms, in an upright position on the top of 
 the stone, and went on in these fearful 
 terms : 
 
 " You bring me, to-morrow morning 
 early, that tile and them wittles. You bring 
 the lot to me, at that old Battery over 
 yonder. You do it, and you never dare to 
 say a word or dare to make a sign concern- 
 ing your having seen such a person as me, 
 or any person sumever, and you shall be let 
 to live. You fail, or you go from my words 
 in any partickler, no matter how small it is, 
 and your heart and your liver shall be tore 
 out, roasted and ate. Now, I ain't alone, as 
 you may think I am. There's a young man
 
 8 GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 
 
 hid with me, in comparison with which 
 young man I am a Angel. That young man 
 hears the words I speak. That young man 
 has a secret way pecooliar to himself, of 
 getting at a boy, and at his heart, and at his 
 liver. It is in wain for a boy to attempt to 
 hide himself from that young man. A boy 
 may lock his door, may be warm in bed, 
 may tuck himself up, may draw the clothes 
 over his head, may think himself com- 
 fortable and safe, but that young man will 
 softly creep and creep his way to him and 
 tear him open. I am a keeping that young 
 man from harming of you at the present 
 moment, with great difficulty. I find it 
 Avery hard to hold that young man off of 
 your inside. Now, what do you say ?" 
 
 I said that I would get him the file, and I 
 would get him what broken bits of food I 
 could, and I would come to him at the 
 Battery, early in the morning. 
 
 " Say Lord strilte you dead if you don't !" 
 said the man. 
 
 I said so, and he took me do^vn. 
 
 " Now," he pursued, " you remember
 
 GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 9 
 
 what you've undertook, and you remember 
 that young man, and you get home !" 
 
 " Goo-good night, sir," I faltered. 
 
 " Much of that !" said he, glancing about 
 him over the cold wet flat. " I wish I was 
 a frog. Or a eel !" 
 
 At the same time, he hugged his shudder- 
 ing body in both his arms — clasping himself, 
 as if to hold himself together — and limped 
 towards the low church wall. As I saw him 
 go, picking his way among the nettles, and 
 among the brambles that bound the green 
 mounds, he looked in my young eyes as if 
 he were eluding the hands of the dead 
 people, stretching up cautiously out of their 
 graves, to get a twist upon his ankle and pull 
 him in. 
 
 When he came to the low church wall, he 
 got over it, like a man Avhose legs were 
 numbed and stiff, and then turned round to 
 look for me. When I saw him turning, I 
 set my face towards home, and made the 
 best use of my legs. But presently I looked 
 over my shoulder, and saw him going on 
 again towards the river, still hugging him-
 
 10 GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 
 
 self in both arms, and picking his way mth 
 his sore feet among the great stones dropped 
 into the marshes here and there, for step- 
 ping-places when, the rains were heavy, or 
 the tide was in. 
 
 The marshes were just a long black hori- 
 zontal line then, as I stopped to look after 
 him ; and the river was just another hori- 
 zontal line, not nearly so broad nor yet so 
 black ; and the sky was just a row of long 
 angiy red lines and dense black lines in- 
 termixed. On the edge of the river I could 
 faintly make out the only two black things 
 in all the prospect that seemed to be stand- 
 ing upright ; one of these was the beacon by 
 which the sailors steered — like an unhooped 
 cask upon a pole — an ugly thing when you 
 were near it ; the other, a gibbet with some 
 chains hanging to it which had once held a 
 pirate. The man was limping on towards 
 this latter, as if he were the pirate come to 
 life, and come down, and going back to hook 
 himself up again. It gave me a terrible 
 turn when I thought so ; and as I saw the 
 cattle lifting their heads to gaze after him, I
 
 GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 11 
 
 wondered whether they thought so too. I 
 looked all round for the horrible young man, 
 and could see no signs of him. But, now I 
 was frightened again, and ran home without 
 stopping.
 
 12 GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 My sister, Mrs. Joe Gargery, was more 
 than twenty years older than I, and had 
 established a great reputation with herself 
 and the neighbours because she had brought 
 me up "by hand." Having at that time to 
 find out for myself what the expression 
 meant, and knowing her to have a hard and 
 heavy hand, and to be much in the habit of 
 laying it upon her husband as well as upon 
 me, I supposed that Joe Gargery and I were 
 both brought up by hand. 
 
 She was not a good-looking woman, my 
 sister ; and I had a general impression that 
 she must have made Joe Gargery marry her 
 by hand. Joe was a fair man, with curls of
 
 GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 13 
 
 flaxen hair on each side of his smooth face, 
 and with eyes of such a very undecided blue 
 that they seemed to have somehow got 
 mixed with their own whites. He was a 
 mild, good-natured, sweet-tempered, easy- 
 going, foolish, dear fellow — a sort of Her- 
 cules in strength, and also in weakness. 
 
 My sister, Mrs. Joe, with black hair and 
 eyes, had such a prevailing redness of skin 
 that I sometimes used to wonder whether it 
 was possible she washed herself with a nut- 
 meg-grater instead of soap. She was tall 
 and bony, and almost always wore a coarse 
 apron, fastened over her figure behind mth 
 two loops, and having a square impregnable 
 bib in front, that was stuck full of pins and 
 needles. She made it a powerful merit in 
 herself, and a strong reproach against Joe, 
 that she wore this apron so much. Though 
 I really see no reason why she should have 
 worn it at all : or why, if she did wear it at 
 all, she should not have taken it off, every 
 day of her life. 
 
 Joe's forge adjoined our house, which was 
 a wooden house, as many of the dwellings in 
 our country were — ^most of them, at that
 
 14 GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 
 
 time. When I ran home from the church- 
 yard, the forge was shut up, and Joe was 
 sittmg alone in the kitchen. Joe and I 
 being fellow-sufferers, and having con- 
 fidences as such, Joe imparted a confidence 
 to me, the moment I raised the latch of the 
 door and peeped in at him opposite to it, 
 sitting in the chimney corner. 
 
 " Mrs. Joe has been out a dozen times, 
 looking for you, Pip. And she's out now, 
 making it a baker's dozen." 
 
 "Is'she?" 
 
 " Yes, Pip," said Joe ; " and what's 
 worse, she's got Tickler with her." 
 
 At this dismal intelligence, I twisted the 
 only button on my waistcoat round and 
 round, and looked in gi'eat depression at the 
 fire. Tickler was a wax-ended piece of cane, 
 worn smooth by collision with my tickled 
 frame. 
 
 " She sot down," said Joe, " and she got 
 up, and she made a grab at Tickler, and she 
 Ram-paged out. That's what she did," said 
 eToe, slowly clearing the fire between the 
 lower bars with the poker, and looking at 
 it : " she Ram-paged out, Pip."
 
 GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 15 
 
 " Has she been gone long, Joe ?" I always 
 treated him as a larger species of child, and 
 as no more than my equal. 
 
 " Well," said Joe, glancing up at the 
 Dutch clock, "she's been on the Ram-page, 
 this last spell, about five minutes, Pip. She's 
 a coming ! Get behind the door, old chap, 
 and have the jack-towel betwixt you," 
 
 I took the advice. My sister, Mrs. Joe, 
 throwing the door wide open, and finding an 
 obstruction behind it, immediately divined 
 the cause, and applied Tickler to its further 
 investigation. She concluded by throwing 
 me — I often served her as a connubial missUe 
 — at Joe, who, glad to get hold of me on 
 any terms, passed me on into the chimney 
 and quietly fenced me up there with his 
 great leg. 
 
 "Where have you been, you young 
 monkey?" said Mrs. Joe, stamping her foot. 
 " Tell me directly what you've been doing 
 to Avear me away with fret and fright and 
 worrit, or I'd have you out of that corner if 
 you was fifty Pips, and he was five hundred 
 Gargerys." 
 
 " I have only been to the churchyard,"
 
 16 GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 
 
 said I, from my stool, crying and rubbing 
 myself. 
 
 " Churchyard !" repeated my sister. " If 
 it warn't for me you'd have been to the 
 churchyard long ago, and stayed there. 
 Who brought you up by hand ?" 
 
 " You did," said I. 
 
 " And why did I do it, I should like to 
 know !" exclaimed my sister. 
 
 I whimpered, " I don't know." 
 
 " / don't !" said my sister. " I'd never do 
 it again ! I know that. I may truly say 
 I've never had this apron of mine off, since 
 bom you were. It's bad enough to be a 
 blacksmith's wife (and him a Gargery) with- 
 out being your mother." 
 
 My thoughts strayed from that question 
 as I looked disconsolately at the fire. For, 
 the fugitive out on the marshes with the 
 ironed leg, the mysterious young man, the 
 file, the food, and the dreadful pledge I was 
 under to commit a larceny on those shelter- 
 ing premises, rose before me in the avenging 
 coals. 
 
 " Hah !" said Mrs. Joe, restoring Tickler 
 to his station. " Churchyard, indeed ! You
 
 GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 17 
 
 may well say churchyard, you two." One 
 of us, by-the-by, had not said it at all. 
 " You'U drive me to the churchyard bet^^ixt 
 you, one of these days, and oh, a pr-r-recious 
 pair you'd be Tvdthout me !" 
 
 As she applied herself to set the tea- 
 things, Joe peeped down at me over his leg, 
 as if he were mentally casting me and him- 
 self up, and calculating what kind of pair 
 we practically should make, under the 
 grievous circumstances foreshadowed. After 
 that, he sat feelino; his rio;ht-side flaxen curls 
 and whisker, and following Mrs. Joe about 
 with his blue eyes, as his manner always 
 Avas at squally times. 
 
 My sister had a trenchant way of cutting 
 our bread-and-butter for us, that never 
 varied. First, with her left hand she jammed 
 the loaf hard and fast against her bib — 
 where it sometimes got a pin into it, and 
 sometimes a needle, which we afterwards got 
 into our mouths. Then she took some 
 butter (not too much) on a knife and spread 
 it on the loaf, in an apothecary kind of way 
 as if she were making a plaister — using both 
 sides of the knife with a slapping dexterit}', 
 VOL. I. c
 
 18 CHEAT EXPECTATIONS. 
 
 and tiniiiiiiiiifj; and raouldinn; the butter off 
 round the crust. Then, she gave the knife 
 a final smart wipe on the edge of the plaister, 
 and then sawed a very thick round off the 
 loaf: which she finally, before separating 
 from the loaf, hewed into two halves, of 
 which Joe got one, and I the other. 
 
 On the present occasion, though I was 
 hungry, I dared not eat my slice. I felt 
 that I must have something in reserve for 
 my dreadful acquaintance, and his ally the 
 still more dreadful young man. I knew 
 Mrs. Joe's housekeeping to be of the strictest 
 kind, and that my larcenous researches 
 might find nothing available in the safe. 
 Therefore I resolved to put my hunk of 
 bread-and-butter down the leg of my 
 trousers. 
 
 The effort of resolution necessary to the 
 achievement of this purpose, I found to be 
 quite awful. It was as if I had to make up 
 my mind to leap from the top of a liigh 
 house, or plunge into a great depth of water. 
 And it was made the more difficult by the 
 unconscious Joe. In our already -mentioned 
 freemasonry as fellow-sufferers, and in his
 
 GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 19 
 
 good-natured companionsliip with me, it was 
 our evening habit to compare the ^^y we 
 bit through our slices, by silently holding 
 them up to each other's admiration now and 
 then — which stimulated us to new exertions. 
 To-night, Joe several times invited me, by 
 the display of his fast-diminishing slice, to 
 enter upon our usual friendly competition ; 
 but he found me, each time, Avith my yellow 
 mug of tea on one knee, and my untouched 
 bread-and-butter on the other. At last, I 
 desperately considered that the thing I con- 
 templated must be done, and that it had 
 best be done in the least improbable manner 
 consistent with the circumstances. I took 
 advantage of a moment when Joe had just 
 looked at me, and got my bread-and-butter 
 down my leg. 
 
 Joe was evidently made uncomfortable by 
 what he supposed to be my loss of appetite, 
 and took a thoughtful bite out of his slice, 
 which he didn't seem to enjo}^ He turned 
 it about in his mouth much longer than 
 usual, pondering over it a good deal, and 
 after all gulped it doA\Ti like a pill. He was 
 about to take another bite, and liad just got 
 c2
 
 20 GRE.VT EXPECTATIONS. 
 
 his head on one side for a good purchase on 
 it, when his eye fell on me, and he saw that 
 my bread-and-butter was gone. 
 
 The wonder and consternation Avith Avhich 
 Joe stopped on the threshold of his bite and 
 stared at me, were too evident to escape my 
 sister's observation, 
 
 "What's the matter now?" said she, 
 smartly, as she put do^vai her cup. 
 
 " I say, you know!" muttered Joe, 
 shaking his head at me in very serious re- 
 monstrance. " Pip, old chap ! You'll do 
 yourself a mischief. It'll stick somewhere. 
 You can't have chawed it, Pip." 
 
 "What's the matter nozy .? " repeated my 
 sister, more sharply than before. 
 
 " If you can cough any trifle on it up, 
 Pip, I'd recommend you to do it," said Joe, 
 all aghast. " Manners is manners, but still 
 your elth's your elth." 
 
 By this time, my sister was quite des- 
 perate, so she pounced on Joe, and, taking 
 him by the two whiskers, knocked his head 
 for a little while against the wall behind 
 him : while I sat in the corner, looking 
 guiltily on.
 
 GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 21 
 
 " Now, perhaps you'll mention what's the 
 matter," said my sister, out of breath, " you 
 staring great stuck pig." 
 
 Joe looked at her in a helpless way ; then 
 took a helpless bite, and looked at me 
 again. 
 
 " You know, Pip," said Joe, solemnly, 
 with his last bite in his cheek, and speaking 
 in a confidential voice, as if we two were 
 quite alone, " you and me is always friends, 
 and I'd be the last to tell upon you, any 
 time. But such a" — ^he moved his chair and 
 looked about the floor between us, and then 
 again at me — " such a most oncommon Bolt 
 as that !" 
 
 "Been boltino- his food, has he?" cried 
 my sister, 
 
 '' You know, old chap," said Joe, looking 
 at me, and not at Mrs. Joe, with his bite 
 still in his cheek, " I Bolted, myself, when 
 I was your age — frequent — and as a boy 
 I've been among a many Bolters ; but I 
 never see your Bolting equal yet, Pip, and 
 it's a mercy you ain't Bolted dead." 
 
 My sister made a dive at me, and fished 
 me up by the hair : saying nothing more
 
 22 GKEAT EXPECTATIONS. 
 
 than the ixwfiil words, "You come along 
 and be dosed." 
 
 Some medical beast had revived Tar-water 
 in those days as a fine medicine, and Mrs. 
 Joe always kept a supply of it in the cup- 
 board ; having a belief in its virtues corre- 
 spondent to its nastiness. At the best of 
 times, so much of this elixir was admi- 
 nistered to me as a choice restorative, that I 
 was conscious of going about, smelling Hke 
 a new fence. On this particular evening the 
 urgency of my case demanded a pint of this 
 mixture, which was poured dovm. my throat, 
 for my gTcater comfort, while Mrs. Joe held 
 my head under her arm, as a boot would be 
 held in a boot-jack. Joe got off with half 
 a pint ; but was made to swallow that (much 
 to his disturbance, as he sat slowly munching 
 and meditating before the fire), " because 
 he had had a turn." Judging from mj^self. 
 I should say he certainly had a turn after- 
 wards, if he had had none before. 
 
 Conscience is a dreadful thing when it 
 accuses man or boy ; but Avhen, in the case 
 of a boy, that secret burden co-operates with 
 another secret burden down the lesj of his
 
 GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 23 
 
 trousers, it is (as I can testify) a great 
 punishment. The guilty knowledge that I 
 was going to rob Mrs. Joe — I never thought 
 I was going to rob Joe, for I never thought 
 of an}^ of the housekeeping property as his 
 — united to the necessity of always keeping 
 one hand on my bread-and-butter as I sat, 
 or when I was ordered about the kitchen on 
 any small errand, almost drove me out of 
 my mind. Then, as the marsh winds made 
 the fire glow and flare, I thought I heard 
 the voice outside, of the man vnih the iron 
 on his leg who had sworn me to secrecy, 
 declaring that he couldn't and wouldn't 
 starve until to-morrow, but must be fed now. 
 At other times, I thought, AMiat if the 
 young man who was with so much difficulty 
 restrained from imbruing his hands in me; 
 should yield to a constitutional impatience, 
 or should mistake the time, and should think 
 himself accredited to my heart and liver to- 
 night, instead of to-morrow ! If ever any- 
 body's hair stood on end ^nth terror, mine 
 must have done so then. But, perhaps, no- 
 body's ever did ? 
 
 It was Christmas Eve, and I had to stir
 
 24 GREAT EXTECTATIONS. 
 
 the pudding for next day, with a copper- 
 stick, from seven to eight by the Dutch 
 clock. I tried it with the load upon my 
 leg (and that made me think afresh of the 
 man with the load on his leg), and found the 
 tendency of exercise to bring the bread-and- 
 butter out at my ankle, quite unmanageable. 
 Happily, I slipped away, and deposited that 
 part of my conscience in my garret bed- 
 room. 
 
 "Hark!" said I, when I had done my 
 stirring, and was taking a final Avarm in the 
 chimney corner before being sent up to lied ; 
 "was that great guns, Joe?" 
 
 " Ah !" said Joe. " There's another con- 
 wict off." 
 
 " What does that mean, Joe?" said I. 
 Mrs. Joe, who always took explanations 
 upon herself, said, snappishly, " Escaped. 
 Escaped." Administering the definition like 
 Tar-water. 
 
 While !Mrs. Joe sat mth her head bending 
 over her needlework, I put my mouth into 
 the forms of saying to Joe, "What's a con- 
 vict?" Joe put his mouth into the forms of 
 returning such a highly elaborate answer,
 
 GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 25 
 
 that I could make out nothing of it but the 
 single word " Pip." 
 
 " There Avas a conwict off last night," said 
 Joe, aloud, " after sunset-gun. And they 
 fired warning of him. And now, it appears 
 they're firing warning of another." 
 
 " TFA^'5 firing?" said I. 
 
 " Drat that boy," interposed my sister, 
 frowning at me over her work, "what a 
 questioner he is. Ask no questions, and 
 you'll be told no lies." 
 
 It was not very polite to herself, I 
 thought, to imply that I should be told lies 
 by her, even if I did ask questions. But she 
 never was polite, unless there was company. 
 
 At this point, Joe greatly augmented my 
 curiosity by taking the utmost pains to open 
 his mouth very wide, and to put it into the 
 form of a word that looked to me like 
 " sulks." Therefore, I naturally pointed to 
 Mrs. Joe, and put my mouth into the form 
 of saying, "her?" But Joe wouldn't hear 
 of that, at all, and again opened his mouth 
 very Avide, and shook the form of a most 
 emphatic word out of it. But I could make 
 nothing of the word.
 
 26 GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 
 
 " Mrs. Joe," said I, as a last resource, " I 
 should like to know — if you wouldn't much 
 mind — where the firing comes from ?" 
 
 " Lord bless the boy !" exclaimed my 
 sister, as if she didn't quite mean that, but 
 rather the contrary. " From the Hulks." 
 
 " Oh-li !" said I, looking at Joe. 
 "Hulks!" 
 
 Joe gave a reproachful cough, as much as 
 to say, "Well, I told you so." 
 
 " And please what's Hulks ?" said I. 
 
 " That's the way with this boy !" ex- 
 claimed my sister, pointing me out with her 
 needle and thread, and shaking her head at 
 me. "Answer him one question, and he'll 
 ask you a dozen directly. Hulks are prison- 
 ships, right 'cross th' meshes." We always 
 used that name for marshes, in our country. 
 
 " I wonder who's put into prison-ships, 
 and why they're put there ?" said I, in a 
 general way, and with quiet desperation. 
 
 It was too much for Mrs. Joe, who imme- 
 diately rose. " I tell you what, young 
 fellow," said she, " I didn't bring you up by 
 hand to badger people's lives out. It would 
 be blame to me, and not praise, if I had.
 
 GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 27 
 
 People are put in the Hullvs because they 
 murder, and because they rob, and forge, 
 and do all sorts of bad ; and they always 
 begin by asking questions. Now, you get 
 along to bed !" 
 
 I was never allowed a candle to light me 
 to bed, and, as I went up-stairs in the dark, 
 with my head tinghng — from Mrs. Joe's 
 thimble, having played the tambourine upon 
 it, to accompany her last words — I felt fear- 
 fully sensible of the great convenience that 
 the Hulks were handy for me. I was 
 clearly on my way there. I had begun by 
 asking questions, and I was going to rob 
 Mrs. Joe. 
 
 Since that time, which is far enough away 
 now, I have often thought that few people 
 know what secrecy there is in the young, 
 under terror. No matter how unreasonable 
 the terror, so that it be terror. I was in 
 mortal terror of the young man who wanted 
 my heart and liver ; I was in mortal terror 
 of my interlocutor with the ironed leg; I 
 was in mortal teiTor of myself, from whom 
 an awful promise had been extracted ; I had 
 no hope of deliverance through my all-
 
 28 GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 
 
 powerful sister, who repulsed me at every 
 turn ; I am afraid to think of what I might 
 have done, on requirement, in the secrecy 
 of my terror. 
 
 If I slept at all that night, it was only to 
 imagine myself drifting down the river on a 
 strong spring tide, to the Hulks ; a ghostly 
 pirate calling out to me through a speaking- 
 trumpet, as I passed the gibbet-station, that 
 I had better come ashore and be hanged 
 there at once, and not put it off. I was 
 afraid to sleep, even if I had been inclined, 
 for I knew that at the first faint dawn of 
 morning I must rob the pantry. There was 
 no doing it in the night, for there was no 
 getting a light by easy friction then ; to have 
 got one, I must have struck it out of flint 
 and steel, and have made a noise like the 
 very pirate himself rattling his chains. 
 
 As soon as the great black velvet pall 
 outside my little window was shot with grey, 
 I got up and went dow^n stairs ; every board 
 upon the way, and every crack in every 
 board, calling after me, " Stop thief!" and 
 " Get up, Mrs. Joe !" In the pantry, which 
 was far more a1)undantly supplied than
 
 GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 29 
 
 usual, o-sv^ng to the season, I was very much 
 alarmed, by a hare hanging up by the heels, 
 whom I rather thought I caught, when my 
 back was half turned, winking. I had no 
 time for verification, no time for selection, 
 no time for anything, for I had no time to 
 spare. I stole some bread, some rind of 
 cheese, about half a jar of mincemeat 
 (which I tied up in my pocket-handkerchief 
 with my last night's slice), some brandy from 
 a stone bottle (which I decanted into a glass 
 bottle I had secretly used for making that 
 intoxicating fluid, Spanish-liquorice-water, 
 up in my room : diluting the stone bottle 
 from a jug in the kitchen cupboard), a meat 
 bone with very little on it, and a beautiful 
 round compact pork pie. I was nearly 
 going away without the pie, but I was 
 tempted to mount upon a shelf, to look what 
 it was that was put away so carefully in a 
 covered earthenware dish in a corner, and I 
 found it was the pie, and I took it, in the 
 hope that it Avas not intended for early use, 
 and would not be missed for some time. 
 
 There was a door in the kitchen, commu- 
 nicating with the forge ; I unlocked and un-
 
 30 GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 
 
 bolted that door, and got a file from among 
 Joe's tools. Then, I put the fiistenings as I 
 had found them, opened the door at Avhich 
 I had entered when I ran home last night, 
 shut it, and ran for the misty marshes.
 
 GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 31 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 It was a rimy morning, and very damp. 
 I had seen the damp lying on the outside of 
 my little window, as if some goblin had 
 been crpng there all night, and using the 
 window for a pocket-handkerchief. Now, I 
 saw the damp lying on the bare hedges and 
 spare grass, like a coarser sort of spiders' 
 webs ; hanoino; itself from t^vio- to twio- and 
 blade to blade. On every rail and gate, wet 
 lay clammy ; and the marsh-mist was so 
 thick, that the wooden finger on the post 
 dii'ecting people to our village — a direction 
 which they never accepted, for they never 
 came there — was invisible to me until I Avas 
 quite close under it. Then, as I looked up
 
 32 GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 
 
 at it, while it dri23ped, it seemed to my 
 oppressed conscience like a phantom de- 
 voting me to the Hulks. 
 
 The mist was heavier yet when I got out 
 upon the marshes, so that instead of my 
 running at everything, everything seemed 
 to run at me. This was very disagreeable 
 to a guilty mind. The gates and dykes and 
 banks came bursting at me throuo-h the 
 mist, as if they cried as plainly as could be, 
 " A boy with Somebody-else's pork pie ! 
 Stop him !" The cattle came upon me with 
 like suddenness, staring out of their eyes, 
 and steaming out of their nostrils, ''Holloa, 
 young thief!" One black ox, with a white 
 cravat on — who even had to my awakened 
 conscience somethino^ of a clerical air — fixed 
 me so obstinately Avith his eyes, and moved 
 his blunt head round in such an accusatory 
 manner as I moved round, that I blubbered 
 out to him, " I couldn't help it, sir ! It 
 wasn't for myself I took it !" Upon which 
 he put down his head, blew a cloud of 
 smoke out of his nose, and vanished with a 
 kick-up of his hind-legs and a flourish of his 
 tail.
 
 GREAT EXPECTATIONS. oo 
 
 All this time, I was getting on towards 
 the river; but however fast I went, I 
 couldn't warm my feet, to which the damp 
 cold seemed riveted, as the iron was riveted to 
 the leg of the man I was running to meet. I 
 knew my way to the Battery, pretty straight, 
 for I had been do■^^^l there on a Sunday 
 with Joe, and Joe, sitting on an old gun, 
 had told me that when I was 'prentice to 
 him regularly bound, we would have such 
 Larks there ! However, in the confusion of 
 the mist, I found myself at last too far to 
 the right, and consequently had to try back 
 along the river-side, on the bank of loose 
 stones above the mud and the stakes that 
 staked the tide out. Making my way along 
 here with all despatch, I had just crossed a 
 ditch which 1 knew to be very near the 
 Battery, and had just scrambled up the 
 mound beyond the ditch, when I saw the 
 man sitting before me. His back was to- 
 wards me, and he had his arms folded, and 
 was nodding forward, heavy with sleep. 
 
 I thought he would be more glad if I 
 came upon him with his breakfast, in that 
 unexpected manner, so I went forward 
 
 VOL. I. D
 
 34 GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 
 
 softly and toucliecl him on the shoulder. He 
 instantly jumped up, and it was not the same 
 man, but another man ! 
 
 And yet this man was dressed in coarse 
 grey, too, and had a great iron on his leg, 
 and Avas lame, and hoarse, and cold, and 
 was everything that the other man Avas; 
 except that he had not the same face, and 
 had a flat broad-brimmed low-croAmed felt 
 hat on. All this, I saw in a moment, for I 
 had only a moment to see it in : he swore an 
 oath at me, made a hit at me — it was a 
 round weak blow that missed me and almost 
 knocked himself doAvn, for it made him 
 stumble — and then he ran into the mist, 
 stumbling twdce as he went, and I lost him. 
 
 " It's the young man !" I thought, feeling 
 my heart shoot as I identified him. I dare 
 say I should have felt a pain in my liver, too, 
 if I had known where it was. 
 
 I was soon at the Battery, after that, and 
 there was the right man — hugging himself 
 and limping to and fro, as if he had never 
 all night left off hugging and limping — 
 waiting for me. He was awfully cold, to be 
 sure. I half expected to see him drop down
 
 GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 60 
 
 before my face and die of deadly cold. His 
 eyes looked so a"\^'fully hungry, too, that 
 when I handed him the file and he laid it 
 down on the o-rass, it occurred to me he 
 would have tried to eat it, if he had not seen 
 my bundle. He did not turn me upside 
 do^\m, this time, to get at what I had, but 
 left me right side upwards while I opened 
 the bundle and emptied my pockets. 
 
 "What's in the bottle, boy?" said he. 
 
 " Brandy," said I. 
 
 He was already handing mincemeat do^vn 
 his throat in the most curious manner — 
 more like a man who was putting it away 
 somewhere in a violent hurry, than a man 
 who was eatmg it — but he left off to take 
 some of the liquor. He shivered all the 
 while, so violently, that it was quite as 
 much as he could do to keep the neck of the 
 bottle between his teeth, mthout bitino: it 
 oflT. 
 
 " I think you have got the ague," said I. 
 
 " I'm much of your opinion, boy," said 
 he. 
 
 ' It's bad about here," I told him. 
 d2
 
 36 GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 
 
 " You've been lying out on the meshes, and 
 they're dreadful aguish. Rheumatic, too." 
 
 " I'll eat my breakfast afore they're the 
 death of me," said he. " I'd do that, if I 
 was going to be strung up to that there 
 gallows as there is over there, directly arter- 
 wards. I'U beat the shivers so far, /'ll bet 
 you." 
 
 He was gobbling mincemeat, meat-bone, 
 bread, cheese, and pork pie, all at once : 
 -staring distrustfully while he did so at the 
 mist aU round us, and often stopping — even 
 stopping his jaws — to listen. Some real or 
 fancied sound, some clink upon the river or 
 breathing of beast upon the marsh, now 
 gave him a start, and he said, suddenly : 
 
 "You're not a deceiving imp? You 
 brought no one Avith you?" 
 
 " No, sir ! No !" 
 
 " Nor giv' no one the office to follow 
 you?" 
 
 " No !" 
 
 ^' Well," said he, " I believe you. You'd 
 be but a fierce young hound indeed, if at 
 your time of life you could help to hunt a 
 AATetched warmint, hmited as near death
 
 GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 37 
 
 and dunghill as this poor wretched warmint 
 is!" 
 
 Something clicked in his throat, as if he 
 had works in him like a clock, and was going 
 to strike. And he smeared his ragged rough 
 sleeve over his eyes. 
 
 Pitying his desolation, and watching him 
 as he gradually settled down upon the pie, 
 I made bold to say, " I am glad you enjoy 
 it." 
 
 " Did you speak?" 
 
 " I said I was glad you enjoyed it." 
 
 " Thankee, my boy. I do." 
 
 I had often watched a lar^e doo; of ours 
 eating his food ; and I now noticed a de- 
 cided similarity between the dog's way of 
 eating, and the man's. The man took strong 
 sharp sudden bites, just like the dog. He 
 swallowed, or rather snapped up, every 
 mouthful, too soon and too fast ; and he 
 looked sideways here and there while he ate, 
 as if he thought there was danger in every 
 direction, of somebody's coming to take the 
 pie away. He was altogether too unsettled 
 in his mind over it, to appreciate it com- 
 fortably, I thought, or to have anybody to
 
 38 r.REAT EXPECTATIONS. 
 
 dine witli him, without making a chop with 
 his jaws at the visitor. In all of which par- 
 ticulars he was very like the dog. 
 
 " I am afraid you won't leave any of it 
 for him," said I, timidly ; after a silence 
 during which I had hesitated as to the 
 politeness of making the remark. " There's 
 no more to be got where that came from."' 
 It was the certainty of this fact that im- 
 pelled me to offer the hint. 
 
 " Leave any for him ? Who's him?" said 
 my friend, stopping in his crunching of pie- 
 crust. 
 
 " The young man. That you spoke of. 
 That Avas hid with you." 
 
 " Oh ah !"" he returned, with something 
 like a gruff laugh. " Him ? Yes, yes ! He 
 don't want no A\dttles." 
 
 " I thought he looked as if he did, ' said I. 
 
 The man stopped eating, and regarded me 
 with the keenest scrutmy and the greatest 
 surprise. 
 
 " Looked y AVhen ?" 
 
 " Just now." 
 
 "Where?" 
 
 " Yonder," said I, pointing; '' over there,
 
 GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 39 
 
 where I found liim nodding asleep, and 
 thought it was you." 
 
 He held me by the collar and stared at 
 me so, that I began to think his first idea 
 about cutting my throat had revived. 
 
 " Dressed like you, you know, only with 
 a hat," I explained, trembling ; '' and — and" 
 — I was very anxious to put this delicately 
 — "and with — the same reason for wanting 
 to borrow a file. Didn't you hear the cannon 
 last night ?" 
 
 "Then, there icas ^ring !" he said to him- 
 self. 
 
 " I wonder you shouldn't have been sure 
 of that,"' I returned, " for we heard it up at 
 home, and that's further away, and we were 
 shut in besides." 
 
 "Why, see now!" said he. "When a 
 man's alone on these fiats, with a light head 
 and a light stomach, perishing of cold and 
 want, he hears nothin' all night, but guns 
 firing, and voices calling. Hears ? He sees 
 the soldiers, with their red coats lighted up 
 by the torches carried afore, closing in round 
 him. Hears his number called, hears him- 
 self challenged, hears the rattle of the
 
 40 GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 
 
 muskets, hears the orders ' Make ready ! 
 Present ! Cover him steady, men !' and is 
 laid hands on — and there's nothin' ! AVhy, 
 if I see one pursuing party last night — 
 coming up in order. Damn 'em, -svith their 
 tramp, tramp — I see a hundred. And as to 
 firing ! Why, I see the mist shake with the 
 cannon, arter it was broad day. — But tliis 
 man ;" he had said all the rest, as if he had 
 forgotten my being there ; " did you notice 
 anything in him ?" 
 
 " He had a badly bruised face," said I, 
 recalling what I hardly knew I knew. 
 
 " Not here ?" exclaimed the man, striking 
 his left cheek mercilessly, with the flat of 
 his hand. 
 
 "Yes, there!" 
 
 "Where is he?" He crammed what 
 little food was left, into the breast of his 
 grey jacket. " Show me the way he went. 
 I'll pull him doAm, like a bloodhound. 
 Curse this iron on my sore leg ! Give us 
 hold of the file, boy." 
 
 I indicated in what direction the mist had 
 shrouded the other man, and he looked up 
 at it for an instant. But he was down on
 
 GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 41 
 
 the rank wet grass, filing at his iron like a 
 madman, and not minding me or minding 
 his own leg, which had an old chafe upon it 
 and was bloody, but which he handled as 
 roughly as if it had no more feeling in it 
 than the file. I was very much afraid of 
 him ao-ain, now that he had worked himself 
 into this fierce hurry, and I was likewise 
 very much afraid of keeping away from 
 home any longer. I told him I must go, 
 but he took no notice, so I thought the best 
 thing I could do was to shp off. The last 
 I saw of him, his head was bent over his 
 knee and he was working hard at his fetter, 
 muttering impatient imprecations at it and 
 at his leg. The last I heard of him, I 
 stopped in the mist to listen, and the file 
 was still going.
 
 42 GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 I FULLY expected to find a Constable in 
 the kitchen, waiting to take me up. But 
 not only was there no Constable there, but 
 no discovery had yet been made of the 
 robbery. Mrs. Joe was prodigiously busy 
 in getting the house ready for the festivities 
 of the day, and Joe had been put upon the 
 kitchen door-step to keep him out of the 
 dustpan — an article into which his destiny 
 always led him sooner or later, when my 
 sister was vigorously reaping the floors of 
 her establishment. 
 
 "And where the deuce ha' you been?" 
 was ]\Irs. Joe's Christmas salutation, when I 
 and my conscience showed ourselves.
 
 GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 43 
 
 I said I had been down to hear the Carols. 
 "Ah! well!" observed Mrs. Joe. "You 
 might ]"<.a' done worse." Xot a doubt of that, 
 I thought. 
 
 " Perhaps if I warn't a blacksmith's wife, 
 and (what's the same thing) a slave with 
 her apron never off, / should have been to 
 hear the Carols," said Mrs. Joe, " I'm 
 rather partial to Carols, myself, and that's 
 the best of reasons for my never hearing 
 any.' 
 
 Joe, who had ventured into the kitchen 
 after me as the dustpan had retired before 
 us, drew the back of his hand across his 
 nose with a conciliatory air when Mrs. Joe 
 darted a look at him, and, when her eyes 
 were -withdrawn, secretly crossed his two 
 forefingers, and exhibited them to me, as 
 our token that Mrs. Joe was in a cross 
 temper. This was so much her normal 
 state, that Joe and I would often, for weeks 
 together, be, as to our fingers, like monu- 
 mental Crusaders as to their legs. 
 
 We were to have a superb dinner, con- 
 sisting of a leg of pickled pork and greens, 
 and a pair of roast stufted foAvls. A hand-
 
 44 GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 
 
 some ^aince-pic had been made yesterday 
 morning (which accounted for the mince- 
 meat not being missed), and the pudding 
 was already on the boil. These extensive 
 arrangements occasioned us to be cut off un- 
 ceremoniously in respect of breakfast ; " for 
 I an't," said Mrs. Joe, " I an't a going to 
 have no formal cramming and busting and 
 washing up now, witli what I've got before 
 me, I promise you !" 
 
 So, we had our slices served out, as if we 
 were two thousand troops on a forced march 
 instead of a man and boy at home ; and we 
 took gulps of milk and water, with apolo- 
 getic countenances, from a jug on the 
 dresser. In the mean time, Mrs. Joe put 
 clean white curtains up, and tacked a new 
 flowered-flounce across the wide chimney to 
 replace the old one, and uncovered the little 
 state parlour across the passage, which was 
 never uncovered at any other time, but 
 passed the rest of the year in a cool haze of 
 silver paper, which even extended to the 
 four little white crockery poodles on the 
 mantelshelf, each with a black nose and a 
 basket of flowers in his mouth, and each the
 
 GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 45 
 
 counterpart of the otlier. Mrs. Joe was a 
 very clean housekeeper, but had an ex- 
 quisite art of making her cleanhness more 
 uncomfortable and unacceptable than dirt 
 itself. Cleanliness is next to Godliness, 
 and some people do the same by their re- 
 ligion. 
 
 My sister having so much to do, was 
 going to church vicariously ; that is to say, 
 Joe and I were going. In his working 
 clothes, Joe was a AveU-knit characteristic- 
 looking blacksmith ; in his liohday clothes, 
 he was more like a scarecrow in good cir- 
 cumstances, than anything else. Nothing 
 that he wore then, fitted him or seemed to 
 belong to him ; and everything that he wore 
 then, grazed him. On the present festive 
 occasion he emerged from his room, when 
 the blithe bells were going, the picture of 
 misery, in a full suit of Sunday penitentials. 
 As to me, I think my sister must have liad 
 some general idea tliat I was a young 
 offender whom an Accoucheur Policeman 
 had taken up (on my birthday) and de- 
 livered over to her, to be dealt with accord- 
 ing to the outraged majesty of the laAv. I
 
 46 GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 
 
 was always treated as if I had insisted on 
 being born, in opposition to the dictates of 
 reason, religion, and morality, and against 
 the dissuadinsr arguments of mv best friends. 
 Even when I was taken to have a new suit 
 of clothes, the tailor had orders to make 
 them like a kind of Reformatory, and on no 
 account to let me have the free use of my 
 limbs, 
 
 Joe and I going to church, therefore, 
 must have been a moving spectacle for com- 
 passionate minds. Yet, what I suiFered out- 
 side, was nothing to what I unden\Tnt 
 within. The terrors that had assailed me 
 whenever IMrs. Joe had gone near the pantry, 
 or out of the room, were only to be equalled 
 by the remorse with which my mind dwelt 
 on what mv hands had done. Under the 
 weight of my "udcked secret, I pondered 
 whether the Church would be poAveiiul 
 enouixh to shield me from the veno-eance of 
 the terrible young man, if I divulged to that 
 establishment. I conceived the idea that 
 the time when the banns were read and 
 when the clergpnan said, " Ye are now to 
 declare it !'' would ])e the time for me to rise
 
 GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 47 
 
 and propose a private conference in the 
 vestry. I am far fi'oni being sure that I 
 might not have astonished our small con- 
 gregation by resorting to this extreme mea- 
 sure, but for its beino' Christmas Dav and 
 no Sunday. 
 
 Mr. Wopsle, the clerk at church, was to 
 dine ^ith us ; and Mr. Hubble the wheel- 
 wright and Mrs. Hubl)le ; and Uncle Pum- 
 blechook (Joe's uncle, but j\lrs. Joe appro- 
 priated hmi), who was a well-to-do corn- 
 chandler in the nearest town, and drove his 
 own chaise-cart. The dinner hour was half- 
 past one. When Joe and I got home, we 
 found the table laid, and Mrs. Joe dressed, 
 and the dinner dressing, and the front door 
 unlocked (it never was, at any other time) 
 for the company to enter by, and ever^'thing 
 most splendid. And still, not a word of the 
 robbery. 
 
 The time came, without bringing with it 
 any relief to my feelings, and the company 
 came. ]Mr. Wopsle, united to a Roman 
 nose and a large shining bald forehead, had 
 a deep voice which he was uncommonly 
 proud of; indeed it was under.stood among
 
 48 GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 
 
 his acquaintance that if you could only give 
 him his head, he would read the clergyman 
 into fits ; he himself confessed that if the 
 Church was "thrown open," meaning to 
 competition, he would not despair of making 
 his mark in it. The Church not being 
 "thrown open," he was, as I have said, our 
 clerk. But he punished the Amens tremen- 
 dously ; and when he gave out the psalm — 
 always giving the whole verse — he looked 
 all round the congregation first, as much 
 as to say, "You have heard my friend over- 
 head ; oblige me with your opinion of this 
 style!" 
 
 I opened the door to the company — 
 making believe that it was a habit of ours 
 to open that door — and I opened it first to 
 Mr. Wopsle, next to Mr. and ]Mrs. Hubble, 
 and last of all to Uncle Pumblechook. N.B. 
 / was not allowed to call him uncle, under 
 the severest penalties. 
 
 " Mrs. Joe," said Uncle Pumblechook : a 
 large hard-breathing middle-aged slow man, 
 with a mouth like a fish, dull staring eyes, 
 and sandy hair standing upright on his head, 
 so that he looked as if he had just been all
 
 GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 49 
 
 but choked, and had that moment come to ; 
 "I have brought you, as the complmients 
 of the season — I have brought you, Mum, a 
 bottle of sherry wine — and I have brought 
 you. Mum, a bottle of port wine." 
 
 Every Christmas Day he presented him- 
 self, as a profound novelty, with exactly the 
 same words, and carrying the two bottles 
 like dumb-bells. Every Christmas Day, 
 Mrs. Joe replied, as she now replied, " Oh, 
 Un — cle Pum — ble — chook ! This is kind !" 
 Every Christmas Day, he retorted, as he 
 now retorted, " It's no more than your 
 merits. And now are you all bobbish, and 
 how's Sixpennorth of halfpence?" meaning 
 me. 
 
 We dined on these occasions in the 
 kitchen, and adjourned, for the nuts and 
 oranges and apples, to the parlour ; Avliich 
 was a change very like Joe's change from 
 his working clothes to his Sunday dress. 
 My sister was uncommonly lively on the 
 present occasion, and indeed was generally 
 more gracious in the society of Mrs. Hubble 
 than in any other company. I remember 
 Mrs. Hubble as a little curly sharp-edged 
 
 VOL. I. E
 
 50 GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 
 
 person in sky-bliit', who held a conven- 
 tionally juvenile position, because she had 
 married ]\Ir. Hubble — I don't know at what 
 remote period — when she was much younger 
 than he. I remember Mr. Hubble as a 
 tough high-shouldered stooping old man, of 
 a sawdusty fragrance, with his legs extra- 
 ordinarily wide apart : so that in my short 
 days I always saw some miles of open coun- 
 try between tliem wlien I met him coming 
 up the lane. 
 
 Among this good company I should have 
 felt myself, even if I hadn't robbed the 
 pantry, in a false position. Not because I 
 was squeezed in at an acute angle of the 
 tablecloth, with tlie table in mj^ chest, and 
 the Pumblechokian elbow in my eye, nor 
 because I was not allowed to speak (I didn't 
 want to speak), nor because I was regaled 
 with the scaly tips of the drumsticks of the 
 fowls, and with those obscure corners of 
 pork of which the pig, when living, had had 
 the least reason to be vain. No ; I should 
 not have minded that, if they woidd only 
 have left me alone. But they wouldn't 
 leave me alone. They seemed to tliink the
 
 GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 51 
 
 opportunity lost, if they failed to point the 
 conversation at me, every now and then, 
 and stick the point into me. I might have 
 been an unfortunate little bull in a Spanish 
 arena, I got so smartingly touched up b}^ 
 these moral goads. 
 
 It began the moment we sat dovni to 
 dinner. Mr. Wopsle said grace mth thea- 
 trical declamation — as it now appears to me, 
 something like a religious cross of the Ghost 
 in Hamlet with Richard the Third — and 
 ended -with the yerj proper aspiration that 
 we might be truly grateful. Upon Avhich 
 my sister fixed me with her e3'e, and said, 
 in a low reproachful voice, " Do 3^ou hear 
 that? Be grateful." 
 
 " Especially," said Mr. Pumblechook, " be 
 grateful, boy, to them which brought you 
 up by hand." 
 
 Mrs. Hubble shook her head, and contem- 
 plating me with a inournful i^resentiment 
 that I should come to no good, asked, " Why 
 is it that the young are never gi'ateful?" 
 This moral mystery seemed too much for 
 the company until j\Ir. Hubble tersely solved 
 it by saying, " Naterally wicious." Every- 
 E 2
 
 52 GREAT EXPECTATIOXS. 
 
 body tlicn mumiuved " True !" and looked 
 at me in a particularly unpleasant and per- 
 sonal manner. 
 
 Joe's station and influence were some- 
 thing feebler (if possible) when there was 
 company, than when there was none. But 
 he always aided and comforted me when he 
 could, in some way of his own, and he 
 always did so at dinner-time by giving me 
 gravy, if there were any. There being 
 plenty of gravy to-day, Joe spooned into 
 my plate, at this point, about half a pint. 
 
 A little later on in the dinner, Mr. Wopsle 
 reviewed the sermon with some severity, and 
 intimated — in the usual hypothetical case of 
 the Church being "thrown open" — what 
 kind of sermon he would have given them. 
 After favouring them with some heads of 
 that discourse, he remarked that he con- 
 sidered the subject of the day's homily, ill 
 chosen ; which was the less excusable, he 
 added, when there were so many subjects 
 " going about." 
 
 " True again," said Uncle Pumblechook. 
 " You've hit it, sir ! Plenty of subjects 
 going about, for them that know how to put
 
 GEEAT EXPECTATIONS. 53 
 
 salt upon their tails. That's what's wanted. 
 A man needn't go far to find a subject, if 
 he's ready with his salt-box." Mr. Pumble- 
 chook added, after a short mterval of re- 
 flection, "Look at Pork alone. There's a 
 subject ! If you want a subject, look at 
 Pork!" 
 
 " True, sir. Many a moral for the young," 
 returned Mr. Wopsle ; and I knew he was 
 going to lug me in, before he said it; 
 " might be deduced from that text." 
 
 (" You listen to this," said my sister to 
 me, in a severe parenthesis.) 
 
 Joe gave me some more gravy. 
 
 " Swine," pursued ]\Ir. AYopsle, in his 
 deepest voice, and pointing his fork at my 
 blushes, as if he were mentioning my 
 christian name ; " Swine were the com- 
 panions of the prodigal. The gluttony of 
 Swine is put before us, as an example to the 
 young." (I thought this pretty well in him 
 who had been praising up the pork for being 
 so plump and juicy.) " What is detestable 
 in a pig, is more detestable in a boy." 
 
 " Or girl," suggested Mr. Hubble. 
 
 " Of course, or girl, Mr. Hubble," as-
 
 54 GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 
 
 sented ]\Ir. Wo]isle, rather irritabl}', " but 
 there is no gh'l jiresent." 
 
 " Besides," said Mr. Pumblechook, turn- 
 ing sharp on me, " think Avhat you've got 
 to be grateful for. If you'd been ]}oni a 
 Squeaker " 
 
 " He vms^ if ever a child was," s;aid my 
 sister, most emphatically. 
 
 Joe gave me some more gravy. 
 
 " Well, but I mean a four-footed 
 Squeaker," said Mr. Pumblechook. " If 
 you had been born such, would you have 
 been here now ? Not you " 
 
 " Unless in that form," said Mr. Wopsle, 
 nodding towards the dish. 
 
 " But I don't mean in that form, sir," 
 returned Mr. Pumblechook, who had an 
 objection to being interrupted ; " I mean, 
 enjoying himself with his elders and betters, 
 and improving himself Avith their conversa- 
 tion, and rolling in the lap of luxury. 
 Would he have been doing that ? No, he 
 wouldn't. And what would have been your 
 destination ?" turning on me again. " You 
 would have been disposed of for so many 
 shillings according to the market price of
 
 GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 55 
 
 the article, and Dunstable the butcher would 
 have come up to you as you lay in your 
 straw, and he Avould have whipped you 
 under his left arm, and with his right he 
 AYould have tucked up his frock to get a pen- 
 knife from out of his waistcoat-pocket, and 
 he would have shed your blood and had 
 your life. No bringing up by hand then. 
 Not a bit of it !" 
 
 Joe offered me more gravy, which I was 
 afraid to take. 
 
 " He was a world of trouble to you, 
 ma'am," said Mrs. Hubble, commiserating 
 my sister. 
 
 " Trouble ?" echoed my sister ; "trouble ?" 
 And then entered on a fearful catalogue of 
 all the illnesses I had been guilty of, and all 
 the acts of sleeplessness I had committed, 
 and all the high places I had tumbled from, 
 and all the low places I had tumbled into, 
 and all the injuries I had done myself, and 
 all the times she had wished me in my grave, 
 and I had contumaciously refused to go 
 there. 
 
 I think the Romans must have aggravated 
 one another very much, with their noses.
 
 56 GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 
 
 Perhaps, they became the restless people 
 they were, in consequence. Anyhow, Mr. 
 Wopsle's Roman nose so aggravated me, 
 during the recital of my misdemeanours, 
 that I should have liked to pull it until he 
 howled. But, all I had endured up to this 
 time, was nothing in comparison Avith the 
 awful feelings that took possession of me 
 when the pause was broken which ensued 
 upon my sister's recital, and in which pause 
 everybody had looked at me (as I felt pain- 
 fully conscious) with indignation and abhor- 
 rence. 
 
 '' Yet," said Mr. Pumblcchook, leading 
 the company gently back to the theme from 
 which they had strayed, " Pork — regarded 
 as bilecl — is rich, too ; ain't it ?" 
 
 " Have a little brandy, uncle," said my 
 sister. 
 
 Heavens, it had come at last ! He 
 would find it was weak, he would say it 
 was weak, and I was lost ! I held tight to 
 the leg of the table under the cloth, with 
 both hands, and awaited my fate. 
 
 My sister went for the stone bottle, came 
 back with the stone bottle, and poured his
 
 GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 57 
 
 brandy out : no one else taking any. The 
 Avretched man trifled mth his glass — took 
 it up, looked at it through the light, put it 
 down — prolonged my misery. All this time, 
 Mrs. Joe and Joe were briskly clearing the 
 table for the pie and pudding. 
 
 I couldn't keep my eyes oif him. Always 
 holding tight by the leg of the table mth 
 my hands and feet, I saw the miserable 
 creature finger his glass playfully, take it 
 up, smile, throw his head back, and drink 
 the brandy off. Instantly afterwards, the 
 company Avere seized with unspeakable con- 
 sternation, owing to his springing to his 
 feet, turning round several times in an appal- 
 ling spasmodic whooping-cough dance, and 
 rushing out at the door ; he then became 
 visible through the windoAV, violently plung- 
 ing and expectorating, making the most 
 hideous faces, and apparently out of his 
 mind. 
 
 I held on tight, while Mrs. Joe and Joe 
 ran to him. I didn't know how I had done 
 it, but I had no doubt I had murdered him 
 somehow. In my dreadful situation, it was 
 a relief when he was brought back, and,
 
 58 GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 
 
 surveying the company all round as if they 
 had disagreed with liini, sank down into his 
 chair with the one significant gasp, " Tar !" 
 
 I had filled up the 1)ottle from the tar- 
 water jug. I knew he would be worse by- 
 and-by. I moved the table, like a Medium 
 of the present day, by the vigour of my 
 unseen hold upon it. 
 
 " Tar !" cried my sister, in amazement. 
 "Why, how ever could Tar come there?" 
 
 But, Uncle Pumblechook, who was omni- 
 potent in that kitchen, wouldn't hear the. 
 word, wouldn't hear of the subject, im- 
 periously waved it all away with his hand, 
 and asked for hot gin-and- water. My sister, 
 who had begun to be alaiTningiy meditative, 
 had to employ herself actively in getting the 
 gin, the hot water, the sugar, and the 
 lemon-peel, and mixing them. For the 
 time at least, I was saved. I stiU held on 
 the leg of the table, but clutched it now with 
 the fervour of gratitude. 
 
 By degrees, I became calm enough to 
 release my grasp and partake of pudding. 
 Mr. Pumblechook partook of pudding. All 
 partook of pudding. The course termi-
 
 GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 59 
 
 natecl, and Mr. Pumblecliook had began to 
 beam under the genial mfluence of gin-and- 
 Trater. I began to think I should get over 
 the day, when my sister said to Joe, " Clean 
 plates — cold." 
 
 I clutched the leg of the table again im- 
 mediately, and pressed it to my bosom as if 
 it had been the companion of my youth 
 and friend of my soul. I foresaw what was 
 coming, and I felt that this time I really 
 was gone. 
 
 "You must taste," said my sister, ad- 
 dressing the guests ^vitli her best grace, 
 "you must taste, to finish with, such a de- 
 lightful and delicious present of Uncle Pum- 
 blechook's !" 
 
 Must they ! Let them not hope to taste it ! 
 
 "You must know," said my sister, rising, 
 " it's a pie ; a savoury pork pie." 
 
 The company murmured their comph- 
 ments. Uncle Pumblechook, sensible of 
 having deserved well of his fellow-creatures, 
 said — quite vivaciously, all things con- 
 sidered — " Well, Mrs. Joe, we'll do our best 
 endeavours ; let us have a cut at this same 
 pie."
 
 60 GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 
 
 My sister went out to get it. I heard her 
 steps proceed to the pantry. I saw Mr. 
 Pumblechook balance his knife. I saw re- 
 awakening appetite in the Roman nostrils of 
 Mr. Wopsle. I heard Mr. Hubble remark 
 that " a bit of savoury pork pie would lay 
 atop of anything you could mention, and do 
 no harm," and I heard Joe say, " You shall 
 have some, Pip." I have never been abso- 
 lutely certain whether I uttered a shrill yell 
 of terror, merely in spirit, or in the bodily 
 hearing of the company. I felt that I could 
 bear no more, and that I must run away. 
 I released the leg of the table, and ran for 
 my life. 
 
 But, I ran no further than the house door, 
 for there I ran head foremost into a party 
 of soldiers with their muskets : one of 
 whom held out a pair of handcuiFs to me, 
 sapng, " Here you are, look sharp, come 
 on !"
 
 GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 61 
 
 CHAPTER y. 
 
 The apparition of a file of soldiers ringing 
 clown the butt-ends of their loaded muskets 
 on our door-step, caused the dinner-party to 
 rise from table in confusion, and caused Mrs. 
 Joe re-entering the kitchen empty-handed, 
 to stop short and stare, in her wondering 
 lament of " Gracious goodness gracious me, 
 what's gone — "svith the — ^pie !" 
 
 The sergeant and I were in the kitchen 
 when Mrs. Joe stood staring ; at which crisis 
 I partially recovered the use of my senses. 
 It w^as the sergeant who had spoken to me, 
 and he was now looking round at the com- 
 pany, with his handcuffs invitingly extended 
 towards them in his right hand, and his left 
 on my shoulder.
 
 62 GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 
 
 " Excuse me, ladies and gentlemen," said 
 the sergeant, " btit as I have mentioned at 
 the door to this smart yomig shaver" (which 
 he hadn't), " I am on a chase in the name 
 of the King, and I want the blacksmith." 
 
 " And pray what might you want with 
 him V retorted my sister, quick to resent his 
 beins: wanted at all. 
 
 "Missis," returned the gallant sergeant, 
 "speaking for myself, I should reply, the 
 honour and pleasure of his fine wife's ac- 
 quaintance ; speaking for the King, I answer, 
 a little job done." 
 
 This was received as rather neat in the 
 sergeant ; insomuch that Mr. Pumblechook 
 cried audibly, " Good again !" 
 
 "You see, blacksmith," said the sergeant, 
 Avho had by this time picked out Joe A\dth 
 his eye, "we have had an accident Avith 
 these, and I find the lock of one of 'em goes 
 wrong, and the coupling don't act pretty. 
 As they are wanted for immediate service, 
 will you throw your eye over them ?" 
 
 Joe threw his eye over them, and pro- 
 nounced that the job would necessitate the 
 li2:htino; of his for2:e fire, . and would take
 
 GREAT EXPECTATIONS. '63 
 
 nearer two hours than one. '•Will it? 
 Tlien will you set about it at once, black- 
 smith," said the off-hand sergeant, " as it's 
 on his Majesty's service. xVnd if my men 
 can bear a hand any^vhere, they'll make 
 themselves useful." With that, he called to 
 his men, who came trooping into the kitchen 
 one after another, and piled their arms in a 
 corner. And then they stood about, as 
 soldiers do ; now, Avith their hands loosely 
 clasped before them ; now, resting a knee or 
 a shoulder ; now, easing a belt or a pouch ; 
 now, opening the door to spit stiffly over 
 their high stocks, out into the yard. 
 
 All these thmgs I saw -\^dthout then know- 
 ing that I saw them, for I was in an agony 
 of apprehension. But, beginnmg to perceive 
 that the handcuffs were not for me, and that 
 tjie military had so far got the better of the 
 pie as to put it in the background, I col- 
 lected a little more of my scattered wits. . 
 
 " Would you give me the Time ?" said the 
 sergeant, addressing himself to Mr. Pumble- 
 chook, as to a man whose appreciative powers 
 justified the inference that he was equal to 
 the time.
 
 G4 GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 
 
 " It's just gone half-past two." 
 
 " That's not so bad," said the sergeant, re- 
 flecting ; " even if I was forced to halt here 
 nigh two hours, that'll do. How far might 
 you call yourselves from the marshes, here- 
 abouts ? Not above a mile, I reckon ?" 
 
 " Just a mile," said Mrs. Joe. 
 
 "That'll do. We begin to close in upon 
 'cm about dusk. A little before dusk, my 
 orders are. That'll do." 
 
 " Convicts, sergeant?" asked Mr. Wopsle, 
 in a matter-of-course way. 
 
 " Ay !" returned the sergeant, " two. 
 They're pretty well known to be out on the 
 marshes still, and they won't try to get 
 clear of 'em before dusk. Anybody here 
 seen anything of any such game ?" 
 
 Everybody, myself excepted, said no, with 
 confidence. Nobody thought of me. 
 
 " Well !" said the sergeant, " they'll find 
 themselves trapped in a circle, I expect, 
 sooner than they count on. Now, black- 
 smith ! If you're ready, His Majesty the 
 King is." 
 
 Joe had got his coat and waistcoat and 
 cravat off, and his leather apron on, and
 
 GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 65 
 
 passed into the forge. One of the soldiers 
 opened its wooden windows, another lighted 
 the fire, another turned to at the bellows, 
 the rest stood round the blaze, which was 
 soon roaring. Then Joe began to hammer 
 and clink, hammer and clink, and we all 
 looked on. 
 
 The interest of the impending pursuit not 
 only absorbed the general attention, but even 
 made my sister liberal. She drew a pitcher 
 of beer from the cask, for the soldiers, and 
 invited the sergeant to take a glass of brandy. 
 But Mr. Pumblechook said, sharply, " Give 
 him wine, Mum. I'll engage there's no Tar 
 in that :" so, the sergeant thanked him and 
 said that as he preferred his drink Avithout 
 tar, he would take Avine, if it was equally 
 convenient. When it was given him, he 
 drank his Majesty's health and Compliments 
 of the Season, and took it all at a mouthful 
 and smacked his lips. 
 
 " Good stuff, eh, sergeant ?" said Mr. 
 Pumblechook. 
 
 "I'll teU you something," returned the 
 sergeant; "I suspect that stuff's oi your 
 providing." 
 
 VOL. I. F
 
 66 GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 
 
 Mr. Pumblecliook, with a fat sort of laugh, 
 said, "Ay, ay? Why?" 
 
 " Because," returned the sergeant, clap- 
 ping I him on the shoulder, "you're a man 
 that knows what's what." 
 
 " D'ye think so ?" said Mr. Pumblecliook, 
 with his former laugh. " Have another 
 glass !" 
 
 " With you. Hob and nob," retui'ned the 
 sergeant. " The top of mine to the foot of 
 yours — ^the foot of yours to the top of mine 
 — Ring once, ring t^vice — the best tune on 
 the Musical Glasses ! Your health. May 
 you live a thousand years, and never be a 
 worse judge of the right sort than you are 
 at the present moment of your life !" 
 
 The sergeant tossed off his glass again and 
 seemed quite ready for another glass. I 
 noticed that Mr. Pumblechook in his hospi- 
 tality appeared to forget that he had made 
 a present of the wine, but took the bottle 
 from Mrs. Joe and had all the credit of 
 handing it about in a gush of joviality. 
 Even I got some. And he was so very free 
 of the wine that he even called for the other
 
 GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 67 
 
 bottle and handed that about -with the same 
 liberality, when the first was gone. 
 
 As I watched them while they all stood 
 clustering about the forge, enjoying them- 
 selves so much, I thought what terrible good 
 sauce for a dinner my fugitive friend on the 
 marshes was. They had not enjoyed them- 
 selves a quarter so much, before the enter- 
 tainment was brightened Avith the excitement 
 he furnished. And now, when they were all 
 in lively anticipation of "the two villains" 
 being taken, and when the bellows seemed 
 to roar for the fugitives, the fire to flare for 
 them, the smoke to hurry away in pursuit 
 of them, Joe to hammer and clink for them, 
 and all the murky shadows on the wall to 
 shake at them in menace as the blaze rose 
 and sank and the red-hot sparks dropped 
 and died, the pale afternoon outside, almost 
 seemed in my pitying young fancy to have 
 turned pale on their account, poor "WTetches. 
 
 At last, Joe's job was done, and the ring- 
 ing and roaring stopped. As Joe got on his 
 coat, he mustered courage to propose that 
 some of us should go doAvn with the soldiers 
 f2
 
 68 GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 
 
 and see what came of the hunt. Mr. Pumble- 
 chook and Mr. Hubble declined, on the plea 
 of a pipe and ladies' society ; but Mr. Wopsle 
 said he would go, if Joe would. Joe said he 
 was agreeable, and would take me, if Mrs. 
 Joe approved. We never should have got 
 leave to go, I am sure, but for Mrs. Joe's 
 curiosity to know all about it and how it 
 ended. As it was, she merely stipulated, 
 " If you bring the boy back with his head 
 blown to bits by a musket, don't look to me 
 to put it together again." 
 
 The sergeant took a polite leave of the 
 ladies, and parted from Mr. Pumblechook 
 as from a comrade; though I doubt if he 
 were quite as fuUy sensible of that gentle- 
 man's merits under arid conditions, as when 
 something moist was going. His men re- 
 sumed their muskets and fell in. Mr, Wopsle, 
 Joe, and I, received strict charge to keep in 
 the rear, and to speak no word after we 
 reached the marshes. When we were all 
 out in the raw air and were steadily 
 moving towards our business, I treasonably 
 whispered to Joe, " I hope, Joe, we shan't 
 find them." And Joe whispered to me, " I'd
 
 GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 69 
 
 give a shilling if they had cut and run, 
 Pip." 
 
 We were joined by no stragglers from 
 the village, for the weather was cold and 
 threatening, the Avay dreary, the footing 
 bad, darkness coming on, and the people 
 had good fires in-doors and were keeping 
 the day. A few faces hurried to glo^\dng 
 windows and looked after us, but none came 
 out. We passed the finger-post, and held 
 straight on to the churchyard. There, we 
 were stopped a few minutes by a signal from 
 the sergeant's hand, while two or three 
 of his men dispersed themselves among 
 the graves, and also examined the porch. 
 They came in again mthout finding any- 
 thing, and then we struck out on the open 
 marshes, through the gate at the side of the 
 churchyard. A bitter sleet came rattling 
 against us here on the east wind, and Joe 
 took me on his back. 
 
 Now that we were out upon the dismal 
 wilderness where they little thought I had 
 been -svithin eight or nine hours and had 
 seen both men hiding, I considered for the 
 first time, with great dread, if we should
 
 70 GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 
 
 come upon them, would my particular con- 
 vict suppose that it was I who had brought 
 the soldiers there ? He had asked me if I 
 was a deceiving imp, and he had said I 
 should be a fierce young hound if I joined 
 the hunt against him. Would he believe 
 that I was both imp and hound in trea- 
 cherous earnest, and had betrayed him ? 
 
 It was of no use asking myself this ques- 
 tion now. There I Avas, on Joe's back, and 
 there was Joe beneath me, charging at the 
 ditches like a hunter, and stimulating Mr. 
 Wopsle not to tumble on his Roman nose, 
 and to keep up with us. The soldiers were 
 in front of us, extended into a pretty wide 
 line with an interval between man and man. 
 We were taking the course I had begun 
 with, and from which I had diverged in the 
 mist. Either the mist was not out again 
 yet, or the wind had dispelled it. Under 
 the low red glare of sunset, the beacon, 
 and the gibbet, and the mound of the Bat- 
 tery, and the opposite shore of the river, 
 were plain, though all of a watery lead 
 colour. 
 
 With my heart thumping like a black-
 
 GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 71 
 
 smith at Joe's broad shoulder, I looked all 
 about for any sign of the convicts. I could 
 see none, I could hear none. Mr. Wopsle 
 had greatly alarmed me more than once, by 
 his blowing and hard breathing ; but I 
 knew the sounds by this time, and could 
 dissociate them from the object of pursuit. 
 I got a dreadful start, when I thought I 
 heard the file still going ; but it was only a 
 sheep bell. The sheep stopped in their eat- 
 ing and looked timidly at us ; and the cattle, 
 their heads turned from the wind and sleet, 
 stared angrily as if they held us responsible 
 for both annoyances; but, except these 
 things, and the shudder of the dying day in 
 every blade of grass, there Avas no break in 
 the bleak stillness of the marshes. 
 
 The soldiers were moving on in the direc- 
 tion of the old Battery, and we were moving 
 on a httle way behind them, when, all of a 
 sudden, we all stopped. For, there had 
 reached us on the wings of the wind and 
 rain, a long shout. It was repeated. It 
 was at a distance towards the east, but it 
 was long and loud. Nay, there seemed to 
 be two or more shouts raised together — if
 
 72 GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 
 
 one might judge from a confusion in the 
 sound. 
 
 To this effect the sergeant and the nearest 
 men were speaking under their breath, when 
 Joe and I came up. After another mo- 
 ment's listening, Joe (who was a good judge) 
 agreed, and Mr, Wopsle (who was a bad 
 judge) agreed. The sergeant, a decisive 
 man, ordered that the sound should not be 
 answered, but that the course should be 
 changed, and that his men should make 
 toAvards it ''at the double." So we slanted 
 to the right (where the East was), and Joe 
 pounded away so wonderfully, that I had to 
 hold on tight to keep my seat. 
 
 It was a run indeed now, and what Joe 
 called, in the only two words he spoke all 
 the time, " a Winder." Down banks and 
 uj) banks, and over gates, and splashing into 
 dykes, and breaking among coarse rushes : 
 no man cared where he went. As we came 
 nearer to the shouting, it became more and 
 more apparent that it was made by more 
 than one voice. Sometimes, it seemed to 
 stop altogether, and then the soldiers stopped. 
 When it broke out again, the soldiers made
 
 GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 73 
 
 for it at a greater rate than ever, and we 
 after them. After a while, we had so run 
 it down, that we could hear one voice calling 
 " Murder !" and another voice, " Convicts ! 
 Runaways ! Guard ! This way for the run- 
 away convicts !" Then both voices would 
 seem to be stifled in a struggle, and then 
 would break out again. And when it had 
 c6me to this, the soldiers ran like deer, and 
 Joe too. 
 
 The sergeant ran in first, when we had 
 run the noise quite down, and two of his 
 men ran in close upon him. Their pieces 
 were cocked and levelled when we all ran in. 
 
 "Here are both men!" panted the ser- 
 geant, struggling at the bottom of a ditch. 
 " Surrender, you two ! and confound you 
 for two wild beasts ! Come asunder !" 
 
 Water was splashing, and mud was flying, 
 and oaths were being sworn, and blows were 
 being struck, when some more men went 
 down into the ditch to help the sergeant, 
 and dragged out, separately, my convict 
 and the other one. Both were bleeding and 
 panting and execrating and struggling ; but 
 of course I knew them both directly.
 
 74 GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 
 
 ^'Mind!" said my convict, wiping blood 
 from liis face with his ragged sleeves, and 
 shaking torn hair from his fingers ; " / took 
 him ! / give him up to you ! Mind that !" 
 
 "It's not much to be particular about," 
 said the sergeant; "it'll do you small good, 
 my man, being in the same plight yourself. 
 Handcuffs there !" 
 
 " I don't expect it to do me any good. I 
 don't want it to do me more good than 
 it does now," said my convict, with a greedy 
 laugh. " I took him. He knows it. That's 
 enough for me." 
 
 The other convict was livid to look at, 
 and, in addition to the old bruised left side 
 of his face, seemed to be bruised and torn 
 all over. He could not so much as get his 
 breath to speak, until they were both sepa- 
 rately handcuffed, but leaned upon a soldier 
 to keep himself from falling. 
 
 " Take notice, guard — he tried to murder 
 me," were his first words. 
 
 " Tried to murder him ?" said my convict, 
 disdainfully. "Try, and not do it? I took 
 him, and giv' him up ; that's what I done. 
 I not only prevented him getting off the
 
 GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 75 
 
 marshes, but I dragged him here — dragged 
 him this far on his way back. He's a gen- 
 tleman, if you please, this villain. Now, the 
 Hulks has got its gentleman again, through 
 me. Murder him ? Worth my while, too, 
 to murder him, when I could do worse and 
 drag hun back !" 
 
 The other one still gasped, " He tried — 
 he tried — to — murder me. Bear — bear mt- 
 ness," 
 
 " Lookee here !" said my convict to the 
 sergeant. " Single-handed I got clear of 
 the prison-ship ; I made a dash and I done 
 it. I could ha' got clear of these death-cold 
 flats likewise — look at my leg: you won't 
 find much iron on it — ^if I hadn't made dis- 
 covery that he was here. Let him go free ? 
 Let him profit by the means as I found out ? 
 Let him make a tool of me afresh and again ? 
 Once more ? No, no, no. If I had died at 
 the bottom there;" and he made an em- 
 phatic swing at the ditch with his manacled 
 hands; "I'd have held to him with that 
 grip, that you should have been safe to find 
 him in my hold." 
 
 The other fugitive, who Avas evidently in
 
 76 GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 
 
 extreme horror of his companion, repeated, 
 "He tried to murder me. I should have 
 been a dead man if you had not come up." 
 
 "He lies!" said my convict, with fierce 
 energy. "He's a liar born, and he'll die a 
 liar. Look at his face; ain't it •svTitten 
 there ? Let him turn those eyes of his on 
 me. I defy him to do it." 
 
 The other, with an effort at a scornful 
 smile — which could not, however, collect 
 the nervous working of his mouth into any 
 set expression — looked at the soldiers, and 
 looked about at the marshes and at the sky, 
 but certainly did not look at the speaker. 
 
 " Do you see him ?" pursued my convict. 
 "Do you see what a villain he is ? Do you 
 see those grovelling and wandering eyes? 
 That's how he looked when we were tried 
 together. He never looked at me." 
 
 The other, always working and working 
 his dry lips and turning his eyes restlessly 
 about him far and near, did at last turn 
 them for a moment on the speaker, with the 
 words, "You are not much to look at," and 
 with a half-taunting glance at the bound 
 hands. At that point, my convict became
 
 GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 77 
 
 SO frantically exasperated, that he would 
 have rushed upon him but for [the interpo- 
 sition of the soldiers. " Didn't I tell you," 
 said the other convict then, " that he would 
 murder me, if he could?" And any one 
 could see that he shook with fear, and that 
 there broke out upon his lips, curious white 
 flakes, like thin snow, 
 
 " Enough of this parley," said the sergeant. 
 " Light those torches." 
 
 As one of the soldiers, who carried a basket 
 in lieu of a gun, went down on his knee to 
 open it, my convict looked round him for 
 the first time, and saw me. I had alighted 
 from Joe's back on the brink of the ditch 
 when we came up, and had not moved since. 
 I looked at him eagerly when he looked at 
 me, and slightly moved my hands and shook 
 my head. I had been Avaiting for him to 
 see me, that I might try to assure him of 
 my innocence. It was not at all expressed 
 to me that he even comprehended my in- 
 tention, for he gave me a look that I did 
 not understand, and it all passed in a mo- 
 ment. But if he had looked at me for an 
 hour or for a day, I could not have remem-
 
 78 GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 
 
 bered his face ever afterwards, as having 
 been more attentive. 
 
 The soldier with the basket soon got a 
 light, and lighted three or four torches, and 
 took one himself and distributed the others. 
 It had been almost dark before, but now it 
 seemed quite dark, and soon afterwards very 
 dark. Before we departed from that spot, 
 four soldiers standing in a ring, fired tmce 
 into the air. Presently we saw other torches 
 kindled at some distance behind us, and 
 others on the marshes on the opposite bank 
 of the river. " All right," said the sergeant. 
 " March." 
 
 We had not gone far when three cannon 
 were fired ahead of us with a sound that 
 seemed to burst something inside my ear. 
 "You are expected on board," said the 
 sergeant to my convict; "they know you 
 are coming. Don't straggle, my man. Close 
 up here." 
 
 The two were kept apart, and each walked 
 surrounded by a separate guard. I had hold 
 of Joe's hand now, and Joe carried one of 
 the torches. Mr. Wopsle had been for going 
 back, but Joe was resolved to see it out, so
 
 GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 79 
 
 we went on with the party. There was a 
 reasonably good path now, mostly on the 
 edge of the river, ^vith a divergence here 
 and there where a dyke came, with a minia- 
 ture windmill on it and a muddy sluice-gate. 
 When I looked round, I could see the other 
 lififhts comino; in after us. The torches we 
 carried, dropped great blotches of fire upon 
 the track, and I coidd see those, too, lymg 
 smoking and flaring. I coidd see nothing 
 else but black darkness. Our lights wanned 
 the air about us with their pitchy blaze, and 
 the two prisoners seemed rather to like that, 
 as they limped along in the midst of the 
 muskets. We could not go fast, because of 
 their lameness ; and they were so spent, that 
 two or three times we had to halt whde they 
 rested. 
 
 After an hour or so of this traveUincr, we 
 came to a rouorh wooden hut and a landins'- 
 place. There was a guard in the hut, and 
 they challenged, and the sergeant answered. 
 Then, we went into the hut where there was 
 a smell of tobacco and whitewash, and a 
 bright fire, and a lamp, 'and a stand of 
 muskets, and a drum, and a low wooden
 
 80 GREAT EXrECTATIOiNS. 
 
 bedstead, like an overgrown mangle without 
 the machinery, capable of holding about a 
 dozen soldiers all at once. Three or four 
 soldiers who lay upon it in their great-coats, 
 were not much interested in us, but just 
 lifted their heads and took a sleepy stare, 
 and then lay down again. The sergeant 
 made some kind of report, and some entry 
 in a book, and then the convict whom I call 
 the other convict was drafted off with his 
 guard, to go on board first. 
 
 My convict never looked at me, except 
 that once. While we stood in the hut, he 
 stood before the fire looking thoughtfully at 
 it, or putting up his feet by turns upon the 
 hob, and looking thoughtfully at them as if 
 he pitied them for their recent adventures. 
 Suddenly, he turned to the sergeant, and 
 remarked : 
 
 " I wish to say something respecting this 
 escape. It may prevent somejpersons laying 
 under suspicion alonger me." 
 
 " You can say what you like," returned 
 the sergeant, standing coolly looking at him 
 with his arms folded, "but you have no call 
 to say it here. You'll have opportunity
 
 GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 81 
 
 enough to say about it, and hear about it, 
 before it's done with, you know." 
 
 " I know, but this is another pint, a sepa- 
 rate matter. A man can't starve ; at least 
 / can't. I took some wittles, up at the 
 willage over yonder — where the church 
 stands a'most out on the marshes." 
 
 " You mean stole," said the sergeant. 
 
 "And rU tell you where from. From 
 the blacksmith's." 
 
 "Halloa!" said the sergeant, staring at 
 Joe. 
 
 " Halloa, Pip !" said Joe, staring at me. 
 
 " It was some broken wittles — that's what 
 it was — and a dram of liquor, and a pie." 
 
 "Have you happened to miss such an 
 article as a pie, blacksmith?" asked the 
 sergeant, confidentially. 
 
 "My Avnfe did, at the very moment when 
 you came in. Don't you know, Pip ?" 
 
 "So," said my convict, turning his eyes 
 on Joe in a moody manner, and mthout 
 the least glance at me; "so you're the 
 blacksmith, are you? Then Fm sorry to 
 say, I've eat your pie." 
 
 " God knows you're welcome to it — so far 
 
 VOL. I. G
 
 82 GREAT EXTECTATIOXS. 
 
 as it was ever mine," returned Joe, Avith a 
 saving remembrance of Mi*s. Joe. ''We 
 dont know what you have done, but we 
 wouldn't have you starved to death for it, 
 poor miserable fellow-creatur. — ^^Vould us, 
 Pip?" 
 
 The something that I had noticed before, 
 clicked in the man's throat again, and he 
 turned his back. The boat had returned, 
 and his guard were ready, so we followed 
 him to the landing-place made of rough 
 stakes and stones, and saw hun put into 
 the boat, which was rowed by a crew of 
 convicts like himself. No one seemed sur- 
 prised to see liim, or interested in seeing 
 him, or glad to see him, or sorry to see him, 
 or spoke a word, except that somebody in 
 the boat growled as if to dogs, '' Give way, 
 you !" which was the signal for the dip of 
 the oars. By the light of the torches, we 
 saw the black Hulk lying out a little way 
 from the mud of the shore, like a wicked 
 Noah's ark. Cribbed and barred and moored 
 by massive rusty chains, the prison-ship 
 seemed in my young eyes to be ironed like
 
 GEEAT EXPECTATIONS. 83 
 
 the prisoners. We saw the boat go along- 
 side, and we saw him taken up the side and 
 disappear. Then, the ends of the torches 
 were fluncr hissin^y into the water, and went 
 out, as if it were all over with him. 
 
 g2
 
 84 GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 
 
 CHAPTER VL 
 
 My state of mind regarding the pilfering 
 from which I had been so unexpectedly ex- 
 onerated, did not impel me to frank dis- 
 closure ; but I hope it had some dregs of 
 jrood at the bottom of it. 
 
 I do not recal that I felt any tenderness 
 of conscience in reference to Mrs. Joe, when 
 the fear of being found out was lifted off me. 
 But I loved Joe — perhaps for no better 
 reason in those early days than because the 
 dear fellow let me love him — and, as to him, 
 my inner self was not so easily composed. 
 It was much upon my mind (particularly 
 when I first saw him looking about for his 
 file) that I ought to tell Joe the whole truth.
 
 GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 85 
 
 Yet I did not, and for the reason that I mis- 
 trusted that if I did, he would think me 
 worse than I was. The fear of losing Joe's 
 confidence, and of thenceforth sitting in the 
 chimney corner at night staring drearily at 
 my for ever lost companion and friend, tied 
 up my tongue. I morbidly represented to 
 myself that if Joe knew it, I never after- 
 wards could see him at the fireside feeling 
 his fair whisker, without thinking that he 
 was meditating on it. That, if Joe knew it, 
 I never afterwards could see him glance, 
 however casually, at yesterday's meat or 
 pudding when it came on to-day's table, 
 without thinking that he was debating 
 whether I had been in the pantry. That, if 
 Joe knew it, and at any subsequent period 
 of our joint domestic life remarked that his 
 beer was flat or thick, the conviction that he 
 suspected Tar in it, would bring a rush of 
 blood to my face. In a word, I was too 
 cowardly to do what I knew to be right, as 
 I had been too cowardly to avoid doing what 
 I knew to be A\Tong. I had had no inter- 
 course with the world at that time, and I 
 imitated none of its many inhabitants who
 
 8G GREAT EXPECTATIOxNS. 
 
 act in this manner. • Quite an untaught 
 genius, I made the discovery of the line of 
 action for myself 
 
 As I was sleepy before we were far away 
 from the prison-ship, Joe took me on his back 
 again and carried me home. He must have 
 had a tiresome journey of it, for Mr. Wopsle, 
 being knocked up, was in such a very bad 
 temper that if the Church had been thrown 
 open, he would probably have excommuni- 
 cated the whole expedition, beginning ^\ith 
 Joe and myself. In his lay capacity, he per- 
 sisted in sitting doAvn in the damp to such 
 an insane extent, that when his coat was 
 taken off to be dried at the kitchen fire, the 
 circumstantial evidence on his trousers 
 would have hanged him if it had been a 
 capital offence. 
 
 By that time, I was staggering on the 
 kitchen floor like a little drunkard, through 
 having been newly set upon my feet, and 
 through having been fast asleep, and 
 through waking in the heat and lights and 
 noise of tongues. As I came to myself 
 (with the aid of a heavy thump between the 
 shoulders, and the restorative exclamation
 
 GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 87 
 
 '' Yah ! Was there ever such a boy as this !" 
 fi'om my sister), I found Joe telling them 
 about the convict's confession, and all the 
 visitors suggesting different ways by which 
 he had got into the pantry. Mr. Pumble- 
 chook made out, after carefully surveying 
 the premises, that he had first got upon the 
 roof of the forge, and had then got upon 
 the roof of the house, and had then let him- 
 self down the kitchen chimney by a rope 
 made of his bedding cut into strips ; and 
 as Mr. Pumblechook was very positive and 
 drove his o^vn chaise-cart — over everybody 
 — it was agreed that it must be so. Mr. 
 Wopsle, indeed, wildly cried out " No !" 
 with the feeble malice of a tired man ; but, 
 as he had no theory, and no coat on, he was 
 unanimously set at naught — not to mention 
 his smoking hard behind, as he stood with 
 his back to the kitchen fire to draw the 
 damp out : which was not calculated to in- 
 spire confidence. 
 
 This was all I heard that night before my 
 sister clutched me, as a slumberous offence 
 to the company's eyesiglit, and assisted me 
 up to bed mth such a strong hand that I
 
 88 GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 
 
 seemed to have fifty boots on, and to be 
 dangling them all against the edges of the 
 stairs. My state of mind, as I have de- 
 scribed it, began before I was up in the 
 morning, and lasted long after the subject 
 had died out, and had ceased to be men- 
 tioned saving on exceptional occasions.
 
 GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 89 
 
 CHAPTER VIL 
 
 At the time when I stood in the church- 
 yard, reading the family tombstones, I had 
 just enough learning to be able to spell them 
 out. My construction even of their simple 
 meaning was not very correct, for I read 
 *' wife of the Above" as a complimentary 
 reference to my father's exaltation to a better 
 world ; and if any one of my deceased rela- 
 tions had been referred to as " Below," I 
 have no doubt I should have formed the 
 worst opinions of that member of the family. 
 Neither, were my notions of the theological 
 positions to which my Catechism bound me, 
 at all accurate ; for, I have a lively remem- 
 brance that I supposed my declaration that
 
 90 GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 
 
 I was to "walk in the same all the days of 
 my life," laid me under an obligation always 
 to go through the village from our house in 
 one particular direction, and never to vary 
 it by turning do^Tn. by the wheelwright's or 
 up by the mill. 
 
 When I was old enough, I was to be ap- 
 prenticed to Joe, and until I could assume 
 that dignity I was not to be what Mrs. Joe 
 called " Pompeyed," or (as I render it) 
 pampered. Therefore, I was not only odd- 
 boy about the forge, but if any neighbour 
 happened to want an extra boy to frighten 
 bu'ds, or pick up stones, or do any such job, 
 I was favoured with the emplojnuent. In 
 order, however, that our superior position 
 might not be compromised thereby, a money- 
 box was kept on the kitchen mantelshelf, 
 into which it was publicly made kno^ni that 
 all my earnings were dropped. I have an 
 impression that they were to be contributed 
 eventually towards the liquidation of the 
 National Debt, but I know I had no hope of 
 any personal participation in the treasure. 
 
 Mr. Wopsle's great-aunt kept an evening 
 school in the viUage ; that is to say, she was
 
 GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 91 
 
 a ridiculous old woman of limited means 
 and unlimited infirmity, who used to go to 
 sleep from six to seven every evening, in 
 the society of youth who paid twopence per 
 week each, for the improving opportunity of 
 seeing her do it. She rented a small cottage, 
 and Mr. Wopsle had the room up-stairs, 
 where we students used to overhear him 
 reading aloud in a most dignified and ter- 
 rific manner, and occasionally bumping on 
 the ceiling. There was a fiction that Mr. 
 Wopsle " examined" the scholars, once a 
 quarter. What he did on those occasions, 
 was to turn up his cufiB, stick up his hair, 
 and give us Mark Antony's oration over the 
 body of Caesar. This was always followed 
 by Collins's Ode on the Passions, wherein I 
 particularly venerated Mr. Wopsle as Re- 
 venge, throwing his blood-stain'd sword in 
 thunder down, and taking the War de- 
 nouncing trumpet with a withering look. It 
 was not with me then, as it was in later 
 life, when I fell into the society of the 
 Passions, and compared them with Collins 
 and Wopsle, rather to the disadvantage of 
 both gentlemen.
 
 92 GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 
 
 Mr. Wopsle's great-aunt, besides keeping 
 this Educational Institution, kept — in the 
 same room — a little general shop. She had 
 no idea what stock she had, or what the 
 price of anything in it was ; but there was 
 a little greasy memorandum-book kept in 
 a drawer, which served as a Catalogue of 
 Prices, and by this oracle Biddy arranged 
 all the shop transactions. Biddy was Mr. 
 Wopsle's great-aunt's granddaughter ; I con- 
 fess myself quite unequal to the working- 
 out of the problem, what relation she was to 
 Mr. Wopsle. She was an orphan like myself; 
 like me, too, had been brought up by hand. 
 She was most noticeable, I thought, in re- 
 spect of her extremities ; for, her hair always 
 wanted brushing, her hands always wanted 
 washing, and her shoes always wanted mend- 
 ing and pulling up at heel. This descrip- 
 tion must be received with a week-day limi- 
 tation. On Sundays, she went to church 
 elaborated. 
 
 Much of my unassisted self, and more by 
 the help of Biddy than of Mr. Wopsle's 
 great-aunt, I struggled through the alphabet 
 as if it had been a bramble-bush ; getting
 
 GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 93 
 
 considerably worried and scratched by every 
 letter. After that, I fell among those thieves, 
 the nine figures, who seemed every evening 
 to do" something new to disguise themselves 
 and baffle recognition. But, at last I began, 
 in a purblind gi'oping way, to read, ^Tite, 
 and cipher, on the very smallest scale. 
 
 One night, I was sitting in the chimney 
 corner with my slate, expending great 
 efforts on the production of a letter to 
 Joe. I think it must have been a full year 
 after our hunt upon the marshes, for it 
 was a long time after, and it was mnter 
 and a hard frost. With an alphabet on the 
 hearth at my feet for reference, I contrived 
 in an hour or two to print and smear this 
 epistle : 
 
 " mI deEr jo i opE U r krWitE wEll 
 i opE i shAl soN, B haBelL 4 2 teeDge U 
 JO aN theN wE shOrl b sO glOdd aN 
 wEn i M preNgtD 2 u JO woT larX an 
 blEvE me inF xn PiP." 
 
 There was no indispensable necessity for 
 my communicating ^\dth Joe by letter, inas- 
 much as he sat beside me and we were 
 alone. But, I delivered this written com-
 
 94 GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 
 
 munication (slate and all) with my own 
 hand, and Joe received it as a miracle of 
 erudition. 
 
 " I say, Pip, old chap !" cried Joe, open- 
 ing his blue eyes wide, "what a scholar you 
 are ! An't you ?" 
 
 " I should like to be," said I, glancing at 
 the slate as he held it: with a misoivino; 
 that the writing was rather hilly. 
 
 "Why, here's a J," said Joe, "and a 
 equal to anjrthink ! Here's a J and a 0, Pip, 
 and a J-0, Joe." 
 
 I had never heard Joe read aloud to any 
 greater extent than this monosyllable, and I 
 had observed at church last Sunday Avhen I 
 accidentally held our Prayer-Book upside 
 down, that it seemed to suit his convenience 
 quite as well as if it had been all right. 
 Wishing to embrace the present occasion of 
 finding out whether in teaching Joe, I should 
 have to begin quite at the beginning, I said, 
 " Ah ! But read the rest, Joe." 
 
 " The rest, eh, Pip ?" said Joe, looking at 
 it with a slowly searching eye, " One, two, 
 three. Why, here's three Js, and three Os, 
 and three' J-0, Joes in it, Pip !"
 
 GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 95 
 
 I leaned over Joe, and, mtli the aid of 
 my forefinger, read him the whole letter, 
 
 " Astonishing !" said Joe, when I had 
 finished. " You aee a scholar." 
 
 "How do you spell Garger)-, Joe?" I 
 asked him, with a modest patronage. 
 
 " I don't spell it at all," said Joe. 
 
 " But supposing you did?" 
 
 " It carit be supposed," said Joe. " Tho' 
 I'm oncommon fond of reading, too." 
 
 "Are you, Joe?" 
 
 "On-common. Give me," said Joe, "a 
 good book, or a good newspaper, and sit me 
 doAvn afore a good fire, and I ask no better. 
 Lord !" he continued, after rubbing his 
 knees a little, "when you do come to a J 
 and a 0, and says you, ' Here, at last, is a 
 J-0, Joe,' how interesting reading is !" 
 
 I derived from this, that Joe's education, 
 like Steam, was yet in its infancy. Pursuing 
 the subject, I inquired : 
 
 " Didn't you ever go to school, Joe, when 
 you were as little as me ?" 
 
 " No, Pip." 
 
 " Why didn't you ever go to school, Joe, 
 when you were as little as me ?"
 
 96 GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 
 
 "Well, Pip," said Joe, taking up the 
 poker, and settling himself to his usual oc- 
 cupation when he was thoughtful, of slowly- 
 raking the fire between the lower bars : "I'll 
 tell you. My father, Pip, he were given to 
 drink, and when he were overtook with 
 drink, he hammered away at my mother, 
 most onmerciful. It were a'most the only 
 hammering he did, indeed, 'xcepting at my- 
 self And he hammered at me with a wigour 
 only to be equalled by the wigour with which 
 he didn't hammer at his anwil. — You're a 
 listening and understanding, Pip ?" 
 
 "Yes, Joe." 
 
 " 'Consequence, my mother and me we 
 ran away from my father, several times ; 
 and then my mother she'd go out to work, 
 and she'd say, '■ Joe,' she'd say, ' now, please 
 God, you shall have some schooling, child,' 
 and she'd put me to school. But my father 
 were that good in his hart that he couldn't 
 abear to be without us. So, he'd come with 
 a most tremenjous crowd and make such a 
 row at the doors of the houses where we was, 
 that they used to be obligated to have no 
 more to do with us and to give us up to
 
 GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 97 
 
 him. And then he took us home and 
 hammered us. Which, you see, Pip," said 
 Joe, pausing in his meditative raking of tlie 
 fire, and looking at me, " were a drawback 
 on my learning." 
 
 " Certainly, poor Joe !" 
 
 " Though mind you, Pip," said Joe, with 
 a judicial touch or two of the poker on the 
 top bar, " rendering unto all their doo, and 
 maintaining equal justice betwixt man and 
 man, my father were that good in his hart, 
 don't you see ?" 
 
 I didn't see ; but I didn't say so. 
 
 "Well!" Joe pursued, " somebody must 
 keep the pot a biUng, Pip, or the pot won't 
 bile, don't you know?" 
 
 I saw that, and said so. 
 
 " 'Consequence, my father didn't make 
 objections to my going to work ; so I went 
 to work at my present calling, which were 
 his too, if he would have followed it, and I 
 worked tolerable hard, I assure you, Pip. 
 In time I were able to keep him, and I kep 
 him till he went off in a purple leptic fit. 
 And it were my intentions to have had put 
 upon his tombstone that Whatsume'er the 
 
 VOL. I. H
 
 98 GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 
 
 failings on liis part, Remember reader he 
 were that good in his hart." 
 
 Joe recited this couplet with such manifest 
 pride and careful perspicuity, that I asked 
 him if he had made it himself ? 
 
 " I made it," said Joe, " my own self. I 
 made it in a moment. It was like strikinjr 
 out a horseshoe complete, in a single blow. 
 I never was so much surprised in all my life 
 — couldn't credit my own ed — to tell you 
 the truth, hardly believed it were my own 
 ed. As I was saying, Pip, it were my in- 
 tentions to have had it cut over him ; but 
 poetry costs money, cut it how you ^vill, 
 small or large, and it were not done. Not 
 to mention bearers, all the money that could 
 be spared were wanted for my mother. She 
 were in poor elth, and quite broke. She 
 weren't long of following, poor soul, and 
 her share of peace come round at last." 
 
 Joe's blue eyes turned a little watery ; he 
 rubbed, first one of them, and then the other, 
 in a most uncongenial and uncomfortable 
 manner, with the round knob on the to}) of 
 the poker. 
 
 " It were but lonesome then," said Joe,
 
 GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 99 
 
 " living here alone, and I got acquainted 
 with your sister. Now, Pip;" Joe looked 
 firmly at me, as if he knew I was not going 
 to agree with him; "your sister is a fine 
 figure of a woman," 
 
 I could not help looking at the fire, in an 
 obvious state of doubt. 
 
 " Whatever family opinions, or whatever 
 the world's opinions, on that subject may 
 be, Pip, your sister is," Joe tapped the top 
 bar with the poker after every word foUow- 
 ino-, " a — fine — fio-ure — of — a — woman !" 
 
 I could think of nothing better to say 
 than " I am glad you think so, Joe." 
 
 " So am I," returned Joe, catching me up. 
 " / am glad I think so, Pip. A little redness, 
 or a little matter of Bone, here or there, 
 what does it signify to Me ?" 
 
 I sagaciously observed, if it didn't signify 
 to him, to whom did it signify ? 
 
 "Certainly!" assented Joe. "That's it. 
 You're right, old chap ! When I got ac- 
 quainted with your sister, it were the talk 
 how she was bringing you up by hand. Very 
 kind of her too, all the folks said, and I said, 
 along -sWth all the folks. As to you," Joe 
 h2
 
 100 GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 
 
 pursued, with a countenance expressive of 
 seeing something very nasty indeed: "if 
 you could have been aware how small and 
 flabby and mean you was, dear me, you'd 
 have formed the most contemptible opinions 
 of yourself !" 
 
 Not exactly relishing this, I said, " Never 
 mind me, Joe." 
 
 " But I did mind you, Pip," he returned, 
 with tender simplicity. "When I offered to 
 your sister to keep company, and to be asked 
 in church at such times as she was willing 
 and ready to come to the forge, I said to 
 her, ' And bring the poor little child. God 
 bless the poor little child,' I said to your 
 sister, ' there's room for him at the forge !' " 
 
 I broke out crying and begging pardon, 
 and hugged Joe round the neck : who 
 dropped the poker to hug me, and to say, 
 " Ever the best of friends ; an't us, Pip ? 
 Don't cry, old chap !" 
 
 When this little interruption was over, 
 Joe resumed : 
 
 " Well, you see, Pip, and here we are ! 
 That's about where it lights ; here we are ! 
 Now, when you take me in hand in my
 
 GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 101 
 
 learning, Pip (and I tell you beforehand I 
 am a^vful dull, most awful dull), Mrs. Joe 
 mustn't see too much of what we're up to. 
 It must be done, as I may say, on the sly. 
 And why on the sly? I'll tell you why, 
 Pip." 
 
 He had taken up the poker again ; with- 
 out which, I doubt if he could have pro- 
 ceeded in his demonstration. 
 
 " Your sister is given to government." 
 
 "Given to government, Joe?" I was 
 startled, for I had some shadowy idea (and 
 I am afraid I must add, hope) that Joe had 
 divorced her in favour of the Lords of the 
 Admiralty, or Treasury. 
 
 ' ' Given to government, ' ' said Joe. " Which 
 I meantersay the government of you and my- 
 self." 
 
 " Oh !" 
 
 " And she an't over partial to having 
 scholars on the premises," Joe continued, 
 " and in partickler would not be over partial 
 to my being a scholar, for fear as I might 
 rise. Like a sort of rebel, don't you 
 see?" 
 
 I was going to retort with an inquiry, and
 
 102 GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 
 
 had got as far as "Why " "vvhen Joe 
 
 stopped me. 
 
 " Stay a bit. I know what you're a going 
 to say, Pip ; stay a bit ! I don't deny that 
 your sister comes the Mo-gul over us, now 
 and again. I don't deny that she do throw 
 us back-falls, and that she do drop do^wn 
 upon us heavy. At such times as when 
 your sister is on the Ram-page, Pip," Joe 
 sank his voice to a whisper and glanced at 
 the door, "candour compels fur to admit 
 that she is a Buster." 
 
 Joe pronounced this word, as if it began 
 with at least twelve capital Bs. 
 
 " Why don't I rise ? That were your ob- 
 servation when I broke it off, Pip ?" 
 
 "Yes, Joe." 
 
 " Well," said Joe, passing the poker into 
 his left hand, that he might feel his whisker ; 
 and I had no hope of him whenever he took 
 to that placid occupation ; " your sister's a 
 master-mind. A master-mind." 
 
 "What's that?" I asked, in some hope of 
 bringing him to a stand. But, Joe was 
 readier with his definition than I had ex- 
 pected, and completely stopped me by
 
 GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 103 
 
 arguing circularly, and answering with a 
 fixed look, "Her." 
 
 " And I an't a master-mind," Joe resumed, 
 when he had unfixed his look, and got back 
 to his whisker. " And last of all, Pip — and 
 this I want to say very serous to you, old 
 chap — I see so much in my poor mother, of 
 a woman drudoino; and slavino^ and break- 
 ing her honest hart and never getting no 
 peace in her mortal days, that I'm dead 
 afeerd of going wrong in the way of not 
 doing what's right by a woman, and I'd fur 
 rather of the two go wrong the t'other w^ay, 
 and be a little ill-conwenienced myself. I 
 wish it was only me that got put out, Pip ; 
 I wish there warn't no Tickler for you, old 
 chap ; I msh I could take it all on myself ; 
 but this is the up-and-down-and-straight on 
 it, Pip, and I hope you'll overlook short- 
 comings." 
 
 Young as I was, I believe that I dated a 
 new admiration of Joe from that night. We 
 were equals afterwards, as we had been 
 before ; but, afterwards at quiet times when 
 I sat looking at Joe and thinking about 
 him, I had a new sensation of feeling con-
 
 104 GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 
 
 scious that I was looking up to Joe in my 
 heart. 
 
 " However," said Joe, rising to replenish 
 the iire ; " here's the Dutch-clock a working 
 himself up to being equal to strike Eight of 
 'em, and she's not come home yet I I hope 
 Uncle Pumblechook's mare mayn't have set 
 a fore-foot on a piece o' ice, and gone 
 down." 
 
 Mrs. Joe made occasional trips with Uncle 
 Pumblechook on market-days, to assist him 
 in buying such household stuffs and goods 
 as required a woman's judgment ; Uncle 
 Pumblechook being a bachelor and reposing 
 no confidences in his domestic servant. This 
 was market-day, and Mrs. Joe was out on 
 one of these expeditions. 
 
 Joe made the fire and swept the hearth, 
 and then we went to the door to listen for 
 the chaise-cart. It was a dry cold nigh^ 
 and the wind blew keenly, and the frost was 
 white and hard. A man would die to-night 
 of lying out on the marshes, I thought. And 
 then I looked at the stars, and considered 
 how awful it would be for a man to turn 
 his face up to them as he froze to death, and
 
 GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 105 
 
 see no help or pity in all the glittering 
 multitude. 
 
 " Here comes the mare," said Joe, " ring- 
 ing like a peal of bells !" 
 
 The sound of her iron shoes upon the hard 
 road was quite musical, as she came along at 
 a much brisker trot than usual. We got a 
 chair out, ready for Mrs. Joe's alighting, and 
 stirred up the fire that they might see a 
 bright window, and took a final survey of 
 the kitchen that nothing might be out of its 
 place. When we had completed these pre- 
 parations, they drove up, wrapped to the 
 eyes. Mrs. Joe was soon landed, and Uncle 
 Pumblechook was soon down too, covering 
 the mare with a cloth, and we were soon all 
 in the kitchen, carrying so much cold air in 
 with us that it seemed to drive all the heat 
 out of the fire. 
 
 " Now," said Mrs. Joe, unwrapping her- 
 self with haste and excitement, and throw- 
 ing her bonnet back on her shoulders 
 where it hung by the strings : "if this 
 boy an't grateful this night, he never will 
 be!" 
 
 I looked as grateful as any boy possibly
 
 106 GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 
 
 could, who was wholly Tininformed why he 
 ought to assume that expression. 
 
 " It's only to be hoped," said my sister, 
 " that he won't be Pompeyed. But I have 
 my fears." 
 
 " She an't in that line, Mum," said Mr. 
 Pumblechook. " She knows better." 
 
 She ? I looked at Joe, making the motion 
 with my lips and eyebrows, " She ?" Joe 
 looked at me, making the motion with his 
 lips and eyebrows, "She?" My sister catch- 
 ing him in the act, he drew the back of his 
 hand across his nose with his usual con- 
 ciliatory air on such occasions, and looked 
 at her. 
 
 "Well?" said my sister, in her snappish 
 way. "What are you staring at? Is the 
 house a-fire ?" 
 
 " — Which some individual," Joe politely 
 hinted, "mentioned — she." 
 
 " And she is a she, I suppose ?" said my 
 sister. " Unless you call Miss Havisham a 
 he. And I doubt if even you'll go so far as 
 that." 
 
 "Miss Havisham, up town?" said Joe. 
 
 " Is there any Miss Havisham do^\Tl
 
 GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 107 
 
 town?" returned my sister, "She wants 
 this boy to go and play there. And of 
 course he's going. And he had better play 
 there," said my sister, shaking her head at 
 me as an encouragement to be extremely 
 light and sportive, "or I'll work him." 
 
 I had heard of Miss Havisham up town — 
 everybody for miles round, had heard of 
 Miss Havisham up to^Ti — as an immensely 
 rich and grim lady who lived in a large and 
 dismal house barricaded against robbers, 
 and who led a life of seclusion. 
 
 ' "Well to be sure!" said Joe, astounded. 
 " I wonder how she come to know Pip !" 
 
 "Noodle!" cried my sister. "^Tio said 
 she knew him ?" 
 
 " — Which some individual," Joe again 
 politely hinted, " mentioned that she wanted 
 him to go and play there." 
 
 "And couldn't she ask Uncle Pumble- 
 chook if he knew of a boy to go and play 
 there? Isn't it just barely possible that 
 Uncle Pumblechook may be a tenant of 
 hers, and that he may sometimes — we Avon't 
 say quarterly or half yearly, for that would 
 be requiring too much of you — but some-
 
 108 GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 
 
 times — go there to pay his rent? And 
 couldn't she then ask Uncle Purablechook 
 if he knew of a boy to go and play there ? 
 And couldn't Uncle Pumblechook, being 
 always considerate and thoughtful for us — 
 though you may not think it, Joseph," in a 
 tone of the deepest reproach, as if he were 
 the most callous of nephews, " then mention 
 this boy, standing Prancing here" — which 
 I solemnly declare I was not doing — "that 
 I have for ever been a willing slave to ?" 
 
 " Good again !" criedUncle Pumblechook. 
 "Well put! Prettily pointed! Good in- 
 deed! Now Joseph, you know the case." 
 
 " No, Joseph," said my sister, still in a re- 
 proachful manner, while Joe apologetically 
 drew the back of his hand across and across 
 his nose, " you do not yet — though you may 
 not think it — know the case. You may 
 consider that you do, but you do not, Joseph. 
 For you do not know that Uncle Pumble- 
 chook, being sensible that for anything we 
 can tell, this boy's fortune may be made by 
 his going to Miss Havisham's, has offered to 
 take him into town to-night in his own 
 chaise-cart, and to keep him to-night, and
 
 GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 109 
 
 to take him with his own hands to j\Iiss 
 Havisham's to-morrow morning. And Lor- 
 a-mussy me !" cried my sister, casting off 
 her bonnet in sudden desperation, "here I 
 stand talking to mere Mooncalfs, with Uncle 
 Pumblechook waiting, and the mare catch- 
 ing cold at the door, and the boy gi'imed 
 with crock and dirt from the hair of his 
 head to the sole of his foot !" 
 
 With that, she pounced upon me, like an 
 eagle on a lamb, and my face was squeezed 
 into wooden bowls in sinks, and my head 
 was put under taps of water-butts, and I 
 was soaped, and kneaded, and towelled, and 
 thumped, and harrowed, and rasped, until 
 I reaUy was quite beside myself. (I may 
 here remark that I suppose myself to be 
 better acquainted than any living authority, 
 with the ridgy effect of a wedding-ring, pass- 
 ing unsympathetically over the human coun- 
 tenance.) 
 
 When my ablutions were completed, I was 
 put into clean linen of the stiffest character, 
 like a young penitent into sackcloth, and was 
 trussed up in my tightest and fearfullest suit. 
 I was then delivered over to Mr. Pumble-
 
 110 GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 
 
 cliook, who formally received me as if he 
 were the Sheriff, and who let off upon me 
 the speech that I knew he had been dying 
 to make aU along : " Boy, be for ever grateful 
 to all friends, but especially unto them which 
 brought you up by hand !" 
 " Good-by, Joe !" 
 " Grod bless you, Pip, old chap !" 
 I had never parted from him before, and 
 what with my feelings and what with soap- 
 suds, I could at first see no stars from the 
 chaise-cart. But they twinkled out one by 
 one, without throwing an}" light on the 
 questions why on earth I was going to play 
 at Miss Havisham's, and what on eailh I 
 was expected to play at.
 
 GREAT EXPECTATIONS. Ill 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 Mb. Pu>iblechook's premises in the High- 
 street of the market to\\Ti, were of a pepper- 
 corny and farinaceous character, as the pre- 
 mises of a corn-chandler and seedsman should 
 be. It appeared to me that he must be a 
 very happy man indeed, to have so many 
 little drawers in hLs shop ; and I wondered 
 when I peeped into one or two on the lower 
 tiers, and saw the tied-up brown paper 
 packets inside, whether the flower-seeds and 
 bulbs ever wanted of a fine day to break 
 out of those jails, and bloom. 
 
 It was in the early morning after my 
 arrival that I entertained this speculation. 
 On the previous night, I had been sent
 
 112 GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 
 
 straight to bed in an attic with a sloping 
 roof, which was so low in the corner where 
 the bedstead was, that I calculated the tiles 
 as being within a foot of my eyebrows. In 
 the same early morning, I discovered a sin- 
 gular affinity between seeds and corduroys. 
 Mr. Pamblechook wore corduroys, and so 
 did his shopman ; and somehow, there Avas 
 a general air and flavour about the cordu- 
 roys, so much in the nature of seeds, and a 
 general air and flavour about the seeds, so 
 much in the nature of corduroys, that I 
 hardly knew which was which. The same 
 opportunity served me for noticing that Mr. 
 Pumblechook appeared to conduct his busi- 
 ness by looking across the street at the sad- 
 dler, who appeared to transact his business 
 by keeping his eye on the coachmaker, who 
 appeared to get on in life by putting his 
 hands in his pockets and contemplating the 
 baker, who in his turn folded his arms and 
 stared at the grocer, who stood at his door 
 and yawned at the chemist. The watch- 
 maker, always poring over a little desk with 
 a magnifying glass at his eye, and always 
 inspected by a group in smock-frocks poring
 
 GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 113 
 
 over him through the glass of his shop- 
 window, seemed to be about the only person 
 in the Hio-h-street whose trade engao^ed his 
 attention. 
 
 Mr. Pumblechook and I breakfasted at 
 eight o'clock in the parlour behind the shop, 
 while the shopman took his mug of tea and 
 hunch of bread-and-butter on a sack of peas 
 in the front premises. I considered Mr. 
 Pumblechook wretched company. Besides 
 being possessed by my sister's idea that a 
 mortifying and penitential character ought 
 to be imparted to my diet — besides giving 
 me as much crumb as possible in combina- 
 tion with as little butter, and putting such 
 a quantity of warm water into my milk that 
 it would have been more candid to have 
 left the milk out altogether — his conversa- 
 tion consisted of nothing but arithmetic. 
 On my politely bidding him Good morning, 
 he said, pompously, "Seven times nine, 
 boy !" And how should /be able to answer, 
 dodged in that way, in a strange place, on 
 an empty stomach ! I was hungry, but be- 
 fore I had swallowed a morsel, he began a 
 running sum that lasted all through the 
 
 VOL. I. I
 
 114 GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 
 
 breakfast. "Seven?" "And four?" "And 
 eight?" "And six?" "And two?" "And 
 ten ?" And so on. And after each figure 
 was disposed of, it was as much as I could 
 do to get a bite or a sup, before the next 
 came; while he sat at his ease guessing 
 nothing, and eating bacon and hot roll, in 
 (if I may be allowed the expression) a gorg- 
 ing and gormandising manner. 
 
 For such reasons, I was very glad when 
 ten o'clock came and we started for Miss 
 Havisham's ; though I was not at all at my 
 ease regarding the manner in which I should 
 acquit myself under that lady's roof. Within 
 a quarter of an hour we came to Miss Havi- 
 sham's house, which was of old brick, and 
 dismal, and had a gi'eat many iron bars to 
 it. Some of the windows had been walled 
 up ; of those that remained, all the lower 
 were rustily barred. There was a court- 
 yard in front, and that was barred ; so, we 
 had to wait, after ringing the bell, until 
 some one should come to open it. While 
 we waited at the gate, I peeped in (even 
 then Mr. Pumblechook said, " And four- 
 teen?" but I pretended not to hear him).
 
 GEEAT EXPECTATIONS. 115 
 
 and saw that at the side of the house there 
 was a large brewery. No brewing was going 
 on in it, and none seemed to have gone on 
 for a long long time. 
 
 A window was raised, and a clear voice 
 demanded "What name?" To which my 
 conductor replied, "Pumblechook." The 
 voice returned, "Quite right," and the 
 window was shut again, and a young lady 
 came across the court-yard, with keys in 
 her hand. 
 
 "This," said Mr. Pumblechook, "is Pip." 
 
 "This is Pip, is it?" returned the young- 
 lady, who was very pretty and seemed very 
 proud; " come in, Pip." 
 
 Mr. Pumblechook was coming in also, 
 when she stopped him mth the gate. 
 
 "Oh!" she said. "Did you wish to see 
 Miss Havisham?" 
 
 "If Miss Havisham wished to see me," 
 returned Mr. Pumblechook, discomfited. 
 
 "Ah!" said the girl; "but you see sh(3 
 don't." 
 
 She said it so finally, and in such an 
 undiscussible way, that Mr. Pumblechook, 
 though in a condition of rufiled dignity, 
 I 2
 
 116 GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 
 
 could not protest. But he eyed me severely 
 — as if / had done anything to him ! — and 
 departed with the words reproachfully de- 
 livered : " Boy ! Let your behaviour here 
 be a credit unto them which brought you 
 up by hand !" I was not free from appre- 
 hension that he would come back to pro- 
 pound through the gate, "And sixteen?" 
 But he didn't. 
 
 My young conductress locked the gate, 
 and we went across the court-yard. It was 
 paved and clean, but grass was growing in 
 every crevice. The brewery buildings had 
 a little lane of communication with it ; and 
 the wooden gates of that lane stood open, 
 and all the brewery beyond, stood open, 
 away to the high enclosing wall; and aU 
 was empty and disused. The cold wind 
 seemed to blow colder there, than outside 
 the ofate : and it made a shrill noise in 
 howling in and out at the open sides of the 
 brewery, like the noise of wind in the rigging 
 of a ship at sea. 
 
 She saw me looking at it, and she said, 
 "You could drink without hurt all the 
 strong beer that's brewed there now, boy."
 
 GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 117 
 
 " I should think I could, miss," said I, in 
 a shy way. 
 
 " Better not try to brew beer there now, 
 or it would turn out sour, boy ; don't you 
 think so?" 
 
 " It looks hke it, miss." 
 
 "Not that anybody means to try," she 
 added, "for that's all done with, and the 
 place will stand as idle as it is, tiU it falls. 
 As to strong beer, there's enough of it in 
 the cellars already, to drown the ]\Ianor 
 House." 
 
 " Is that the name of this house, miss ?" 
 
 " One of its names, boy." 
 
 "It has more than one, then, miss?" 
 
 " One more. Its other name was Satis ; 
 which is Greek, or Latin, or Hebrew, or all 
 three — or all one to me — for enough." 
 
 "Enough House," said I; "that's a cu- 
 rious name, miss." 
 
 "Yes," she replied; "but it meant more 
 than it said. It meant, when it was given, 
 that whoever had this house, could Avant 
 nothing else. They must have been easily 
 satisfied in those days, I should think. But 
 don't loiter, boy."
 
 118 GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 
 
 Though she called me "boy" so often, 
 and with a carelessness that was far from 
 complimentary, she was of about my own 
 age. She seemed much older than I, of 
 course, being a girl, and beautiful and self- 
 possessed; and she was as scornful of me 
 as if she had been one-and-twenty, and a 
 queen. 
 
 We went into the house by a side door 
 — the great front entrance had two chains 
 across it outside — and the first thing I no- 
 ticed was, that the passages were all dark, 
 and that she had left a candle burning there. 
 She took it up, and we went through more 
 passages and up a staircase, and still it was 
 aU dark, and only the candle lighted us. 
 
 At last we came to the door of a room, 
 and she said, " Go in." 
 
 I answered, more in shyness than polite- 
 ness, "After you, miss." 
 
 To this, she returned : " Don't be ridi- 
 culous, boy; I am not going in," And 
 scornfully walked away, and — what wag 
 worse — took the candle with her. 
 
 This was very uncomfortable, and I was 
 half afraid. However, the only thing to be
 
 GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 119 
 
 done being to knock at the door, I knocked, 
 and was told from -svithin to enter. I en- 
 tered, therefore, and found myself in a pretty 
 large room, well lighted with wax candles. 
 ISlo glimpse of daylight was to be seen in it. 
 It was a dressing-room, as I supposed from 
 the furniture, though much of it was of 
 forms and uses then quite unknown to me. 
 But prominent in it was a draped table 
 Avith a gilded looking-glass, and that I made 
 out at first sight to be a fine lady's dressing- 
 table. 
 
 Whether I should have made out this 
 object so soon, if there had been no fine 
 lady sitting at it, I cannot say. In an arm- 
 chair, with an elbow resting on the table 
 and her head leaning on that hand, sat the 
 strangest lady I have ever seen, or shall 
 ever see. 
 
 She was dressed in rich materials — satins, 
 and lace, and sdks — all of white. Her shoes 
 were white. And she had a lono; white veil 
 dependent from her hair, and she had bridal 
 flowers in her hair, but her hair was white. 
 Some bright jewels sparkled on her neck 
 and on her hands, and some other jewels
 
 120 GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 
 
 lay sparkling on the table. Dresses, less 
 splendid than the dress she wore, and half- 
 packed trunks, were scattered about. She 
 had not quite finished dressing, for she had 
 but one shoe on — the other was on the 
 table near her hand — her veil was but half 
 arranged, her watch and chain were not put 
 on, and some lace for her bosom lay with 
 those trinkets, and with her handkerchief, 
 and gloves, and some flowers, and a prayer- 
 book, all confusedly heaped about the look- 
 ing-glass. 
 
 It was not in the first moments that I saw 
 all these things, though I saw more of them 
 in the first moments than might be sup- 
 posed. But, I saw that everything within 
 my view which ought to be white, had been 
 white long ago, and had lost its lustre, and 
 was faded and yellow. I saw that the bride 
 ■within the bridal dress had withered like 
 the dress, and like the flowers, and had no 
 brio-htness left but the brio-htness of her 
 sunken eyes. I saw that the dress had 
 been put upon the rounded figure of a 
 young woman, and that the figure upon 
 Avhich it now hung loose, had shrunk to
 
 GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 121 
 
 skin and bone. Once, I had been taken to 
 see some ghastly wax- work at the Fair, re- 
 presenting I know not what impossible per- 
 sonage lying in state. Once, I had been 
 taken to one of our old marsh churches to 
 see a skeleton in the ashes of a rich dress, 
 that had been dug out of a vault under 
 the church pavement. Now, wax-work and 
 skeleton seemed to have dark eyes that 
 moved and looked at me. I should have 
 cried out, if I could. 
 
 "Who is it?" said the lady at the 
 table. 
 
 " Pip, ma'am." 
 
 "Pip?" 
 
 " Mr. Pumblechook's boy, ma'am. Come 
 — ^to play." 
 
 " Come nearer • let me look at you. Come 
 close." 
 
 It was when I stood before her, avoiding 
 her eyes, that I took note of the surround- 
 ing objects in detail, and saw that her watch 
 had stopped at twenty minutes to nine, and 
 that a clock in the room had stopped at 
 twenty minutes to nine. 
 
 " Look at me," said Miss Havisham. " You
 
 122 GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 
 
 are not afraid of a "woman who has never 
 seen the sun since you were bom ?" 
 
 I regret to state that I was not afraid of 
 telling the enormous lie comprehended in 
 the answer " No." 
 
 "Do you know what 1 touch here ?" she 
 said, laying her hands, one upon the other, 
 on her left side. 
 
 " Yes, ma'am." (It made me think of the 
 young man.) 
 
 "What do I touch?" 
 
 " Your heart." 
 
 " Broken !" 
 
 She uttered the word with an eager look, 
 and with strong emphasis, and with a weird 
 smile that had a kind of boast in it. After- 
 wards, she kept her hands there for a little 
 while, and slowly took them away as if they 
 were heavy. 
 
 " I am tired," said Miss Havisham. " I 
 want diversion, and I have done mth men 
 and women. Play." 
 
 I think it will be conceded by my most 
 disputatious reader, that she could hardly 
 have directed an unfortunate boy to do any-
 
 GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 123 
 
 thins: in the wide world more difficult to be 
 done under the circumstances. 
 
 " I sometimes have sick fancies," she went 
 on, " and I have a sick fancy that I want to 
 see some play. There, there !" with an im- 
 patient movement of the fingers of her right 
 hand ; " play, play, play !" 
 
 For a moment, with the fear of my sister's 
 working me before my eyes, I had a despe- 
 rate idea of starting round the room in the 
 assumed character of Mr. Pumblechook's 
 chaise-cart. But, I felt myself so unequal to 
 the performance that I gave it up, and stood 
 looking at Miss Havisham in what I suppose 
 she took for a dogged manner, inasmuch as 
 she said, when we had taken a good look at 
 each other : 
 
 " Are you sullen and obstinate ?" 
 
 " No, ma'am, I am very sorry for you, and 
 very sorry I can't play just now. If you 
 complain of me I shall get into trouble mth 
 my sister, so I would do it if I could ; but 
 it's so new here, and so strange, and so fine 
 
 — and melancholy " I stopped, fearing 
 
 I might say too much, or had already said
 
 124 GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 
 
 if, and we took another look at each 
 other. 
 
 Before she spoke again, she turned her 
 eyes from me, and looked at the dress she 
 wore, and at the dressing-table, and finally 
 at herself in the looking-glass. 
 
 " So new to him," she muttered, " so old 
 to me ; so strange to him, so familiar to 
 me ; so melancholy to both of us ! Call 
 EsteUa." 
 
 As she was still looking at the reflexion of 
 herself, I thought she was still talking to 
 herself, and kept quiet. 
 
 " Call Estella," she repeated, flashing a 
 look at me. " You can do that. Call 
 Estella. At the door," 
 
 To stand in the dark in a mysterious pas- 
 sage of an unkno^m house, bawling Estella 
 to a scornful young lady neither visible nor 
 responsive, and feeling it a dreadful liberty 
 so to roar out her name, was almost as bad 
 as playing to order. But, she answered at 
 last, and her light came along the long dark 
 passage like a star. 
 
 Miss Havisham beckoned her to come 
 close, and took up a jewel from the table,
 
 GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 125 
 
 and tried its eiFect upon her fair young 
 bosom and against her pretty bro^vn hair. 
 "Your own, one day, my dear, and you 
 will use it well. Let me see you play cards 
 with this boy." 
 
 "With this boy ! Why, he is a common 
 labouring-boy !" 
 
 I thought I overheard Miss Havisham 
 answer — only it seemed so unlikely — 
 " Well ? You can break his heart." 
 
 "What do you play, boy?" asked Estella 
 of myself, with the greatest disdain. 
 
 " Nothing but beggar my neighbour, 
 miss." 
 
 " Beggar him," said Miss Havisham to 
 Estella. So we sat down to cards. 
 
 It was then I began to understand that 
 everything in the room had stopped, like 
 the watch and the clock, a long time ago. I 
 noticed that Miss Havisham put do-svn the 
 jewel exactly on the spot from which she 
 had taken it up. As Estella dealt the cards, 
 I glanced at the dressing-table again, and 
 saw that the shoe upon it, once white, now 
 yellow, had never been worn. I glanced 
 down at the foot from which the shoe was
 
 126 GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 
 
 absent, and saw that the silk stocking on it, 
 once white, now yellow, had been trodden 
 ragged. Without this arrest of everything, 
 this standing still of all the pale decayed 
 objects, not even the withered bridal dress 
 on the collapsed form could have looked so 
 like grave-clothes, or the long veil so like a 
 shroud. 
 
 So she sat, corpse-like, as we played at 
 cards; the friUings and trinunings on her 
 bridal dress, looking like earthy paper. I 
 knew nothing then, of the discoveries that 
 are occasionally made of bodies buried in 
 ancient times, which fall to powder in the 
 moment of being distinctly seen ; but, I have 
 often thought since, that she must have 
 looked as if the admission of the natural 
 light of day would have struck her to dust. 
 
 "He calls the knaves. Jacks, this boy!" 
 said E Stella mth disdain, before our first 
 game was out. " And what coarse hands he 
 has. And what thick boots !" 
 
 I had never thought of being ashamed of 
 my hands before; but I began to consider 
 them a very indifferent pair. Her contempt
 
 GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 127 
 
 was SO strong, that it became infectious, and 
 I caught it. 
 
 She won the game, and I dealt. I mis- 
 dealt, a;S was only natural, when I knew she 
 was lying in wait for me to do ^vi^ong ; and 
 she denounced me for a stupid, clumsy 
 labouring-boy. 
 
 " You say nothing of her," remarked Miss 
 Havisham to me, as she looked on. " She 
 says many hard things of you, but you say 
 nothing of her. Wliat do you think of 
 her?" 
 
 " I don't like to say," I stammered. 
 
 " Tell me in my ear," said Miss Havisham, 
 bending down. 
 
 " I think she is very proud," I replied, in 
 a whisper. 
 
 "Anything else?" 
 
 " I think she is very pretty." 
 
 "Anything else?" 
 
 "I think she is very insulting." (She 
 was looking at me then, mth a look of 
 supreme aversion.) 
 
 " Anything else ?" 
 
 " I think I should like to go home."
 
 128 GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 
 
 "And never sec her again, though she is 
 so pretty ?" 
 
 " I am not sure that I shouldn't like to 
 see her again, but I should like to go home 
 now." 
 
 "You shall go soon," said Miss Havisham, 
 aloud. " Play the game out." 
 
 Saving for the one weird smile at first, I 
 should have felt almost sure that Miss Havi- 
 sham's face could not smile. It had dropped 
 into a watchful and brooding expression — 
 most likely when all the things about her 
 had become transfixed — and it looked as if 
 nothing could ever lift it up again. Her 
 chest had dropped, so that she stooped ; and 
 her voice had dropped, so that she spoke 
 low, and with a dead lull upon her ; alto- 
 gether, she had the appearance of having 
 dropped, body and soul, within and without, 
 under the weight of a crushing blow. 
 
 I played the game to an end with Estella, 
 and she beggared me. She threw the cards 
 down on the table when she had won them 
 all, as if she despised them for having been 
 won of me.
 
 GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 129 
 
 "When shall I have you here agam?" 
 said Miss Havisham. " Let me think." 
 
 I was beginning to remind her that to- 
 day was Wednesday, when she checked me 
 with her former impatient movement of the 
 fingers of her right hand. 
 
 " There, there ! I know nothing of days 
 of the week; I know nothing of Aveeks of 
 the year. Come again after six days. You 
 hear ?" 
 
 "Yes, ma'am." 
 
 " Estella, take him down. Let him have 
 something to eat, and let him roam and 
 look about him while he eats. Go, Pip." 
 
 I followed the candle down, as I had fol- 
 lowed the candle up, and she stood it in the 
 place where we had found it. Until she 
 opened the side entrance, I had fancied, 
 without thinking about it, that it must 
 necessarily be night-time. The rush of the 
 daylight quite confounded me, and made 
 me feel as if I had been in the candlelight 
 of the strange room many hours. 
 
 "You are to wait here, you boy," said 
 Estella; and disappeared and closed the 
 door. 
 
 VOL, I. K
 
 130 GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 
 
 I took the opportunity of being alone in 
 the court-yard, to look at my coarse hands 
 and my common boots. My opinion of 
 those accessories was not favourable. They 
 had never troubled me before, but they 
 troubled me now, as vulgar appendages. I 
 determined to ask Joe why he had ever 
 taught me to call those picture-cards, Jacks, 
 which ought to be called knaves. I wished 
 Joe had been rather more genteelly brought 
 up, and then I should have been so too. 
 
 She came back, with some bread and 
 meat and a little mug of beer. She put the 
 mug down on the stones of the yard, and 
 gave me the bread and meat without look- 
 ing at me, as insolently as if I were a dog in 
 disgrace. I was so humiliated, hurt, spurned, 
 offended, angry, sorry — I cannot hit upon 
 the risht name for the smart — God knows 
 what its name was — ^that tears started to my 
 eyes. The moment they sprang there, the 
 girl looked at me with a quick delight in 
 having been the cause of them. This gave 
 me power to keep them back and to look at 
 her : so, she gave a contemj^tuous toss — but 
 with a sense, I thought, of having made
 
 GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 131 
 
 too sure that I was so wounded — and left 
 me. 
 
 But, when she was gone, I looked about 
 me for a place to hide my face in, and got 
 behind one of the gates in the brewery-lane, 
 and leaned my sleeve against the wall there, 
 and leaned my forehead on it and cried. As 
 I cried, I kicked the wall, and took a hard 
 twist at my hair ; so bitter were my feelings, 
 and so sharp was the smart without a name, 
 that needed counteraction. 
 
 My sister's bringing up had made me 
 sensitive. In the little world in which 
 children have their existence whosoever 
 brings them up, there is nothing so finely 
 perceived and so finely felt, as injustice. It 
 may be only small injustice that the child 
 can be exposed to; but the child is small, 
 and its world is small, and its rocking-horse 
 stands as many hands high, according to 
 scale, as a big-boned Irish hunter. Within 
 myself, I had sustained, from my babyhood, 
 a perpetual conflict -with injustice. I had 
 known, from the time when I could speak, 
 that my sister, in her capricious and violent 
 coercion, was unjust to me. I had cherished 
 K 2
 
 132 GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 
 
 a profound conviction that her bringing me 
 up by hand, gave her no right to bring me 
 up by jerks. Through all my punishments, 
 disgraces, fasts and vigils, and other peni- 
 tential performances, I had nursed this as- 
 surance ; and to my communing so much 
 with it, in a solitary and unprotected way, I 
 in great part refer the fact that I was morally 
 timid and very sensitive. 
 
 I got rid of my injured feelings for the 
 time, by kicking them into the brewery 
 wall, and twisting them out of my hair, and 
 then I smoothed my face with my sleeve, 
 and came from behind the gate. The bread 
 and meat were acceptable, and the beer Avas 
 warming and tingling, and I was soon in 
 spirits to look about me. 
 
 To be sure, it was a deserted place, down 
 to the pigeon-house in the brewery-yard, 
 which had been blown crooked on its pole 
 by some high wind, and would have made 
 the pigeons think themselves at sea, if there 
 had been any pigeons there to be rocked by 
 it. But, there were no pigeons in the dove- 
 cot, no horses in the stable, no pigs in the 
 sty, no malt in the storehouse, no smells of
 
 GllEAT EXPECTATIONS. 133 
 
 grains and beer in the copper or the vat. 
 All the uses and scents of the brewery- 
 might have evaporated with its last reek of 
 smoke. In a by-yard, there was a wilder- 
 ness of empty casks, which had a certain 
 sour remembrance of better days lingering 
 about them ; but it was too sour to be ac- 
 cepted as a sample of the beer that was 
 gone — and in this respect I remember those 
 recluses as being like most others. 
 
 Behind the furthest end of the brewery, 
 was a rank garden with an old wall : not so 
 high but that I could struggle up and hold 
 on long enough to look over it, and see that 
 the rank garden was the garden of the 
 house, and that it was overgro^\ai with 
 tangled weeds, but that there was a track 
 upon the green and yellow paths, as if some 
 one sometimes walked there, and that 
 Estella was walking aAvay from me even 
 then. But she seemed to be everywhere. 
 For, when I yielded to the temptation pre- 
 sented by the casks, and began to walk on 
 them, I saw her walking on them at the end of 
 the 3^ard of casks. She had her back towards 
 me, and held her pretty brown hair spread
 
 134 GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 
 
 out in her tAvo hands, and never looked 
 round, and passed out of my view directly. 
 So, in the brewery itself — ^by which I mean 
 the large paved lofty place in which they 
 used to make the beer, and where the brew- 
 ing utensils still were. When I first went 
 into it, and, rather oppressed by its gloom, 
 stood near the door looking about me, I saw 
 her pass among the extinguished fires, and 
 ascend some light iron stairs, and go out by 
 a gallery high overhead, as if she were going 
 out into the sky. 
 
 It was in this place, and at this moment, 
 that a strange thing happened to my fancy. 
 I thought it a strange thing then, and I 
 thought it a stranger thing long afterwards. 
 I turned my eyes — a little dimmed by look- 
 ing up at the frosty light — towards a great 
 wooden beam in a low nook of the building 
 near me on my right hand, and I saw a 
 figure hanging there by the neck. A figure 
 all in yellow white, ^Yit[l but one shoe to the 
 feet ; and it hung so, that I could see that 
 the faded trimmings of the dress were like 
 earthy paper, and that the face was Miss 
 Havisham's, with a movement going over
 
 GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 135 
 
 the whole countenance as if she were trying 
 to call to me. In the terror of seeing the 
 figure, and in the terror of being certain 
 that it had not been there a moment before, 
 I at first ran from it, and then ran towards 
 it. And my terror Avas gTeatest of all, when 
 I found no figure there. 
 
 Nothing less than the frosty light of the 
 cheerful sky, the sight of people passing 
 beyond the bars of the court-yard gate, and 
 the reviving influence of the rest of the 
 bread and meat and beer, would have 
 brought me round. Even with those aids, 
 I might not have come to myself as soon as 
 I 'did, but that I saw Estella approaching 
 with the keys, to let me out. She would 
 have some fair reason for looking down upon 
 me, I thought, if she saw me frightened ; 
 and she should have no fair reason. 
 
 She gave me a triumphant glance in 
 passing me, as if she rejoiced that my hands 
 were so coarse and my boots were so thick, 
 and she opened the gate, and stood holding 
 it. I was passing out Avithout looking at 
 her, when she touched me with a taunting 
 hand.
 
 136 GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 
 
 " Why don't rou cry ?" 
 
 " Because I don't want to." 
 
 *' You do," said she. " You have been 
 crying till you are half blind, and you are 
 near crying again now." 
 
 She laughed contemptuously, pushed me 
 out, and locked the gate upon me. I went 
 straight to Mr. Pumblechook's, and was im- 
 mensely relieved to find him not at home. 
 So, leaving word with the shopman on what 
 day I was wanted at Miss Havisham's 
 again, I set off on the four-mile walk to our 
 forge ; pondering, as I went along, on all I 
 had seen, and deeply revolving that I was a 
 common labouring-boy; that my hands were 
 coarse, that my boots Avere thick ; that I 
 had fallen into a despicable habit of calling 
 knaves Jacks ; that I was much more igno- 
 rant than I had considered myself last night, 
 and o;enerallv that I was in a low-lived bad 
 way.
 
 GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 137 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 When I reached home, my sister was 
 very curious to know all about Miss Ha- 
 visham's, and asked a number of questions. 
 And I soon found myself getting heavily 
 bumped from behind in the nape of the 
 neck and the small of the back, and ha\dng 
 my face ignominiously shoved against the 
 kitchen wall, because I did not answer those 
 questions at sufficient length. 
 
 If a dread of not being understood be 
 hidden in the breasts of other young people 
 to anything like the extent to which it used 
 to be hidden in mine — which I consider 
 probable, as I have no particular reason to 
 suspect myself of having been a monstrosity
 
 138 GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 
 
 — it is the key to many reservations. I felt 
 convinced that if I described Miss Ha- 
 visham's as my eyes had seen it, I should 
 not be understood. Not only that, but I 
 felt convinced that Miss Havisham too 
 would not be understood ; and although she 
 was perfectly incomprehensible to me, I 
 entertained an impression that there would 
 be something coarse and treacherous in my 
 dragging her as she really was (to say no- 
 thing of Miss Estella) before the contempla- 
 tion of Mrs. Joe. Consequently, I said as 
 little as I could, and had my face shoved 
 a2:ainst the kitchen wall. 
 
 The worst of it was that that bullying old 
 Pumblechook, preyed upon by a devouring 
 curiosity to be informed of all I had seen 
 and heard, came gaping over in his chaise- 
 cart at tea-time, to have the details divulged 
 to him. And the mere sight of the torment, 
 with his fishy eyes and mouth open, his 
 sandy hair inquisitively on end, and his 
 waistcoat heaving with windy arithmetic, 
 made me vicious in my reticence. 
 
 " Well, boy," Uncle Pumblechook began, 
 as soon as he was seated in the chair of
 
 GEEAT EXPECTATIONS. 139 
 
 honour by the fire. " How did you get on 
 up town ?" 
 
 I answered, " Pretty well, sir," and my 
 sister shook her fist at me. 
 
 " Pretty weU ?" Mr. Pumblechook re- 
 peated. " Pretty well is no answer. Tell 
 us what you mean by pretty well, boy ?" 
 
 Whitewash on the forehead hardens the 
 brain into a state of obstinacy perhaps. 
 Anyhow, with whitewash from the wall on 
 my forehead, my obstinacy was adamantine. 
 I reflected for some time, and then answered 
 as if I had discovered a new idea, " I mean 
 pretty well." 
 
 My sister with an exclamation of im- 
 patience was going to fly at me — I had no 
 shadow of defence, for Joe was busy in the 
 forge — when Mr. Pumblechook interposed 
 with " No ! Don't lose your temper. Leave 
 this lad to me, ma'am ; leave this lad to me." 
 Mr. Pumblechook then turned me towards 
 him, as if he were going to cut my hair, and 
 said : 
 
 " First (to get our thoughts in order) : 
 Forty-three pence ?" 
 
 I calculated the consequences of replying
 
 140 GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 
 
 " Four Hundred Pound," and finding them 
 against me, went as near the answer as I 
 could — which Avas somewhere about eight- 
 pence off. Mr. Pumblechook then put me 
 through my pence-table from " twelve pence 
 make one shilling," up to " forty pence make 
 three and fourpence," and then triumphantly 
 demanded, as if he had done for me, '"''Now! 
 How much is forty-three pence ?" To which 
 I replied, after a long interval of reflection, 
 " I don't know." And I was so aggravated 
 that I almost doubt if I did know. 
 
 Mr. Pumblechook worked his head like a 
 screw to screw it out of me, and said, " Is 
 forty-three pence seven and sixpence three 
 fardens, for instance ?" 
 
 " Yes !" said I. And although my sister 
 instantly boxed my ears, it was highly 
 gratifying to me to see that the answer 
 spoilt his joke, and brought him to a dead 
 stop. 
 
 " Boy ! What like is Miss Havisham ?" 
 Mr. Pumblechook began again when he had 
 recovered ; folding his arms tight on his 
 chest and applying the screw. 
 
 " Very tall and dark," I told him.
 
 GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 141 
 
 " Is she, uncle?" asked my sister. 
 
 Mr. Pumblechook winked assent ; from 
 which I at once inferred that he had never 
 seen Miss Havisham, for she was nothing of 
 the kind. 
 
 " Good !" said Mr. Pumblechook, con- 
 ceitedly. (" This is the way to have him ! 
 We are beginning to hold our own, I think. 
 Mum?") 
 
 " I am sure, uncle," returned Mrs. Joe, 
 " I wish you had him always : you know" so 
 weU how to deal with him." 
 
 " NoWj^oy ! What was she a doing of, 
 when you went in to-day ?" asked Mr. Pum- 
 blechook. 
 
 " She was sitting," I answered, " in a 
 black velvet coach." 
 
 Mr. Pumblechook and Mrs. Joe stared at 
 one another — as they well might — and both 
 repeated, "In a black velvet coach?" 
 
 " Yes," said I. " And Miss EsteUa— 
 that's her niece, I think — handed her in cake 
 and wine at the coach-window, on a gold 
 plate. And we all had cake and wine on 
 gold plates. And I got up behind the coach 
 to eat mine, because she told me to."
 
 142 GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 
 
 " Was anybody else there ?" asked Mr. 
 Pumblechook. 
 
 " Four dogs," said I. 
 
 " Large or small?" 
 
 " Immense," said I. " And they fought 
 for veal cutlets out of a silver basket." 
 
 Mr. Pumblechook and Mrs. Joe stared at 
 one another again, in utter amazement. I 
 was perfectly frantic — a reckless mtness 
 under the torture — and would have told 
 them anything. 
 
 " Where was this coach, in the name of 
 gracious ?" asked my sister. * 
 
 " In Miss Havisham's room." They stared 
 again. " But there weren't any horses to 
 it." I added this saving clause, in the 
 moment of rejecting four richly caparisoned 
 coursers which I had had wild thoughts of 
 harnessing. 
 
 " Can this be possible, uncle ?" asked 
 Mrs. Joe. " What can the boy mean ?" 
 
 " I'll tell you. Mum," said Mr. Pumble- 
 chook. " My opinion is, it's a sedan-chair. 
 She's flighty, you know — very flighty — 
 quite flighty enough to pass her days in a 
 sedan-chair."
 
 GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 143 
 
 " Did you ever see her in it, uncle ?" 
 asked Mrs. Joe. 
 
 " How could I ?" he returned, forced to 
 the admission, " when I never see her in my 
 life ? ^ever clapped eyes upon her !" 
 
 " Goodness, uncle! And yet you have 
 spoken to her?" 
 
 " Why, don't you know," said Mr. Pum- 
 blechook, testily, "that when I have been 
 there, I have been took up to the outside of 
 her door, and the door has stood ajar, and 
 she has spoke to me that way. Don't say 
 you don't know that^ Mum. Howsever, the 
 boy went there to play. What did you play 
 at, boy?" 
 
 " We played with flags," I said. (I beg 
 to observe that I think of myself with 
 amazement, when I recal the lies I told on 
 this occasion.) 
 
 " Flags !" echoed my sister. 
 
 " Yes," said I. " Estella waved a blue 
 flag, and I waved a red one, and Miss Ha- 
 visham waved one sprinkled all over with 
 little gold stars, out at the coach-window. 
 And then we all waved our swords and hur- 
 rahed."
 
 144 GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 
 
 " Swords !" repeated my sister. " Where 
 did you get swords from ?" 
 
 " Out of a cupboard," said I. "And I 
 saw pistols in it — and jam — and pills. And 
 there was no daylight in the room, but it 
 was all lighted up with candles." 
 
 " That's true, Mum," said Mr. Pumble- 
 chook, with a grave nod. " That's the state 
 of the case, for that much I've seen myself." 
 And then they both stared at me, and I, 
 w^ith an obtrusive show of artlessness on my 
 countenance, stared at them, and plaited 
 the right leg of my trousers with my right 
 hand. 
 
 If they had asked me any more questions 
 I should undoubtedly have betrayed myself, 
 for I was even then on the point of men- 
 tioning that there was a balloon in the yard, 
 and should have hazarded the statement but 
 for my invention being divided between that 
 phenomenon and a bear in the brewery. 
 They were so much occupied, however, in 
 discussing the marvels I had already pre- 
 sented for their consideration, that I es- 
 caped. The subject still held them when 
 Joe came in from his work to have a cup of
 
 GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 145 
 
 tea. To whom my sister, more for the relief 
 of her own mind than for the gratification 
 of his, related my pretended experiences. 
 
 Now, when I saw Joe open his blue eyes 
 and roll them all round the kitchen in help- 
 less amazement, I was overtaken by peni- 
 tence; but only as regarded him — not in 
 the least as regarded the other two. To- 
 wards Joe, and Joe only, I considered my- 
 self a young monster, while they sat de- 
 batino- what results would come to me from 
 Miss Havisham's acquaintance and favour. 
 They had no doubt that Miss Havisham 
 would " do something" for me ; their doubts 
 related to the form that something would 
 take. My sister stood out for "property." 
 Mr. Pumblechook was in favour of a hand- 
 some premium for binding me apprentice to 
 some genteel trade — say, the corn and seed 
 trade, for instance. Joe fell into the deepest 
 disgrace Avith both, for offering the bright 
 suggestion that I might only be presented 
 with one of the do";s who had fouo-ht for 
 the veal-cutlets. " If a fool's head can't ex- 
 press better opinions than that," said my 
 sister, " and you have got any Avork to do, 
 
 VOL. I. L
 
 14 G GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 
 
 you had better go and do it." So he 
 went. 
 
 After Mr. Pumblechook had driven oflf, 
 and when my sister was washing up, I stole 
 into the forge to Joe, and remained by him 
 until he had done for the night. Then I 
 said, " Before the fire goes out, Joe, I should 
 like to tell you something." 
 
 " Should you, Pip ?" said Joe, drawing 
 his shoeing-stool near the forge. " Then tell 
 us. What is it, Pip ?" 
 
 " Joe," said I, taking hold of his rolled- 
 up shirt sleeve, and twisting it between my 
 finger and thumb, you remember all that 
 about Miss Havisham's ?" 
 
 " Remember ?" said Joe. " I believe you ! 
 Wonderful !" 
 
 " It's a terrible thing, Joe ; it ain't true." 
 
 " "WTiat are you telling of, Pip ?" cried 
 Joe, falling back in the greatest amazement. 
 " You don't mean to say it's " 
 
 " Yes I do ; it's lies, Joe." 
 
 " But not all of it ? Why sure you don't 
 mean to say, Pip, that there was no black 
 
 welwet CO eh ?" For, I stood shaking 
 
 my head. '' But at least there was dogs.
 
 GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 147 
 
 Pip. Come, Pip," said Joe, persuasively, 
 " if there warn't no Aveal- cutlets, at least 
 there was dogs ?" 
 
 " No, Joe." 
 
 "J. dog?" said Joe. "'A puppy? 
 Come?" 
 
 " No, Joe, there was nothing at all of the 
 kind." 
 
 As I fixed my eyes hopelessly on Joe, Joe 
 contemplated me in dismay. " Pip, old 
 chap ! This won't do, old fellow ! I say ! 
 Where do you expect to go to?" 
 
 " It's terrible, Joe ; an'tit?" 
 
 " Terrible ?" cried Joe. "Awful! What 
 possessed you?" 
 
 " I don't know what possessed me, Joe," 
 I rephed, letting his shirt sleeve go, and 
 sitting do^\ll in the ashes at his feet, hang- 
 ing my head ; " but I wish you hadn't 
 taught me to call Knaves at cards. Jacks ; 
 and I wish my boots weren't so thick nor 
 my hands so coarse." 
 
 And then I told Joe that I felt very 
 
 miserable, and that I hadn't been able to 
 
 explain myself to Mrs. Joe and Pumblc- 
 
 chook who were so rude to me, and that 
 
 l2
 
 148 GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 
 
 there had been a beautiful young lady at 
 Miss Havisham's who was dreadfully proud, 
 and that she had said I was common, and 
 that I knew I was common, and that I 
 wished I was not common, and that the lies 
 had come of it somehow, though I didn't 
 know how. 
 
 This was a case of metaphj^sics, at least as 
 difficult for Joe to deal with, as for me. 
 But Joe took the case altogether out of the 
 region of metaphysics, and by that means 
 vanquished it. 
 
 " There's one thing you may be sure of, 
 Pip," said Joe, after some rumination, 
 " namely, that lies is lies. Howsever they 
 come, they didn't ought to come, and they 
 come from the father of lies, and work round 
 to the same. Don't you tell no more of 'em, 
 Pip. That ain't the way to get out of being 
 common, old chap. And as to being common, 
 I don't make it out at all clear. You are on- 
 common in some things. You're oncommon 
 small. Likewise you're a oncommon scholar." 
 
 "No, I am ignorant and backward, Joe." 
 
 " Why, see what a letter you wrote last 
 niglit. Wrote in print even ! I've seen
 
 GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 149 
 
 letters — Ah ! and from gentlefolks ! — that 
 I'll swear weren't wrote in print," said 
 Joe. 
 
 " I have learnt next to nothing, Joe. You 
 think much of me. It's only that." 
 
 "Well, Pip," said Joe, "be it so or be it 
 son't, you must be a common scholar afore 
 you can be a oncommon one, I should hope ! 
 The king upon his throne, "with his crown 
 upon his ed, can't sit and write his acts of 
 Parliament in print, without having begun, 
 when he were a unpromoted Prince, with 
 the alphabet — Ah !" added Joe, with a shake 
 of the head that was full of meaning, " and 
 begun at A too, and worked his way to Z. 
 And / know Avhat that is to do, though I 
 can't say I've exactly done it." 
 
 There was some hope in this piece of 
 wisdom, and it rather encouraged me. 
 
 "Whether common ones as to callings 
 and earnings," pursued Joe, reflectively, 
 "mightn't be the better of continuing for to 
 keep company with common ones, instead 
 of going out to play with oncommon ones — 
 which reminds me to hope that there were 
 a flag, perhaps?"
 
 150 GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 
 
 "No, Joe." 
 
 " (I'm sorry there weren't a flag, Pip.) 
 Whether that might be or mightn't be, is a 
 thing as can't be looked into now, without 
 putting your sister on the Rampage ; and 
 that's a thino; not to be thou<2:ht of, as beino- 
 done intentional. Lookee here, Pip, at what 
 is said to you by a true friend. Which this 
 to you the true friend say. If you can't 
 get to be oncommon through going straight, 
 you'll never get to do it through going 
 crooked. So don't tell no more on 'em, Pip, 
 and live well and die ha^^py." 
 
 "You are not angry with me, Joe?" 
 
 " No, old chap. But bearing in mind that 
 them were which I meantersay of a stunning 
 and outdacious sort — alluding to them which 
 bordered on weal-cutlets and dog-fighting — 
 a sincere well-wisher would adwise, Pip, 
 their being dropped into your meditations, 
 when you go up-stairs to bed. That's all, 
 old chap, and don't never do it no more." 
 
 When I got up to my little room and said 
 my prayers, I did not forget Joe's recom- 
 mendation, and yet my young mind was in 
 that disturbed and unthankful state, that I
 
 GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 151 
 
 thouo^lit lono; after I laid me do-sv^i, how 
 common EsteUa would consider Joe, a mere 
 blacksmith : how thick his boots, and how 
 coarse his hands. I thought how Joe and 
 my sister were then sitting in the kitchen, 
 and how I had come up to bed from the 
 kitchen, and how Miss Havisham and Estella 
 never sat in a kitchen, but were far above 
 the level of such common doings. I fell 
 asleep recalling what I "used to do" when 
 I was at Miss Havisham's ; as though I had 
 been there weeks or months, instead of hours; 
 and as though it were quite an old subject 
 of remembrance, instead of one that had 
 arisen only that day. 
 
 That was a memorable day to me, for it 
 made great changes in me. But, it is the 
 same with any life. Imagine one selected 
 day struck out of it, and think how different 
 its course would have been. Pause you who 
 read this, and think for a moment of the 
 long chain of iron or gold, of thorns or 
 flowers, that would never have bound you, 
 but for the formation of the first link on one 
 memorable day.
 
 152 GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 The felicitous idea occurred to me a 
 morning or two later when I woke, that the 
 best step I could take towards making my- 
 self uncommon was to get out of Biddy 
 everything she knew. In pursuance of this 
 luminous conception I mentioned to Biddy 
 when I went to Mr. "Wopsle's great-aunt's at 
 night, that I had a particular reason for 
 wishing to get on in hfe, and that I should 
 feel very much obliged to her if she would 
 impart all her learning to me. Biddy, who 
 was the most obliging of girls, immediately 
 said she would, and indeed began to carry 
 out her promise within five minutes. 
 
 The Educational scheme or Course esta-
 
 GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 153 
 
 blished by Mr. Wopsle's great-aunt may be 
 resolved into the following synopsis. The 
 pupils ate apples and put straws up one 
 another's backs, until Mr. Wopsle's great- 
 aunt collected her energies, and made an in- 
 discriminate totter at them Avith a birch-rod. 
 After receiving the charge with every mark 
 of derision, the pupils formed in line and 
 buzzingly passed a ragged book from hand 
 to hand. The book had an alphabet in it, 
 some figures and tables, and a little spelling 
 — that is to say, it had had once. As soon 
 as this volume began to circulate, Mr. 
 Wopsle's great -aunt fell into a state of 
 coma ; arising either from sleep or a rheu- 
 matic paroxysm. The pupils then entered 
 among themselves upon a competitive ex- 
 amination on the subject of Boots, with the 
 view of ascertaining who could tread the 
 hardest upon whose toes. This mental 
 exercise lasted until Biddy made a rush at 
 them and distributed three defaced Bibles 
 (shaped as if they had been unskilfully cut 
 off the chump -end of something), more 
 illegibly printed at the best than any cui'iosi- 
 ties of literature I have since met with,
 
 1^4 GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 
 
 speckled all over with ironmould, and hav- 
 ing various specimens of the insect world 
 smashed between their leaves. This part of 
 the Course was usually lightened by several 
 single combats between Biddy and refrac- 
 tory students. When the fights were over, 
 Biddy gave out the number of a page, and 
 then we all read aloud Avhat we could — or 
 what we couldn't — in a frightful chorus ; 
 Biddy leading with a high shrill monotonous 
 voice, and none of us having the least notion 
 of, or reverence for, what we were reading 
 about. When this horrible din had lasted 
 a certain time,- it mechanically awoke Mr. 
 Wopsle's great-aunt, who staggered at a boy 
 fortuitously, and pulled his ears. This was 
 understood to terminate the Course for the 
 evening, and we emerged into the air with 
 shrieks of intellectual victory. It is fair to 
 remark that there was no prohibition against 
 any pupil's entertaining hhnself with a slate 
 or even with the ink (when there was any), 
 but that it was not easy to pursue that 
 branch of study in the mnter season, on ac- 
 count of the little general shop in which the 
 classes were holden — and which was also
 
 GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 155 
 
 Mr. Wopsle's great-aunt's sitting-room and 
 bed-chamber — ^being but faintly illuminated 
 through the agency of one low-spirited dip- 
 candle and no snuffere. 
 
 It appeared to me that it would take time, 
 to become uncommon under these circum- 
 stances: nevertheless, I resolved to try it, 
 and that very evening Biddy entered on our 
 special agreement, by imparting some in- 
 formation from her little catalogue of Prices, 
 under the head of moist sugar, and lending 
 me, to copy at home, a large old English D 
 which she had imitated from the heading 
 of some newspaper, and which I supposed, 
 until she told me what it was, to be a design 
 for a buckle. 
 
 Of course there was a pubhc-house in the 
 village, and of course Joe liked sometimes to 
 smoke his pipe there. I had received strict 
 orders from my sister to call for him at the 
 Three JoUy Bargemen, that evening, on my 
 way from school, and bring him home at my 
 peril. To the Three Jolly Bargemen, there- 
 fore, I directed my steps. 
 
 There was a bar at the JoUy Bargemen, 
 with some alarmingly long chalk scores in
 
 156 GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 
 
 it on the wall at the side of the door, which 
 seemed to me to be never paid off. They 
 had been there ever since I could remember, 
 and had grown more than I had. But there 
 was a quantity of chalk about our country, 
 and perhaps the people neglected no oppor- 
 tunity of turning it to account. 
 
 It being Saturday night, I found the land- 
 lord looking rather grimly at these records, 
 but as my business was with Joe and not 
 with him, I merely wished him good even- 
 ing, and passed into the common room at 
 the end of the passage, where there was a 
 bright large kitchen fire, and where Joe 
 was smoking his pipe in company with Mr. 
 Wopsle and a stranger. Joe gi'eeted me as 
 usual with " Halloa, Pip, old chap !" and 
 the moment he said that, the stranger turned 
 his head and looked at me. 
 
 He was a secret-looking man whom I had 
 never seen before. His head was all on one 
 side, and one of his eyes was half shut up, 
 as if he were taking aim at something with 
 an invisible gun. He had a pipe in his 
 mouth, and he took it out, and, after slowly 
 blowing all his smoke away and looking
 
 GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 157 
 
 hard at me all tlie time, nodded. So, I 
 nodded, and then he nodded again, and 
 made room on the settle beside him that I 
 might sit do-wm there. 
 
 But, as I was used to sit beside Joe when- 
 ever I entered that place of resort, I said 
 " No, thank you, sir," and fell into the space 
 Joe made for me on the opposite settle. The 
 strange man, after glancing at Joe, and see- 
 ing that his attention was othermse engaged, 
 nodded to me again when I had taken my 
 seat, and then rubbed his leg — in a very odd 
 way, as it struck me. 
 
 " You was saying," said the strange man, 
 turning to Joe, " that you was a black- 
 smith." 
 
 " Yes. I said it, you know," said Joe. 
 
 "What'U you drink, Mr. ? You 
 
 didn't mention your name, by-the-by." 
 
 Joe mentioned it now, and the strange 
 man called him by it. " What'll you drink, 
 Mr. Gargery ? At my expense ? To top 
 up with ?" 
 
 " Well," said Joe, " to tell you the truth, 
 I ain't much in the habit of drinking at 
 anybody's expense but my own."
 
 lo8 GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 
 
 "Habit? No," returned the stranger, 
 " but once and away, and on a Saturday 
 night too. Come ! Put a name to it, Mr. 
 Gargery." 
 
 "I wouldn't wish to be stiff company," 
 said Joe. " Rum." 
 
 " Rum," repeated the stranger. " And 
 will the other gentleman originate a senti- 
 ment ?" 
 
 "Rum," said Mr. Wopsle. 
 
 "Three Rums!" cried the stranger, call- 
 ing to the landlord. " Glasses round !" 
 
 " This other gentleman," observed Joe, 
 by way of introducing Mr. Wopsle, "is a 
 gentleman that you would like to hear give 
 it out. Our clerk at church." 
 
 "Aha!" said the stranger, quickly, and 
 cocking his eye at me. " The lonely church, 
 right out on the marshes, with the graves 
 round it !" 
 
 "That's it," said Joe. 
 
 The stranger, with a comfortable kind of 
 grunt over his pipe, put his legs up on the 
 settle that he had to himself. He wore a 
 flapping broad-brimmed traveller's hat, and 
 under it a handkerchief tied over his head in
 
 GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 159 
 
 the manner of a cap : so that he showed no 
 hair. As he looked at the fire, I thought I 
 saw a cunning expression, followed by a half 
 laugh, come into his face. 
 
 " I am not acquainted mth this country, 
 gentlemen, but it seems a solitary country 
 towards the river." 
 
 " Most marshes is solitary," said Joe. 
 
 " No doubt, no doubt. Do you find any 
 gipsies, now, or tramps, or vagrants of any 
 sort, out there ?" 
 
 "No," said Joe; "none but a runaway 
 convict now and then. And we don't find 
 thern^ easy. Eh, Mr. Wopsle ?" 
 
 Mr. Wopsle, with a majestic remem- 
 brance of old discomfiture, assented ; but 
 not warmly. 
 
 "Seems you have been out after such?" 
 asked the stranger. 
 
 " Once," returned Joe. " Not that we 
 wanted to take them, you understand ; we 
 went out as lookers on ; me, and Mr. Wopsle, 
 and Pip. Didn't us, Pip?" 
 
 "Yes, Joe." 
 
 The stranger looked at me again — still 
 cocking his eye, as if he were expressly
 
 160 GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 
 
 taking aim at me with his invisible gun — 
 and said, "He's a likely young parcel of 
 bones that. What is it you call him ?" 
 
 " Pip," said Joe. 
 
 "Christened Pip?" 
 
 "No, not christened Pip." 
 
 " Surname Pip ?" 
 
 "No," said Joe, "it's a kind of a family 
 name what he gave himself when a infant, 
 and is called by." 
 
 "Son of 3''ours?" 
 
 "Well," said Joe, meditatively — not, of 
 course, that it could be in any wise neces- 
 sary to consider about it, but because it was 
 the way at the Jolly Bargemen to seem to 
 consider deeply about everything that was 
 discussed over pipes ; " well — no. No, lie 
 ain't." 
 
 "Nevvy?" said the strange man. 
 
 "Well," said Joe, with the same appear- 
 ance of profound cogitation, " he is not — no, 
 not to deceive you, he is not — my nev\y." 
 
 " What the Blue Blazes is he ?" asked the 
 stranger. Which appeared to me to be an 
 inquiry of unnecessary strength. 
 
 ]\Ir. Wopsle struck in upon that ; as one
 
 GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 161 
 
 who knew all about relationships, having 
 professional occasion to bear in mind what 
 female relations a man might not marry; 
 and expounded the ties between me and 
 Joe. Having his hand in, Mr. Wopsle 
 finished off with a most terrifically snarling 
 passage from Richard the Third, and seemed 
 to think he had done quite enough to ac- 
 count for it when he added, " — as the poet 
 says." 
 
 And here I may remark that when Mr. 
 Wopsle referred to me, he considered it a 
 necessary part of such reference to rumple 
 my hair and poke it into my eyes. I cannot 
 conceive why everybody of his standing who 
 visited at our house should always have put 
 me through the same inflammatory process 
 under similar circumstances. Yet I do not 
 call to mind that I was ever in my earlier 
 youth the subject of remark in our social 
 family circle, but some large-handed person 
 took some such ophthalmic steps to patro- 
 nise me. 
 
 All this while, the strange man looked at 
 nobody but me, and looked at me as if he 
 were determined to have a shot at me at 
 
 VOL. I. M
 
 162 GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 
 
 last, and bring me do^vn. But he said 
 nothing after offering his Blue Blazes obser- 
 vation, until the glasses of rum-and-water 
 were brought; and then he made his shot, 
 and a most extraordinary shot it was. 
 
 It was not a verbal remark, but a pro- 
 ceeding in dumb-show, and was pointedly- 
 addressed to me. He stirred his rum-and- 
 water pointedly at me, and he tasted his 
 rum-and-water pointedly at me. And he 
 stirred it and he tasted it : not with a spoon 
 that was brought to him, but loith a file. 
 
 He did this so that nobody but I saw the 
 file ; and when he had done it he A^-iped the 
 file and put it in a breast-pocket. I knew it 
 to be Joe's file, and I knew that he knew my 
 convict, the moment I saw the instrument. 
 I sat gazing at him, spell-bound. But he 
 now reclined on his settle, taking very little 
 notice of me, and talking principally about 
 turnips. 
 
 There was a delicious sense of cleaning-up 
 and making a quiet pause before going on 
 in life afresh, in our \*iUage on Saturday 
 nights, which stimulated Joe to dare to stay 
 out half an hour longer on Saturdays than
 
 GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 163 
 
 at other times. The half-hour and the rum- 
 and-water running out together, Joe got up 
 to go, and took me by the hand. 
 
 " Stop half a moment, Mr. Gargery," said 
 the strange man. " I think I've got a bright 
 new shilling somewhere in my pocket, and 
 if I have, the boy shall have it," 
 
 He looked it out from a handful of small 
 change, folded it in some crumpled paper, 
 and gave it to me. "Yours!" said he. 
 "Mind! Your own." 
 
 I thanked him, staring at him far beyond 
 the bounds of ofood manners, and holdin<y 
 tio-ht to Joe. He o-ave Joe o;ood-nio;ht, and 
 he gave Mr. Wopsle good-night (who went 
 out with us), and he gave me only a look 
 with his aiming eye — no, not a look, for he 
 shut it up, but wonders may be done with 
 an eye by hiding it. 
 
 On the way home, if I had been in a 
 humour for talking, the talk must have 
 been all on my side, for Mr. Wopsle parted 
 from us at the door of the Jolly Bargemen, 
 and Joe went all the way home with his 
 mouth mde open, to rinse the rum outAvith 
 as much air as possible. But I was in a 
 m2
 
 164 GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 
 
 manner stupified by this turning up of my 
 old misdeed and old acquaintance, and could 
 think of nothing else. 
 
 My sister was not in a very bad temper 
 when we presented ourselves in the kitchen, 
 and Joe Avas encouraged by that unusual 
 circumstance to tell her about the bright 
 shilling, "A bad un, I'll be bound," said 
 Mrs. Joe, triumphantly, "or he wouldn't 
 have given it to the boy ! Let's look at it." 
 
 I took it out of the paper, and it proved 
 to be a good one. " But what's this?" said 
 Mrs. Joe, throwing down the shilling and 
 catching up the paper. "Two One-Pound 
 notes ?" 
 
 Nothing less than two fat sweltering one- 
 pound notes that seemed to have been on 
 terms of the warmest intimacy mth all the 
 cattle markets in the county. Joe caught 
 up his hat again, and ran with them to the 
 Jolly Bargemen to restore them to their 
 owner. While he was gone, I sat down on 
 my usual stool and looked vacantly at my 
 sister, feeling pretty sure that the man 
 would not be there. 
 
 Presently, Joe came back, saying that the
 
 GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 165 
 
 man was gone, but that he, Joe, had left 
 word at the Three Jolly Bargemen concern- 
 ing the notes. Then my sister sealed them 
 up in a piece of paper, and put them under 
 some dried rose-leaves in an ornamental 
 teapot on the top of a press in the state 
 parlour. There they remained, a nightmare 
 to me, many and many a night and day. 
 
 I had sadly broken sleep when I got to 
 bed, through thinking of the strange man 
 taking aim at me with his invisible gun, and 
 of the guiltily coarse and common thing it 
 was, to be on secret terms of conspiracy with 
 convicts — a feature in my low career that I 
 had previously forgotten. I was haunted 
 by the file too. A dread possessed me that 
 when I least expected it, the file Avould re- 
 appear. I coaxed myself to sleep by think- 
 ing of Miss Havisham's, next Wednesday ; 
 and in my sleep I saw the file coining at me 
 out of a door, without seeing who held it, 
 and I screamed myself awake.
 
 166 GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 
 
 CHAPTER XI. 
 
 At the appointed time I returned to Miss 
 Havisliam's, and my hesitating ring at the 
 gate brought out Estella. She locked it 
 after admitting me, as she had done before, 
 and again preceded me into the dark passage 
 where her candle stood. She took no notice 
 of me until she had the candle in her hand, 
 when she looked over her shoulder, super- 
 ciliously saying, "You are to come this way 
 to-day," and took me to quite another part 
 of the house. 
 
 The passage was a long one, and seemed 
 to pervade the whole square basement of the 
 Manor House. We traversed but one side 
 of the square, however, and at the end of it
 
 GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 167 
 
 she stopped, and put her candle down and 
 opened a door. Here, the daylight reap- 
 peared, and I found myselP in a small paved 
 court-yard, the opposite side of which was 
 formed by a detached dweUing-house, that 
 looked as if it had once belonged to the 
 manager or head clerk of the extinct 
 brewery. There was a clock in the outer 
 wall of this house. Like the clock in Miss 
 Havisham's room, and like Miss Havisham's 
 watch, it had stopped at twenty minutes to 
 nine. 
 
 We went in at the door, which stood open, 
 and into a gloomy room with a low ceiling, 
 on the ground floor at the back. There was 
 some company in the room, and Estella said 
 to me as she joined it, " You are to go and 
 stand there, boy, tiU you are wanted." 
 " There," being the window, I crossed to it, 
 and stood "there," in a very uncomfortable 
 state of mind, looking out. 
 
 It opened to the ground, and looked into 
 a most miserable corner of the neglected 
 garden, upon a rank ruin of cabbage-stalks, 
 and one box-tree that had been clipped 
 round long ago, like a pudding, and had a
 
 168 GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 
 
 new growth at the top of it, out of shape 
 and of a different colour, as if that part of 
 the pudding had stuck to the saucepan and 
 got burnt. This was my homely thought, 
 as I contemplated the box-tree. There had 
 been some light snow, over-night, and it lay 
 nowhere else to my knowledge ; but, it had 
 not quite melted from the cold shadow of 
 this bit of garden, and the wind caught it 
 up in little eddies and threw it at the 
 window, as if it pelted me for coming there. 
 
 I divined that my coming had stopped 
 conversation in the room, and that its other 
 occupants were looking at me. I could see 
 nothing of the room except the shining of 
 the fire in the "window-glass, but I stiffened 
 in all my joints with the consciousness that 
 I was under close inspection. 
 
 There were three ladies in the room and 
 one gentleman. Before I had been standing 
 at the window five minutes, they somehow 
 conveyed to me that they were all toadies 
 and humbugs, but that each of them pre- 
 tended not to know that the others were 
 toadies and humbugs : because the admis- 
 sion that he or she did know it, would have
 
 GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 169 
 
 made him or her out to be a toady and 
 humbug. 
 
 They all had a listless and dreary air of 
 waiting somebody's pleasure, and the most 
 talkative of the ladies had to speak quite 
 rigidly to repress a yawn. This lady, 
 whose name was Camilla, ver}- much re- 
 minded me of my sister, with the difference 
 that she was older, and (as I found when I 
 caught sight of her) of a blunter cast of 
 features. Indeed, when I knew her better 
 I began to think it was a Mercy she had any 
 features at all, so very blank and high was 
 the dead wall of her face. 
 
 " Poor dear soul !" said this lady, with an 
 abruptness of manner quite my sister's. 
 " Xobody's enemy but his own !" 
 
 " It would be much more commendable to 
 be somebody else's enemy," said the gentle- 
 man ; " far more natural." 
 
 " Cousin Raymond," observed another 
 lady, " we are to love our neighbour." 
 
 " Sarah Pocket," returned Cousin Ray- 
 mond, " if a man is not his own neighbour, 
 who is ?" 
 
 Miss Pocket laughed, and Camilla laughed
 
 170 GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 
 
 and said (cliecking a yawn), "The idea!" 
 But I tlionglit they seemed to think it rather 
 a good idea too. The other lady, who had 
 not spoken yet, said gravely and emphati- 
 cally, " Very true !" 
 
 " Poor soul !" Camilla presently went on 
 (I knew they had all been looking at me in 
 the mean time), "he is so very strange! 
 Would any one believe that when Tom's 
 wife died, he actually could not be induced 
 to see the importance of the children's 
 having the deepest of trimmings to their 
 mourning ? ' Good Lord !' says he, ' Ca- 
 milla, what can it signify so long as the poor 
 bereaved little things are in black ?' So like 
 Matthew! The idea!" 
 
 " Good points in him, good points in 
 him," said Cousin Rapnond; "Heaven 
 forbid I should deny good points in him ; 
 but he never had, and he never will have, 
 any sense of the proprieties." 
 
 " You know I was obliged," said Camilla, 
 "I was obliged to be firm. I said, ' It will 
 NOT DO, for the credit of the family. I told 
 him that, without deep trimmings, the 
 family was disgraced. I cried about it from
 
 GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 171 
 
 breakfast till dinner. I injured my diges- 
 tion. And at last he flung out in his violent 
 way, and said with a D, ' Then do as you 
 like.' Thank Goodness it will always be a 
 consolation to me to know that I instantly 
 went out in a pouring rain and bought the 
 things." 
 
 ^^ He paid for them, did he not?" asked 
 E Stella. 
 
 " It's not the question, my dear child, 
 who paid for them," returned Camilla, " / 
 bought them. And I shall often think of 
 that with peace, when I wake up in the 
 night." 
 
 The ringing of a distant bell, combined 
 with the echoing of some cry or call along 
 the passage by which I had come, inter- 
 rupted the conversation and caused Estella 
 to say to me, " Now, boy!" On my turning 
 round, they all looked at me with the utmost 
 contempt, and, as I went out, I heard Sarah 
 Pocket say, " Well I am sure ! Wliat next !" 
 and Camilla add, with indignation, " Was 
 there ever such a fancy ! The i-dc^-a !" 
 
 As we were going with our candle along 
 the dark passage, Estella stopped all of a
 
 172 GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 
 
 sudden, and, facing round, said in her taunt- 
 ing manner with her face quite close to 
 mine : 
 
 "Well?" 
 
 " Well, miss ?" I answered, almost falling 
 over her and checking myself. 
 
 She stood looking at me, and, of course, I 
 stood looking at her. 
 
 " Am I pretty ?" 
 
 " Yes ; I think you are very pretty." 
 
 " Am I insulting?" 
 
 " Not so much so as you were last time," 
 said I. 
 
 " Not so much so ?" 
 
 " No." 
 
 She fired when she asked the last question, 
 and she slapped my face with such force as 
 she had, when I answered it. 
 
 " Now?" said she. " You little coarse 
 monster, what do you think of me now ?" 
 
 " I shall not tell you." 
 
 " Because you are going to tell, up-stairs. 
 Is that it?" 
 
 "No," said I, "that's not it." 
 
 " Why don't you cry again, you little 
 wretch?"
 
 GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 173 
 
 " Because I'll never cry for you again," 
 said I. Which was, 1 suppose, as false a 
 declaration as ever was made ; for I was 
 inwardly (irying for her then, and I know 
 what I know of the pain she cost me after- 
 wards. 
 
 We went on our w^ay up-stairs after this 
 episode ; and, as we were going up, we met 
 a gentleman groping his way down. 
 
 " Whom have we here ?" asked the gentle- 
 man, stopping and looking at me. 
 
 " A boy," said Estella. 
 
 He was a burly man of an exceedingly 
 dark complexion, with an exceedingly large 
 head and a corresponding large hand. He 
 took my chin in his large hand and turned 
 up my face to have a look at me by the light 
 of the candle. He was prematurely bald on 
 the top of his head, and had bushy black 
 eyebrows that wouldn't lie down but stood 
 up bristling. His eyes were set very deep 
 in his head, and were disagreeably sharp 
 and suspicious. He had a large watch- 
 chain, and strong black dots where his beard 
 and whiskers would have been if he had let 
 them. He was nothing to me, and 1 could
 
 174 GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 
 
 have had no foresight then, that he ever 
 would be anything to me, but it happened 
 that I had this opportunity of observing 
 him well. * 
 
 "Boy of the neighbourhood? Hey?" 
 said he. 
 
 " Yes, sir," said I. 
 
 " How do yoit come here ?" 
 
 " Miss Havisham sent for me, sir," I ex- 
 plained. 
 
 " Well ! Behave yourself. I have a 
 pretty large experience of boys, and you're 
 a bad set of fellows. Now mind !" said he, 
 biting the side of his great forefinger as he 
 frowned at me, " you behave yourself !" 
 
 With those words, he released me — ^^vhich 
 I was glad of, for his hand smelt of scented 
 soap — and went his way do^vn stairs. I 
 wondered whether he could be a doctor ; but 
 no, I thought ; he couldn't be a doctor, or 
 he would have a quieter and more persua- 
 sive manner. There was not much time to 
 consider the subject, for we Avere soon in 
 Miss Havisham's room, where she and every- 
 thing else were just as I had left them. Es-
 
 GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 175 
 
 tella left me standing near the door, and I 
 stood there until Miss Havisham cast her 
 eyes upon me from the dressing-table. 
 
 " So !" she said, without being startled or 
 surprised ; " the days have AYorn away, have 
 they?" 
 
 " Yes, ma'am. To-day is " 
 
 " There, there, there !" with the impatient 
 movement of her fingers. " I don't want to 
 know. Are you ready to play ?" 
 
 I was obliged to answer in some con- 
 fusion, " I don't think I am, ma'am." 
 
 " Not at cards again ?" she demanded, 
 with a searching look. 
 
 " Yes, ma'am ; I could do that, if I was 
 wanted." 
 
 " Since this house strikes you old and 
 grave, boy," said Miss Havisham, im- 
 patiently, *' and you are unwilling to play, 
 are you willing to work?" 
 
 I could answer this inquiry with a better 
 heart than I had been able to find for the 
 other question, and I said I was quite 
 "WTllino;. 
 
 " Then go into that opposite room," said
 
 174 GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 
 
 have had no foresight then, that he ever 
 would be anything to me, but it happened 
 that I had this opportunity of observing 
 him well. * 
 
 " Boy of the neighbourhood ? Hey ?" 
 said he. 
 
 " Yes, sir,'' said I. 
 
 " How do you come here?" 
 
 " Miss Havisham sent for me, sir," I ex- 
 plained. 
 
 " Well ! Behave yourself. I have a 
 pretty large experience of boys, and you're 
 a bad set of fellows. Now mind !" said he, 
 biting the side of his great forefinger as he 
 frowned at me, " you behave yourself !" 
 
 With those words, he released me — which 
 I was glad of, for his hand smelt of scented 
 soap — and went his way do^vn stairs. I 
 wondered whether he could be a doctor ; but 
 no, I thought ; he couldn't be a doctor, or 
 he would have a quieter and more persua- 
 sive manner. There was not much time to 
 consider the subject, for we were soon in 
 Miss Havisham's room, where she and every- 
 thing else were just as I had left them. Es-
 
 GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 175 
 
 tella left me standing near the door, and I 
 Stood there until Miss Havisham cast her 
 eyes upon me from the dressing-table. 
 
 '^ So !" she said, without being startled or 
 surprised ; "the days have worn away, have 
 they?" 
 
 " Yes, ma'am. To-day is " 
 
 " There, there, there !" with the impatient 
 movement of her fingers. " I don't want to 
 know. Are you ready to play ?" 
 
 I was obliged to answer in some con- 
 fusion, " I don't think I am, ma'am." 
 
 " Not at cards ao'ain ?" she demanded, 
 with a searching look. 
 
 " Yes, ma'am ; I could do that, if I was 
 wanted." 
 
 " Since this house strikes you old and 
 grave, boy," said Miss Ha^dsham, im- 
 patiently, "and you are unwilling to play, 
 are you wilhng to work?" 
 
 I could answer this inquiry with a better 
 heart than I had been able to find for the 
 other question, and I said I was quite 
 "willino;. 
 
 " Then go into that opposite room," said
 
 178 GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 
 
 laid when I am dead. They shall come and 
 look at me here." 
 
 AVith some vague misgiving that she might 
 get upon the table then and there and die at 
 once, the complete realisation of the ghastly 
 waxwork at the Fair, I shrank under her 
 touch. 
 
 "What do you think that is?" she asked 
 me, again pointing with her stick; "'that, 
 where those cobwebs are ?" 
 
 " I can't guess what it is, ma'am." 
 
 " It's a great cake. A bride-cake. Mine !" 
 
 She looked all round the room in a glaring 
 manner, and then said, leaning on me while 
 her hand twitched my shoulder. " Come, 
 come, come ! Walk me, walk me !" 
 
 I made out from this, that the work I had 
 to do, was to walk Miss Havisham round 
 and round the room. Accordingly, I started 
 at once, and she leaned upon my shoulder, 
 and we went away at a pace that might 
 have been an imitation (founded on my first 
 impulse under that roof) of Mr. Pumble- 
 chook's chaise-cart. 
 
 She was not ph3^sically strong, and after 
 a little time said, "Slow^er!" Still, we
 
 GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 179 
 
 went at an impatient fitful speed, and as 
 we went, she twitched the hand upon my 
 shoulder, and worked her mouth, and led 
 me to believe that we were sroino; fast be- 
 cause her thoughts went fast. After a while 
 she said, " Call Estella !" so I went out on 
 the landing and roared that name as I had 
 done on the previous occasion. When her 
 light appeared, I returned to Miss Havisham, 
 and we started aAvay again round and round 
 the room. 
 
 If only Estella had come to be a spectator 
 of our ^proceedings, I should have felt suffi- 
 ciently discontented; but, as she brought 
 Avith her the three ladies and the gentleman 
 
 o 
 
 whom I had seen below, I didn't know what 
 to do. In my politeness, I would have 
 stopped; but. Miss Ha\dsham twitched my 
 shoulder, and we posted on — Avith a shame- 
 faced consciousness on my part that they 
 would think it was all my doing. 
 
 "Dear Miss Havisham," said Miss Sarah 
 Pocket. " How well you look !" 
 
 " I do not," returned Miss Havisham. 
 " I am yellow skin and bone." 
 
 Camilla brightened when Miss Pocket met 
 n2
 
 180 GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 
 
 with this rebuff; and she murmured, as she 
 plaintively contemplated i\Iiss Havisham, 
 " Poor dear soul ! Certainly not to be ex- 
 pected to look well, poor thinpj. The idea !" 
 
 " And how are you f " said Miss Havisham 
 to Camilla. As we were close to Camilla 
 then, I would have stopped as a matter of 
 course, only Miss Havisham wouldn't stop. 
 We swept on, and I felt that I was highly 
 obnoxious to Camilla. 
 
 "Thank you. Miss Havisham," she re- 
 turned, " I am as well as can be expected." 
 
 "Why, what's the matter with you?" 
 asked Miss Havisham, with exceeding sharp- 
 ness. 
 
 " Nothing worth mentioning," replied Ca- 
 milla. " I don't wish to make a display of 
 my feelings, but I have habitually thought 
 of you more in the night than I am quite 
 equal to." 
 
 "Then don't think of me," retorted Miss 
 Havisham. 
 
 "Very easily said!" remarked Camilla, 
 amiably repressing a sob, while a hitch 
 came into her upper lip, and her tears 
 overflowed. " Raymond is a witness what
 
 GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 181 
 
 ginger and sal volatile I am obliged to take 
 in the night. Raymond is a witness what 
 nervous jerkings I have in my legs. Chokings 
 und nervous jerkings, however, are nothing 
 new to me when I think with anxiety of 
 those I love. If I could be less affectionate 
 and sensitive, I should have a better digestion 
 and an iron set of nerves. I am sure I wish 
 it could be so. But as to not thinking of 
 you in the night — The idea !" Here, a burst 
 of tears. 
 
 The Ra}Tiiond referred to, I understood 
 to be the gentleman present, and him I un- 
 derstood to be Mr. Camilla. He came to 
 the rescue at this point, and said in a con- 
 solatory and complimentary voice, "Ca- 
 milla, my dear, it is well known that your 
 family feelings are gradually undermining 
 you to the extent of making one of your 
 legs shorter than the other." 
 
 " I am not aware," observed the grave 
 lady whose voice I had heard but once, 
 "that to think of any person is to make 
 a great claim upon that person, my dear." 
 
 Miss Sarah Pocket, whom I now saw to 
 be a little dry bro^\^l corrugated old woman.
 
 182 GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 
 
 with a small face that might have been made 
 of walnut-shelLs, and a large mouth like a 
 cat's without the whiskers, supported this 
 position by saying, " No, indeed, my dear. 
 Hem!" 
 
 " Thinking is easy enough," said the grave 
 lady. 
 
 "AVhat is easier, you know?" assented 
 Miss Sarah Pocket. 
 
 " Oh yes, yes !" cried Camilla, whose fer- 
 menting feelings appeared to rise from her 
 legs to her bosom. " It's all very true ! It's 
 a weakness to be so affectionate, but I can't 
 help it. No doubt my health would be much 
 better if it was otherwise, still I wouldn't 
 change my disposition if I could. It's the 
 cause of much suffering, but it's a consola- 
 tion to know I possess it, when I wake up in 
 the nio-ht." Here another burst of feelinsr. 
 
 o o 
 
 Miss Havisham and I had never stopped 
 all this time, but kept going round and 
 round the room : now, brushino; ao^ainst the 
 skirts of the visitors : now, giving them the 
 whole length of the dismal chamber. 
 
 "There's Matthew!" said Camilla. "Never 
 mixing with unj natural ties, never coming
 
 GEE AT EXPECTATIONS. 183 
 
 here to see how Miss Havisham is ! I have 
 taken to the sofa with my staylace cut, and 
 have lain there hours, insensible, mth my 
 head over the side, and my hair all down, 
 and my feet I don't know where " 
 
 (" jMuch higher than your head, my love," 
 said Mr. Camilla.) 
 
 "I have gone off into that state, hours 
 and hours, on account of Matthew's strange 
 and inexplicable conduct, and nobody has 
 thanked me." 
 
 " Really I must say I should think not !" 
 interposed the grave lady. 
 
 "You see, my dear," added Miss Sarah 
 Pocket (a blandly vicious personage), " the 
 question to put to yourself is, who did you 
 expect to thank you, my love ?" 
 
 " Without expecting any thanks, or any- 
 thing of the sort," resumed Camilla, " I 
 have remained in that state, hours and 
 hours, and Raymond is a witness of the 
 extent to which I have choked, and what 
 the total inefficacy of ginger has been, 
 and I have been heard at the pianoforte- 
 tuner's across the street, where the poor 
 mistaken children have even supposed it to
 
 184 GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 
 
 be pigeons cooing at a distance — and now 
 
 to be told " Here Camilla put her 
 
 hand to her throat, and began to be quite 
 chemical as to the formation of new combi- 
 nations there. 
 
 When this same Matthew was mentioned, 
 Miss Havisham stopped me and herself, and 
 stood looking at the speaker. This change 
 had a great influence in bringing Camilla's 
 chemistry to a sudden end. 
 
 " Matthew will come and see me at last," 
 said Miss Havisham, sternly, "when I am 
 laid on that table. That will be his place 
 — there," striking the table Avith her stick, 
 
 "at my head! And yours will be there! 
 
 And your husband's there! And Sarah 
 
 Pocket's there! And Georgiana's there! 
 
 Now you all know where to take your 
 
 stations when you come to feast upon me. 
 
 And now go !" 
 
 At the mention of each name, she had 
 
 struck the table with her stick in a new 
 
 place. She now said, " Walk me, walk 
 
 me !" and we went on again. 
 
 "I suppose there's nothing to be done," 
 
 exclaimed Camilla, " but comply and depart.
 
 GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 185 
 
 It's something to have seen the object of 
 one's love and duty, for even so short a 
 time. I shall think of it with a melancholy 
 satisfaction when I wake up in the night. 
 I wish Matthew could have that comfort, 
 but he sets it at defiance. I am determined 
 not to make a display of my feehngs, 
 but it's very hard to be told one wants to 
 feast on one's relations — as if one was a 
 Giant — and to be told to go. The bare 
 idea!" 
 
 Mr. Camilla interposing, as Mrs. Camilla 
 laid her hand upon her heaving bosom, 
 that lady assumed an unnatural fortitude of 
 manner which I supposed to be expressive 
 of an intention to drop and choke when out 
 of view, and kissing her hand to Miss Havi- 
 sham, was escorted forth. Sarah Pocket 
 and Georgiana contended who should re- 
 main last; but, Sarah was too knowing to 
 be outdone, and ambled round Georgiana 
 with that artful slipperiness, that the latter 
 was obliged to take precedence. Sarah 
 Pocket then made her separate effect of 
 departing with " Bless you, Miss Havisham 
 dear !" and with a smile of forgiving pity
 
 186 GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 
 
 on her walnut-shell countenance for the 
 weaknesses of the rest. 
 
 While Estella was away lighting them 
 down, Miss Havisham still walked with her 
 hand on my shoulder, but more and more 
 slowly. At last she stopped before the fire, 
 and said, after muttering and looking at it 
 some seconds : 
 
 "This is my birthday, Pip." 
 
 I was going to wish her many happy re- 
 turns, when she lifted her stick. 
 
 "I don't suffer it to be spoken of I 
 don't suffer those who were here just now, 
 or any one, to speak of it. They come 
 here on the day, but they dare not refer 
 to it." 
 
 Of course / made no further effort to 
 refer to it. 
 
 " On this day of the year, long before 
 you were born, this heap of decay," stabbing 
 with her crutched stick at the pile of cob- 
 webs on the table but not touching it, "was 
 brought here. It and I have worn away 
 together. The mice have gnawed at it, 
 and sharper teeth than teeth of mice have 
 gnawed at me."
 
 GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 187 
 
 She held the head of her stick against 
 her heart as she stood looking at the tahle ; 
 she in her once white dress, all yellow and 
 withered; the once white cloth all yellow 
 and withered ; everything around, in a state 
 to crumble under a touch. 
 
 "When the ruin is complete," said she, 
 with a ghastly look, " and when they lay 
 me dead, in my bride's dress on the bride's 
 table — which shall be done, and which will 
 be the finished curse upon him — so much 
 the better if it is done on this day !" 
 
 She stood looking at the table as if she 
 stood looking at her own figure lying there. 
 I remained quiet. EsteUa returned, and she 
 too remained quiet. It seemed to me that 
 we continued thus for a Ions; time. In the 
 heavy air of the room, and the heavy dark- 
 ness that brooded in its remoter corners, I 
 even had an alarming fancy that Estella and 
 I might presently begin to decay. 
 
 At length, not coming out of her dis- 
 traught state by degrees, but in an instant, 
 Miss Havisham said, " Let me see you two 
 play cards ; why have you not begun ?" 
 With that, we returned to her room, and
 
 188 GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 
 
 sat down as before ; I was beggared, as be- 
 fore; and again, as before, Miss Havisliam 
 watched us all the time, directed my atten- 
 tion to Estella's beauty, and made me notice 
 it the more by trying her jcAvels on Estella's 
 breast and hair. 
 
 Estella, for her part, likewise treated me 
 as before ; except that she did not conde- 
 scend to speak. AVhen w^e had played some 
 half-dozen games, a day "svas appointed for 
 my return, and I was taken down into the 
 yard to be fed in the former dog-like manner. 
 There, too, I was again left to wander about 
 as I liked. 
 
 It is not much to the purpose whether a 
 gate in that garden wall which I had 
 scrambled up to peep over on the last oc- 
 casion was, on that last occasion, open or 
 shut. Enough that I saw no gate then, and 
 that I saw one now. ^As it stood open, and 
 as I knew that Estella had let the visitors 
 out — for, she had returned with the keys in 
 her hand — I strolled into the garden and 
 strolled all over it. It was quite a wilder- 
 ness, and there were old melon-frames and 
 cucumber-frames in it, which seemed in
 
 GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 189 
 
 their decline to have produced a sponta- 
 neous growth of weak attempts at pieces 
 of old hats and boots, with now and then a 
 weedy oiFshoot into the likeness of a bat- 
 tered saucepan. 
 
 When I had exhausted the garden, and a 
 greenhouse with nothing in it but a fallen- 
 down grape-vine and some bottles, I found 
 myself in the dismal corner upon which I 
 had looked out of "\Adndow. Never question- 
 ing for a moment that the house was now 
 empty, I looked in at another window, and 
 fouiid myself, to my great surprise, ex- 
 changing a broad stare with a pale young 
 gentleman with red eyelids and light hair. 
 
 This pale young gentleman quickly disap- 
 peared, and reappeared beside me. He had 
 been at his books when I had found myself 
 staring at him, and I now saw that he Avas 
 inky. 
 
 " Halloa !" said he, " young feUow !" 
 
 Halloa being a general observation which 
 I have usually observed to be best answered 
 by itself, / said " Halloa !" politely omitting 
 young fellow. 
 
 " AVho let you in ?" said he.
 
 190 GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 
 
 " Miss Estella." 
 
 "Who gave you leave to prowl about?" 
 
 " Miss Estella." 
 
 " Come and fight," said the pale young 
 gentleman. 
 
 What could I do but follow him ? I have 
 often asked myself the question since : but, 
 what else could 1 do ? His manner was so 
 final and I was so astonished, that I fol- 
 lowed where he led, as if I had been under 
 a spell. 
 
 " Stop a minute, though," he said, wheel- 
 ing round before we had gone many paces. 
 " I ought to give you a reason for fighting, 
 too. There it is!" In a most irritating 
 manner he instantly slapped his hands 
 against one another, daintily flung one of 
 his legs up behind him, pulled my hair, 
 slapped his hands again, dipped his head, 
 and butted it into my stomach. 
 
 The bull-like proceeding last mentioned, 
 besides that it was unquestionably to be re- 
 garded in the light of a liberty, was par- 
 ticularly disagreeable just after bread and 
 meat. I therefore hit out at him and was 
 going to hit out ngain, when he said, '" Aha !
 
 GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 191 
 
 Would you ?" and began dancing backwards 
 and forwards in a manner quite unparalleled 
 within my limited experience. 
 
 " Laws of the game !" said he. Here, he 
 skipped from his left leg on to his right. 
 " Regular rules !" Here, he skipped from 
 his right leg on to his left. " Come to the 
 ground, and go through the preliminaries !" 
 Here, he dodged backwards and forwards, 
 and did aU sorts of things while I looked 
 helplessly at him. 
 
 I was secretly afraid of him when I saw 
 him so dexterous ; but, I felt morally and 
 physically convinced that his light head of 
 hair could have had no business in the pit 
 of my stomach, and that I had a right to 
 consider it irrelevant when so obtruded on 
 my attention. Therefore, I followed him 
 without a word, to a retired nook of the 
 garden, formed by the junction of two waUs 
 and screened by some rubbish. On his 
 asking me if I was satisfied with the ground, 
 and on my replying Yes, he begged my 
 leave to absent himself for a moment, and 
 quickly returned with a bottle of water and 
 a sponge dipped in vinegar. " Available for
 
 192 GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 
 
 both," he said, placing these against the 
 wall. And then fell to pulling off, not only 
 his jacket and waistcoat, but his shirt too, in 
 a manner at once light-hearted, business- 
 like, and bloodthirsty. 
 
 Although he did not look very healthy — 
 having pimples on his face, and a breaking 
 out at his mouth — these dreadful prepara- 
 tions quite appalled me. I judged him to be 
 about my own age, but he was much taller, 
 and he had a way of spinning himself about 
 that was full of appearance. For the rest, he 
 was a young gentleman in a gi'ey suit (when 
 not denuded for battle), with his elbows, 
 knees, wrists, and heels, considerably in ad- 
 vance of the rest of him as to development. 
 
 My heart failed me when I saw him 
 squaring at me with every demonstration of 
 mechanical nicety, and eyeing my anatomy 
 as if he were minutely choosing his bone. I 
 never have been so surprised in my life, as I 
 was when I let out the first blow, and saw 
 him lying on his back, looking up at me with 
 a bloody nose and his face exceedingly fore- 
 shortened. 
 
 But, he was on his feet directly, and after
 
 GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 193 
 
 sponging himself with a great show of dexte- 
 rity began squaring again. The second 
 greatest surprise I have ever had in my life 
 was seeing him on his back again, looking 
 up at me out of a black eye. 
 
 His spirit inspired me with great respect. 
 He seemed to have no strength, and he never 
 once hit me hard, and he was always knocked 
 down ; but, he would be up again in a mo- 
 ment, sponging himself or drinking out of 
 the water-bottle, with the greatest satisfac- 
 tion in seconding himself according to form, 
 and then came at me "svith an air and a show 
 that made me believe he really was going to 
 do for me at last. He got heavily bruised, 
 for I am sorry to record that the more I hit 
 him, the harder I hit him ; but, he came up 
 again and again and again, until at last he 
 got a bad fall with the back of his head 
 against the wall. Even after that crisis in 
 our affairs, he got up and turned round and 
 round confusedly a few times, not knowing 
 where I was ; but finally went on his knees 
 to his sponge and threw it up : at the same 
 time panting out, " That means you have 
 won." 
 
 VOL. I.
 
 194 GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 
 
 He seemed so brave and innocent, tliat 
 although I had not proposed the contest I 
 felt but a gloomy satisfaction in my victory. 
 Indeed, I go so far as to hope that I regarded 
 myself while dressing, as a species of savage 
 young Avolf, or other wild beast. However, 
 I got dressed, darkly wiping my sanguinary 
 face at intervals, and I said, " Can I help 
 you?" and he said "No thankee," and I 
 said " Good afternoon," and he said " Same 
 to you." 
 
 When I got into the court-yard, I found 
 Estella waiting with the keys. But, she 
 neither asked me where I had been, nor 
 why I had kept her waiting ; and there was 
 a bright flush upon her face, as though some- 
 thing had happened to delight her. Instead 
 of going straight to the gate, too, she stepped 
 back into the passage, and beckoned me. 
 
 " Come here ! You may kiss me, if you 
 
 like." -:• • 
 
 I kissed her cheek as she turned it to me. 
 I think I would have gone through a great 
 deal to kiss her cheek. But, I felt that the 
 kiss was given to the coarse common bo)^ as
 
 GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 195 
 
 a piece of money might have been, and that 
 it was worth nothing. 
 
 What with the birthday visitors, and what 
 with the cards, and what Math the fight, my 
 stay had lasted so long, that when I neared 
 home the light on the spit of sand off the 
 point on the marshes was gleaming against 
 a black night-sky, and Joe's furnace was 
 flinging a path of fire across the road. 
 
 2
 
 196 GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 
 
 CHAPTER XII. 
 
 My mind grew very uneasy on the subject 
 of the pale young gentleman. The more I 
 thought of the fight, and recalled the pale 
 young gentleman on his back in various 
 stages of pufiH' and incrimsoned coun- 
 tenance, the more certain it appeared that 
 something would be done to me. I felt that 
 the pale young gentleman's blood was on my 
 head, and that the Law would avenge it. 
 Without having any definite idea of the 
 penalties I had incurred, it was clear to me 
 that village boys could not go stalldng about 
 the country, ravaging the houses of gentle- 
 folks and pitching into the studious youth 
 of England, without laying themselves open
 
 GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 197 
 
 to severe punishment. For some days, I even 
 kept close at home, and looked out at the 
 kitchen door with the greatest caution and 
 trepidation before going on an errand, lest 
 the officers of the County Jail should pounce 
 upon me. The pale young gentleman's 
 nose had stained my trousers, and I tried to 
 wash out that evidence of my guilt in the 
 dead of night. I had cut my knuckles 
 against the pale young gentleman's teeth, 
 and I twisted my imagination into a thou- 
 sand tangles, as I devised incredible ways 
 of accounting for that damnatory circum- 
 stance when I should be haled before the 
 Judges. 
 
 When the day came round for my return 
 to the scene of the deed of violence, my 
 terrors reached their height. Whether 
 myrmidons of Justice, specially sent down 
 from London, would be lying in ambush 
 behind the gate ? Whether Miss Havisham, 
 preferring to take personal vengeance for an 
 outrage done to her house, might rise in 
 those grave-clothes of hers, draw a pistol, 
 and shoot me dead? Whether suborned 
 boys — a numerous band of mercenaries —
 
 198 GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 
 
 might be engaged to fall upon me in the 
 brewery, and cufF me until I was no more ? 
 It was high testimony to my confidence in 
 the spirit of the pale young gentleman, that 
 I never imagined him accessary to these re- 
 taliations ; they always came into my mind 
 as the acts of injudicious relatives of his, 
 goaded on by the state of his visage and an 
 indignant sympathy with the family fea- 
 tures. 
 
 However, go to Miss Havisham's I must, 
 and go I did. And behold ! nothing came 
 of the late stru2;oie. It was not alluded to 
 in any way, and no pale young gentleman 
 was to be discovered on the premises. I 
 found the same gate open, and I explored 
 the garden, and even looked in at the 
 windoAvs of the detached house ; but, my 
 view was suddenly stopped by the closed 
 shutters mthin, and all was lifeless. Only 
 in the corner where the combat had taken 
 place, could I detect any evidence of the 
 young gentleman's existence. There were 
 traces of his gore in that spot, and I covered 
 them with garden-mould from the eye of 
 man.
 
 GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 199 
 
 On the broad landing between Miss Ha- 
 visham's 0"v\ti room, and that other room in 
 which the long table was laid out, I saw a 
 garden-chair — a light chair on wheels, that 
 you pushed from behind. It had been 
 placed there since my last visit, and I 
 entered, that same day, on a regular occu- 
 pation of pushing Miss Havisham in this 
 chair (when she was tired of walking with 
 her hand upon my shoulder) round her own 
 room, and across the landing, and round the 
 other room. Over and over and over again, 
 we would make these journeys, and some- 
 times they would last as long as three hours 
 at a stretch. I insensibly fall into a general 
 mention of these journeys as numerous, be- 
 cause it was at once settled that I should 
 return every alternate day at noon for these 
 purposes, and because I am now going to 
 sum up a period of at least eight or ten 
 months. 
 
 As we began to be more used to one 
 another, Miss Havisham talked more to me, 
 and asked me such questions as what had I 
 learnt and what was I 2foinf!i: to be ? I told 
 her I was going to be apprenticed to Joe, I
 
 200 GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 
 
 believed ; and I enlarged upon my knowing 
 nothing and wanting to know everything, in 
 the hope that she might offer some help to- 
 wards that desirable end. But, she did not ; 
 on the contrary, she seemed to prefcir my 
 being ignorant. Neither did she ever give 
 me any money — or anything but my daily 
 dinner — nor ever stipulate that I should be 
 paid for my services. 
 
 Estella was always about, and always let 
 me in and out, but never told me I might 
 kiss her again. Sometimes, she would coldly 
 tolerate me ; sometimes, she would con- 
 descend to me ; sometimes, she would be 
 quite familiar with me ; sometimes, she 
 would tell me energetically that she hated 
 me. Miss Havisham would often ask me in 
 a whisper, or when we were alone, " Does 
 she grow prettier and prettier, Pip?" And 
 when I said yes (for indeed she did), 
 would seem to enjoy it greedily. Also, 
 when we played at cards Miss Havisham 
 would look on, with a miserly relish of Es- 
 tella's moods, whatever they were. And 
 sometimes, when her moods were so many 
 and so contradictory of one another that
 
 GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 201 
 
 I was puzzled what to say or do, Miss Ha- 
 visham would embrace her with lavish fond- 
 ness, murmuring something in her ear that 
 sounded like " Break their hearts my pride 
 and hope, break their hearts and have no 
 mercy !" 
 
 There was a sono- Joe used to hum frao-- 
 ments of at the forge, of which the burden 
 was Old Clem. This was not a very cere- 
 monious way of rendering homage to a 
 patron saint ; but, I believe Old Clem stood 
 in that relation towards smiths. It was a 
 song that imitated the measure of beating 
 upon iron, and was a mere lyrical excuse for 
 the introduction of Old Clem's respected 
 name. Thus, you were to hammer boys 
 round — Old Clem ! With a thump and a 
 sound — Old Clem ! Beat it out, beat it out 
 — Old Clem ! With a clink for the stout — 
 Old Clem ! Blow the fire, blow the fire — 
 Old Clem ! Roaring dryer, soaring higher 
 — Old Clem ! One day soon after the ap- 
 pearance of the chair, Miss Havisham sud- 
 denly saying to me, with the impatient 
 movement of her fingers, " There, there, 
 there ! Sing !" I was sui'prised into croon-
 
 202 GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 
 
 ing this ditty as I pushed her over the floor. 
 It happened so to catch her fancy that, she 
 took it up in a low brooding voice as if she 
 were singing in her sleep. After that, it 
 became customary with us to have it as we 
 moved about, and Estella would often join 
 in ; though the whole strain was so subdued, 
 even when there were three of us, that it 
 made less noise in the grim old house than 
 the lightest breath of mnd. 
 
 What could I become with these sur- 
 roundings ? How could my character fail to 
 be influenced by them ? Is it to be won- 
 dered at if my thoughts were dazed, as my 
 eyes were, when I came out into the natural 
 light from the misty yellow rooms ? 
 
 Perhaps, I might have told Joe about the 
 pale young gentleman, if I had not pre- 
 viously been betrayed into those enormous 
 inventions to which I had confessed. Under 
 the circumstances, I felt that Joe could 
 hardly fail to discern in the pale young gen- 
 tleman, an appropriate passenger to be put 
 into the black velvet coach ; therefore, I 
 said nothing of him. Besides : that shrink- 
 ing from havino; Miss Havisham and Es-
 
 GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 203 
 
 tella discussed, which had come upon me in 
 the beginning, grew much more potent as 
 time went on. I reposed complete con- 
 fidence in no one but Biddy; but, I told 
 poor Biddy everything. Why it came 
 natural to me to do so, and why Biddy had 
 a deep concern in everything I told her, I 
 did not know then, though I think I know 
 now. 
 
 Meanwhile, councils went on in the 
 kitchen at home, fraught with ahnost insup- 
 portable aggravation to my exasperated 
 spirit. That ass, Pumblechook, used often 
 to come over of a night for the purpose of 
 discussing my prospects with my sister ; and 
 I really do believe (to this hour with less 
 penitence than I ought to feel), that if these 
 hands could have taken a linchpin out of his 
 chaise-cart, they would have done it. The 
 miserable man was a man of that confined 
 stolidity of mind, that he could not discuss 
 my prospects without having me before him 
 — as it were, to operate upon — and he would 
 drag me up from my stool (usually by the 
 collar) where I was quiet in a corner, and, 
 putting me before the fire as if I were going
 
 204 GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 
 
 to be cooked, would begin by saying, " Now, 
 Mum, here is this boy ! Here is this boy 
 which you brought up by hand. Hold up 
 your head, boy, and be for ever grateful 
 unto them which so did do. Now, Mum, 
 with respections to this boy !" And then he 
 would rumple my hair the wrong way — 
 which from my earliest remembrance, as 
 already hinted, I have in my soul denied the 
 right of any fellow- creature to do — and 
 would hold me before him by the sleeve : a 
 spectacle of imbecility only to be equalled 
 by himself. 
 
 Then, he and my sister would pair off in 
 such nonsensical speculations about Miss 
 Havisham, and about what she would do 
 with me and for me, that I used to want — 
 quite painfully — to burst into spiteful tears, 
 fly at Pumblechook, and pummel him all 
 over. In these dialogues, my sister spoke 
 to me as if she were morally wrenching 
 one of my teeth out at every reference ; 
 while Pumblechook himself, self-constituted 
 my patron, would sit supervising me mth a 
 depreciatory eye, like the architect of my
 
 GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 205 
 
 fortunes who thought himself engaged on a 
 very unremunerative job. 
 
 In these discussions, Joe bore no part. 
 But he was often talked at, while they were 
 in progress, by reason of Mrs. Joe's per- 
 ceiving that he was not favourable to my 
 being taken from the forge. I was fully old 
 enough now, to be apprenticed to Joe ; and 
 when Joe sat with the poker on his knees 
 thoughtfully raking out the ashes between 
 the lower bars, my sister would so distinctly 
 construe that innocent action into opposition 
 on his part, that she would dive at him, 
 take the poker out of his hands, shake him, 
 and put it away. There was a most irri- 
 tating end to every one of these debates. 
 All in a moment, with nothing to lead up to 
 it, my sister would stop herself in a yawn, 
 and catching sight of me as it were inci- 
 dentally, would swoop upon me with, 
 " Come ! There's enough of you ! You 
 get along to bed ; youWe given trouble 
 enough for one night, I hope !" As if I had 
 besought them as a favour to bother my life 
 out.
 
 206 GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 
 
 We went on in this way for a long time, 
 and it seemed likely that we should con- 
 tinue to go on in this way for a long time, 
 when, one day Miss Havisham stopped 
 short as she and I were walking, she leaning 
 on my shoulder ; and said with some dis- 
 pleasure : 
 
 " You are growing tall, Pip!" 
 
 I thought it best to hint, through the 
 medium of a meditative look, that this 
 might be occasioned by circumstances over 
 which I had no control. 
 
 She said no more at the time ; but, she 
 presently stopped and looked at me again ; 
 and presently again ; and after that, looked 
 frowning and moody. On the next day of 
 my attendance when our usual exercise was 
 over, and I had landed her at her dressing- 
 table, she stayed me with a movement of her 
 impatient fingers : 
 
 " Tell me the name again of that black- 
 smith of yours." 
 
 " Joe Gargery, ma'am." 
 
 " Meaning the master you were to be ap- 
 prenticed to ?" 
 
 " Yes, Miss Havisham."
 
 GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 207 
 
 " You had better be apprenticed at once. 
 Would Gargery come here with you, and 
 bring your indentures, do you think?" 
 
 I signified that I had no doubt he would 
 take it as an honour to be asked. 
 
 "Then let him come." 
 
 " At any particular time. Miss Havi- 
 sham ?" 
 
 " There, there ! I know nothing about 
 times. Let him come soon, and come alone 
 with you." 
 
 When I got home at night, and delivered 
 this message for Joe, my sister "went on 
 the Rampage," in a more alarming degree 
 than at any previous period. She asked me 
 and Joe whether we supposed she was door- 
 mats under our feet, and how we dared to 
 use her so, and what company we graciously 
 thought she was fit for ? When she had ex- 
 hausted a torrent of such inquiries, she 
 threw a candlestick at Joe, burst into a 
 loud sobbing, got out the dustpan — which 
 was always a very bad sign — put on her 
 coarse apron, and began cleaning up to a 
 terrible extent. Not satisfied with a dry 
 cleaning, she took to a pail and scrubbing-
 
 208 GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 
 
 brush, and cleaned iis out of house and 
 home, so that we stood shivering in the back 
 yard. It was ten o'clock at night before we 
 ventured to creep in again, and then she 
 asked Joe why he hadn't married a Negress 
 Slave at once ? Joe offered no answer, poor 
 fellow, but stood feeling his whisker and 
 looking dejectedly at me, as if he thought it 
 really might ha\'e been a better speculation.
 
 GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 209 
 
 CHAPTER XIII. 
 
 It was a trial to my feelings, on the next 
 day but one, to see Joe arraying himself in 
 his Sunday clothes to accompany me to Miss 
 Havisham's. However, as he thought his 
 court-suit necessary to the occasion, it was 
 not for me to tell him that he looked far 
 better in his working dress ; the rather, be- 
 cause I knew he made himself so dreadfully 
 uncomfortable, entirely on my account, and 
 that it was for me he pulled up his shirt- 
 collar so very higli behind, that it made the 
 hair on the crown of his head stand up like 
 a tuft of feathers. 
 
 At breakfast-time my sister declared her 
 intention of going to to-wn with us, and 
 
 VOL. I. p
 
 210 GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 
 
 being left at Uncle Pumblecliook's, and 
 called for " when we had done with our fine 
 ladies" — a way of putting the case, from 
 which Joe ajDpeared inclined to augur the 
 worst. The forge was shut up for the day, 
 and Joe inscribed in chalk upon the door 
 (as it was his custom to do on the very rare 
 occasions when he was not at work) the 
 monosyllable hout, accompanied by a sketch 
 of an arrow supposed to be flying in the 
 direction he had taken. 
 
 We walked to town, my sister leading the 
 way in a very large beaver bonnet, and 
 carrying a basket like the Great Seal of 
 England in plaited straw, a pair of j^attens, 
 a spare shawl, and an umbrella, though it 
 was a fine bright day. I am not quite clear 
 whether these articles were carried peniten- 
 tially or ostentatiously ; but, I rather think 
 they were displayed as articles of property 
 — much as Cleopatra or any other sovereign 
 lady on the Rampage might exhibit her 
 Avealth in a pageant or procession. 
 
 When we came to Pumblechook's, my 
 sister bounced in and left us. As it was 
 almost noon, Joe and I held sti'aight on to
 
 GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 211 
 
 Miss Havisham's house. Estella opened the 
 gate as usual, and, the moment she appeared, 
 Joe took his hat off and stood weighing it 
 by the brim in both his hands : as if he had 
 some urgent reason in his mind for being 
 particular to half a quarter of an ounce. 
 
 Estella took no notice of either of us, but 
 led us the way that I knew so well. I fol- 
 lowed next to her, and Joe came last. When 
 I looked back at Joe in the long passage, he 
 was still weighing his hat "with the greatest 
 care, and was coming after us in long strides 
 on the tips of his toes. 
 
 Estella told me we were both to go in, so 
 I took Joe by the coat-cuff and conducted 
 him into Miss Havisham's presence. She was 
 seated at her dressing-table, and looked 
 round at us immediately. 
 
 " Oh !" said she to Joe. " You are the 
 husband of the sister of this boy ?" 
 
 I could hardly have imagined dear old Joe 
 looking so unlike himself or so like some ex- 
 traordinary bird ; standing, as he did, speech- 
 less, with his tuft of feathers ruffled, and his 
 mouth open, as if he wanted a worm, 
 p 2
 
 212 GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 
 
 " You are the husband," repeated Miss 
 Havisham, " of the sister of this boy ?" 
 
 It was very aggravating ; but, throughout 
 the interview Joe persisted in addressing Me 
 instead of Miss Ha\dshani. 
 
 *' Which I meantersay, Pip," Joe now ob- 
 served in a manner that was at once expres- 
 sive of forcible argumentation, strict confi- 
 dence, and great politeness, " as I hup and 
 married your sister, and I Avere at the time 
 what you might call (if you was anyways 
 inclined) a single man." 
 
 "AYell!" said Miss Havisham. "And you 
 have reared the boy, with the intention of 
 taking him for your apprentice ; is that so, 
 Mr. Gargery?" 
 
 " You know, Pip," replied Joe, " as you 
 and me were ever friends, and it were look'd 
 for'ard to betwixt us, as being calc'lated to 
 lead to larks. Not but what, Pip, if you 
 had ever made objections to the business — 
 such as its being open to black and sut, or 
 such-like — not but what they would have 
 been attended to, don't you see ?" 
 
 " Has the boy," said Miss Havisham,
 
 GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 213 
 
 "ever made any objection? Does he like 
 the trade ?" 
 
 " Which it is well bekno^Mi to yourself, 
 Pip," returned Joe, strengthening his former 
 mixture of argumentation, confidence, and 
 politeness, " that it were the wish of your 
 OAvn hart." (I saw the idea suddenly break 
 upon him that he would adapt his epitaph 
 to the occasion, before he went on to say) 
 " And there weren't no objection on your 
 part, and Pip it were the great Avish of your 
 hart !" 
 
 It was quite in vain for me to endeavour 
 to make him sensible that he ought to speak 
 to Miss Havisham. The more I made faces 
 and gestures to him to do it, the more con- 
 fidential, argumentative, and polite, he per- 
 sisted in being to Me. 
 
 " Have you brought his indentures with 
 you ?" asked Miss Havisham. 
 
 " Well, Pip, you know," replied Joe, as 
 if that were a little unreasonable, "you 
 yourself see me put 'em in my 'at, and 
 therefore you know as they are here." With 
 which he took them out, and gave them,
 
 214 GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 
 
 not to j\Iiss Havisham, but to me. I am 
 afraid I was ashamed of the dear good fellow 
 — I hwio I was ashamed of him — when I 
 saw that Estella stood at the back of Miss 
 Havisham's chair, and that her eyes laughed 
 mischievously. 1 took the indentures out 
 of his hand and gave them to Miss Havi- 
 sham. 
 
 " You expected," said Miss Havisham, as 
 she looked them over, " no premium with 
 the boy?" 
 
 " Joe !" I remonstrated ; for he made no 
 
 reply at all. " Why- don't you answer " 
 
 . " Pip, ' returned Joe, cutting me short as 
 if he were hurt, " which I meantersay that 
 were not a question requiring a answer be- 
 twixt yourself and me, and which you know 
 the answer to be full well No. You know 
 it to be Xo, Pip, and wherefore should I 
 
 Miss Havisham glanced at him as if she 
 understood what he really was, better than 
 T had thought possible, seeing what he was 
 there; and took up a little bag from the 
 table beside her. 
 
 " Pip has earned a premium here," she
 
 GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 215 
 
 said, " and here it is. There are iive-and- 
 twenty guineas in this bag. Give it to your 
 master, Pip?" 
 
 As if he were absolutely out of his mind 
 with the wonder awakened in him by her 
 strange figure and the strange room, Joe, 
 even at this pass, persisted in addressing me. 
 
 " This is wery liberal on your part, Pip," 
 said Joe, " and it is as such received and 
 grateful Avelcome, though never looked for, 
 far nor near nor nowheres. And now, old 
 chap," said Joe, conveying to me a sensa- 
 tion, first of burning and then of freezing, 
 for I felt as if that familiar expression were 
 apphed to Miss Havisham ; " and now, old 
 chap, may we do our duty ! May you and 
 me do our duty, both on us by one and 
 another, and by them which your liberal 
 present — have — conweyed — to be — for the 
 satisfaction of mind — of — them as never — " 
 here Joe showed that he felt he had fallen 
 into frightful difiiculties, until he trium- 
 phantly rescued himself with tlie words, 
 '' and from myself far be it !" These words 
 had such a round and convincino; sound for 
 him that he said them twice.
 
 216 GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 
 
 " Good-by, Pip !" said Miss Havisham, 
 *' Let them out, Estella." 
 
 " Am I to come again, Miss Havisham ?" 
 I asked. 
 
 " No. Gargery is your master now. Gar- 
 gery ! One word !" 
 
 Thus calling him back as I went out of 
 the door, I heard her say to Joe, in a dis- 
 tinct emphatic voice, " The boy has been a 
 good boy here, and that is his reward. Of 
 course, as an honest man, you will expect 
 no other and no more." 
 
 How Joe got out of the room, I have 
 never been able to determine ; but, I know 
 that when he did get out he was steadily 
 proceeding up-stairs instead of coming down, 
 and was deaf to all remonstrances until 
 I went after him and laid hold of him. 
 In another minute we were outside the 
 gate, and it was locked, and Estella was 
 gone. 
 
 AVhen we stood in the daylight alone 
 again, Joe backed up against a wall, and 
 said to me, *' Astonishing !" And there he 
 remained so long, saying "Astonishing !" at 
 intervals, so often, that I began to think his
 
 GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 217 
 
 senses were never coming back. At length 
 lie prolonged his remark into *' Pip, I do 
 assure you this is as-TON-ishing !" and so, 
 by degrees, became conversational and able 
 to walk away. 
 
 I have reason to think that Joe's intellects 
 were brightened by the encounter they had 
 passed through, and that on our way to 
 Pumblechook's he invented a subtle and 
 deep design. My reason is to be found in 
 what took place in Mr. Pumblechook's 
 parlour : where, on our presenting our- 
 selves, my sister sat in conference with that 
 detested seedsman. 
 
 "Well?" cried my sister, addressing us 
 both at once. "And what's happened to 
 you ? I wonder you condescend to come 
 back to such poor society as this, I am sure 
 I do !" 
 
 " Miss Havisham," said Joe, with a fixed 
 look at me, like an effort of remembrance, 
 "made it wery partick'ler that we should 
 give her — were it compliments or respects, 
 Pip?" 
 
 " Compliments," I said. 
 
 " Which that were my own belief," an-
 
 218 GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 
 
 swered Joe — " her compliments to Mrs. J. 
 Gargery " 
 
 " Much good they'll do me !" observed 
 my sister ; but rather gratified too. 
 
 "And wishing," pursued Joe, A\T.th an- 
 other fixed look at me, like another eiFort of 
 remembrance, " that the state of Miss Havi- 
 sham's elth were sitch as would have — 
 allowed, were it, Pip ?" 
 
 " Of her having the pleasure," I added. 
 
 " Of ladies' company," said Joe. And 
 drew a long breath. 
 
 " Well !" cried my sister, with a mollified 
 glance at Mr. Pumblechook. " She might 
 have had the politeness to send that message 
 at first, but it's better late than never. And 
 what did she give young Rantipole here ?" 
 
 " She giv' him," said Joe, " nothing." 
 
 Mrs. Joe was going to break out, but Joe 
 went on. 
 
 "What she giv'," said Joe, "she giv' to 
 his friends. ' And by his friends,' were her 
 explanation, ' I mean into the hands of his 
 sister Mrs. J. Gargery.' Them were her 
 words ; ' Mrs. J. Gargery.' She mayn't 
 have know'd," added Joe, with an appear-
 
 GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 219 
 
 ance of reflection, "whether it were Joe, or 
 Jorge." 
 
 My sister looked at Pumblechook : M^ho 
 smoothed the elbows of his wooden arm- 
 chair, and nodded at her and at the fire, 
 as if he had known all about it before- 
 hand. 
 
 " And how much have you got?" asked 
 my sister, laughing. Positively, laughing ! 
 
 " What would present company say to ten 
 pound?" demanded Joe. 
 
 " They'd say," returned my sister, curtly, 
 " pretty well. Not too much, but pretty 
 well." 
 
 " It's more than that, then," said Joe. 
 
 That fearful Impostor, Pumblechook, im- 
 mediately nodded, and said, as he rubbed 
 the arms of his chair : "Its more than that, 
 Mum." 
 
 " Why you don't mean to say " began 
 
 my sister. 
 
 " Yes I do, Mum," said Pumblechook ; 
 " but wait a bit. Go on, Joseph. Good in 
 you ! Go on !" 
 
 " What would present company say," pro- 
 ceeded Joe, " to twenty pound?"
 
 220 GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 
 
 " Handsome would be the word," re- 
 turned my sister. 
 
 " Well, then," said Joe, " it's more than 
 twenty pound." 
 
 That abject hypocrite, Pumblechook, 
 nodded again, and said, with a patronising 
 laugh, " It's more than that, Mum. Good 
 again ! Follow her up, Joseph !" 
 
 " Then to make an end of it," said Joe, de- 
 lightedly handing the bag to my sister ; 
 " it's five-and-twenty pound." 
 
 " It's five-and-twenty pound. Mum," 
 echoed that basest of swindlers, Pumble- 
 chook, rising to shake hands with her ; " and 
 it's no more than your merits (as I said 
 when my opinion was asked), and I Avish 
 you joy of the money !" 
 
 If the villain had stopped here, his case 
 would have been sufficiently awful, but he 
 blackened his guilt by proceeding to take 
 me into custody, with the right of patronage 
 that left all his former criminality far be- 
 hind. 
 
 " Now you see, Joseph and wife," said 
 Pumblechook, as he took me by the arm 
 above the elbow, " I am one of them that
 
 GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 221 
 
 always go right through with what they've 
 begun. This boy must be bound, out of 
 hand. That's my way. Bound out of 
 hand." 
 
 " Goodness knows, Uncle Pumblechook," 
 said my sister (grasping the money), "we're 
 deeply beholden to you." 
 
 " Never mind me. Mum," returned that** 
 diabolical corn-chandler. " A pleasure's a 
 pleasure, all the world over. But this boy, 
 you know ; we must have him bound. I 
 said I'd see to it — to tell you the truth." 
 
 The Justices were sitting in the Town 
 Hall near at hand, and we at once went 
 over to have me bound apprentice to Joe in 
 the Magisterial presence. I say, we went 
 over, but I was pushed over by Pumble- 
 chook, exactly as if I had that moment 
 picked a pocket or fired a rick ; indeed, it 
 was the general impression in Court that I 
 had been taken red-handed, for, as Pumble- 
 chook shoved me before him throuo^h the 
 crowd, I heard some people say, " What's he 
 done ?" and others, " He's a young 'un, too, 
 but looks bad, don't he?" One person of 
 mild and benevolent aspect even gave me a
 
 222 GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 
 
 tract ornamented witli a woodcut of a male- 
 volent young man fitted up with a perfect 
 sausage-shop of fetters, and entitled To be 
 
 EEAD IN MY CeLL. 
 
 The Hall was a queer place, I thought, 
 with higher pews in it than a church — and 
 with people hanging over the pews looking 
 ^on — and with mighty Justices (one with a 
 powdered head) leaning back in chairs, with 
 folded arms, or taking snuff, or going to 
 sleep, or writing, or reading the newspapers 
 — and with some shining black portraits on 
 the walls, which my un artistic e}'e regarded 
 as a composition of hardbake and sticking- 
 plaister. Here, in a comer, my indentures 
 were duly signed and attested, and I was 
 " bound ;" Mr. Pumblechook holding me all 
 the while as if we had looked in on our way 
 to the scaffold, to have those little pre- 
 liminaries disposed of. 
 
 When we had come out again, and had 
 got rid of the boys who had been put into 
 great spirits by the expectation of seeing 
 me publicly tortured, and who were much 
 disappointed to find that my friends were 
 merely rallying round me, we went back to
 
 GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 223 
 
 Pumblechook's. And there my sister be- 
 came so excited by the twenty-five guineas, 
 that nothing would serve her but we must 
 have a dinner out of that Avindfall, at the 
 Blue Boar, and that Pumblechook must go 
 over in his chaise-cart, and bring the Hub- 
 bies and Mr. Wopsle. 
 
 It was agreed to be done ; and a most 
 melancholy day I passed. For, it inscrutably 
 appeared to. stand to reason, in the minds of 
 the whole company, that I was an ex- 
 crescence on the entertainment. And to 
 make it worse, they all asked me from tune 
 to time — in short, whenever they had no- 
 thing else to do — why I didn't enjoy my- 
 self. And what could I possibly do tlien, 
 but say I icas enjoying myself — when I 
 wasn't ? 
 
 However, they were groAvn up and had 
 their own way, and they made the most of 
 it. That smndling Pumblechook, exalted 
 into the beneficent contriver of the whole 
 occasion, actually took the top of the table ; 
 and, when he addressed them on the subject 
 of my being bound, and had fiendishly con- 
 gratulated them on my being Hable to im-
 
 224 GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 
 
 prisonment if I played at cards, drank 
 strong liquors, kept late hours or bad com- 
 pany, or indulged in other vagaries which 
 the form of my indentures appeared to con- 
 template as next to inevitable, he placed me 
 standing on a chair beside him, to illustrate 
 his remarks. 
 
 My only other remembrances of the great 
 festival are. That they wouldn't let me go to 
 sleep, but whenever they saw me dropping 
 off, woke me up and told me to enjoy my- 
 self. That, rather late in the evening Mr. 
 Wopsle gave us Collins's ode, and threw his 
 blood-stain'd sword in thunder down, with 
 such effect, that a waiter came in and said, 
 " The Commercials undemeatK sent up their 
 compliments, and it wasn't the Tumbler's 
 Arms." That, they were all in excellent 
 spirits on the road home, and sang Lady 
 Fair! Mr. Wopsle taking the bass, and as- 
 serting with a tremendously strong voice (in 
 reply to the inquisitive bore who leads that 
 piece of music in a most impertinent 
 manner, by wanting to know all about 
 everybody's private affairs) that he was the 
 man with his white locks flowinir, and that
 
 GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 225 
 
 he was upon the whole the weakest pilgrim 
 going. 
 
 Finally, I remember that when I got into 
 my little bedroom I was truly wretched, and 
 had a strong conviction on me that I should 
 never like Joe's trade. I had liked it once, 
 but once was not now. 
 
 VOL. I.
 
 226 GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 
 
 CHAPTER XIV. 
 
 It is a most miserable thing to feel 
 ashamed of home. There may be black 
 ingratitude in the thing, and the punish- 
 ment may be retributive and well de- 
 served; but, that it is a miserable thing, 
 I can testify. 
 
 Home had never been a very pleasant 
 place to me, because of my sister's temper. 
 But, Joe had sanctified it, and I had be- 
 lieved in it. I had believed in the best 
 parlour as a most elegant saloon ; I had 
 believed in the front door, as a mysterious 
 portal of the Temple of State whose solemn 
 opening was attended mth a sacrifice of 
 roast fowls ; I had believed in the kitchen
 
 GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 227 
 
 as a chaste though not magnificent apart- 
 ment ; I had believed in the forge as the 
 glo\\-ing road to manhood and independence. 
 Within a single year, all this was changed. 
 Now, it was all coarse and common, and I 
 would not have had ]Miss Ha^dsham and 
 Estella see it on any account. 
 
 How much of mv unsrracious condition 
 of mind may have been my o^^^l fault, 
 how much Miss Havisham's, how much my 
 sister's, is now of no moment to me or to 
 any one. The change was made in me ; 
 the thing was done. Well or ill done, ex- 
 cusably or inexcusably, it was done. 
 
 Once, it had seemed to me that when I 
 should at last roll up my shirt-sleeves and 
 go into the forge, Joe's 'prentice, I should 
 be distinguished and happy. Xow the re- 
 ality was in my hold, I only felt that I was 
 dusty with the dust of small-coal, and that 
 I had a weight upon my daily remembrance 
 to which the anvil was a feather. There 
 have been occasions in my later life (I sup- 
 pose as in most lives) when I have felt for 
 a tune as if a thick curtain had fallen on all 
 its interest and romance, to shut me out 
 q2
 
 228 GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 
 
 from anything save dull endurance any 
 more. Never has that curtain dropped so 
 heavy and blank, as when my way in life 
 lay stretched out straight before me through 
 the newly-entered road of apprenticeship to 
 Joe. 
 
 I remember that at a later period of my 
 " time," I used to stand about the church- 
 yard on Sunday evenings when night was 
 falling, comparing my own perspective mth 
 the windy marsh view, and making out 
 some likeness between them by thinking 
 how flat and low both were, and how on 
 both there came an unknown way and a 
 dark mist and then the sea. I was quite as 
 dejected on the first working-day of my 
 apprenticeship as in that after-time ; but I 
 am glad to know that I never breathed a 
 murmur to Joe while my indentures lasted. 
 It is about the only thing I am glad to 
 know of myself in that connexion. 
 
 For, though it includes what I proceed to 
 add, all the merit of what I proceed to add 
 was Joe's. It was not because I was faith- 
 ful, but because Joe was faithful, that I 
 never ran away and went for a soldier or a
 
 GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 229 
 
 sailor. It was not because I had a strong 
 sense of the virtue of industry, but because 
 Joe had a strong sense of the virtue of in- 
 dustry, that I worked with tolerable zeal 
 against the grain. It is not possible to 
 know how far the influence of any amiable 
 honest-hearted duty-doing man flies out into 
 the world; but it is very possible to know 
 how it has touched one's self in going by, 
 and I know right weU, that any good that 
 intermixed itself with my apprenticeship 
 came of plain contented Joe, and not of 
 restlessly aspiring discontented me. 
 
 What I wanted, who can say? How 
 can / say, when I never knew? What I 
 dreaded was, that in some unlucky hour I, 
 being at my grimiest and commonest, should 
 lift up my eyes and see Estella looking in at 
 one of the wooden windows of the forge. I 
 Avas haunted by the fear that she would, 
 sooner or later, find me out, with a black 
 face and hands, doing the coarsest part of 
 my work, and would exult over me and 
 despise me. Often after dark, when I was 
 pvdling the bellows for Joe, and we were 
 singing Old Clem, and when the thought
 
 230 GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 
 
 how we used to sing it at Miss Ilavisliam's 
 would seem to show me Estella s face in the 
 fire, with her pretty hair fluttering in the 
 wind and her eyes scorning me, — often at 
 such a time I would look towards those 
 panels of black night in the wall which the 
 wooden windows then were, and would 
 fancy that I saw her just drawing her face 
 away, and would believe that she had come 
 at last. 
 
 After that, when we went in to supper, 
 the place and the meal would have a more 
 homely look than ever, and I would feel 
 more ashamed of home than ever, in my 
 own ungracious breast.
 
 GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 231 
 
 CHAPTER Xy. 
 
 As I was getting too big for Mr. Wopsle's 
 great-aunt's room, my education under that 
 preposterous female terminated. Not, how- 
 ever, until Biddy had imparted to me every- 
 thing she knew, from the little catalogue of 
 prices, to a comic song she had once bought 
 for a halfpenny. Although the only cohe- 
 rent part of the latter piece of literature 
 were the opening lines, 
 
 TVTieii I went to Luunon town sirs, 
 Too rul loo ml 
 Too rul loo rul 
 
 Wasn't I done very brown sirs, 
 
 Too rul loo rul 
 Too rul loo rul 
 
 — still, in my desire to be wiser, I got
 
 232 GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 
 
 this composition by heart with the utmost 
 gravity ; nor do I recollect that I questioned 
 its merit, except that I thought (as I still do) 
 the amount of Too rul somewhat in excess 
 of the poetry. In my hunger for informa- 
 tion, I made proposals to Mr. Wopsle to 
 bestow some intellectual crumbs upon me : 
 with which he kindly complied. As it turned 
 out, however, that he only wanted me for a 
 dramatic lay-figure, to be contradicted and 
 embraced and wept over and bullied and 
 clutched and stabbed and knocked about 
 in a variety of ways, I soon declined that 
 course of instruction ; though not until Mr. 
 Wopsle in his poetic fury had severely 
 mauled me. 
 
 Whatever I acquired, I tried to impart to 
 Joe. This statement sounds so well, that I 
 cannot in my conscience let it pass unex- 
 plained. I wanted to make Joe less ignorant 
 and common, that he might be worthier of 
 my society and less open to Estella's re- 
 proach. 
 
 The old Battery out on the marshes was 
 our place of study, and a broken slate and 
 a short piece of slate pencil Avere our educa-
 
 GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 233 
 
 tional implements : to which Joe always 
 added a j)ipe of tobacco. I never knew 
 Joe to remember anything from one Sunday 
 to another, or to acquire, under my tuition, 
 any piece of information whatever. Yet he 
 would smoke his pipe at the Battery with a 
 far more sagacious air than any^vhere else 
 — even Avith a learned air — as if he con- 
 sidered himself to be advancing immensely. 
 Dear fellow, I hope he did. 
 
 It was pleasant and quiet, out there with 
 the sails on the river passing beyond the 
 earthwork, and sometimes, when the tide 
 was low, looking as if they belonged to 
 sunken ships that were still sailing on at 
 the bottom of the water. Whenever I 
 watched the vessels standing out to sea 
 with their white sails spread, I somehow 
 thought of Miss Havisham and Estella; 
 and whenever the light struck aslant, afar 
 off, upon a cloud or sail or green hill-side 
 or water-line, it was just the same. — Miss 
 Havisham and Estella and the strange house 
 and the strange life appeared to have some- 
 thing to do with everything that was pic- 
 turesque.
 
 234 GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 
 
 One Sunday when Joe, greatly enjoying 
 his pipe, had so plumed himself on being 
 "most awful dull," that I had given him up 
 for the day, I lay on the earthwork for some 
 time with my chin on my hand, descr^dng 
 traces of Miss Havisham and Estella all over 
 the prospect, in the sky and in the water, 
 until at last I resolved to mention a thought 
 concerning them that had been much in my 
 head. 
 
 " Joe," said I ; " don't you think I ought 
 to make Miss Havisham a visit ?" 
 
 "Well, Pip," returned Joe, slowly con- 
 sidering. " AVhat for ?" 
 
 " What for, Joe ? What is any visit made 
 for?" 
 
 "There is some wisits pVaps," said Joe, 
 " as for ever remains open to the question, 
 Pip. But in regard of wisiting Miss Havi- 
 sham. She might think you wanted some- 
 thing — expected something of her." 
 
 " Don't you think I might say that I did 
 not, Joe?" 
 
 " You might, old chap," said Joe. " And 
 she might credit it. Similarly she mightn't."
 
 GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 235 
 
 Joe felt, as I did, that he had made a 
 point there, and he pulled hard at his pipe 
 to keep himsell' from weakening it by repe- 
 tition. 
 
 "You see, Pip," Joe pursued, as soon as 
 he was past that danger, " Miss Havisham 
 done the handsome thing by you. When 
 Miss Havisham done the handsome thing 
 by you, she called me back to say to me as 
 that were all." 
 
 " Yes, Joe. I heard her." 
 
 "All," Joe repeated, very emphatically. 
 
 "Yes, Joe. I tell you, I heard her." 
 
 "Which I meantersay, Pip, it might be 
 that her meaning were — Make a end on it ! 
 — As you was ! — IMe to the North, and you 
 to the South ! — Keep in sunders !" 
 
 I had thought of that too, and it was 
 very far from comforting to me to find that 
 he had thought of it ; for it seemed to render 
 it more probable. 
 
 "But, Joe." 
 
 "Yes, old chap." 
 
 "Here am I, getting on in the first year 
 of my time, and, since the day of my being
 
 23 G GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 
 
 bound, I have never thanked Miss Havi- 
 sham, or asked after her, or shown that I 
 remember her." 
 
 "That's true, Pip; and unless you was 
 to turn her out a set of shoes all four round 
 — and which I meantersay as even a set of 
 shoes all four round might not act accept- 
 able as a present, in a total wacancy of 
 hoofs " 
 
 " I don't mean that sort of remembrance, 
 Joe ; I don't mean a present." 
 
 But Joe had got the idea of a present in 
 his head and must harp upon it. " Or 
 even," said he, " if you was helped to knock- 
 ing her up a new chain for the front door — 
 or say a gross or two of shark-headed screws 
 for general use — or some light fancy article, 
 such as a toastino;-fork when she took her 
 muffins — or a gridiron when she took a 
 sprat or such like " 
 
 " I don't mean any present at all, Joe," I 
 interposed. 
 
 "Well," said Joe, still harping on it as 
 though I had particularly pressed it, "if I 
 was yourself, Pip, I wouldn't. No, I would 
 not. For what's a door-chain when she's
 
 GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 237 
 
 got one always up ? And shark-headers is 
 open to misrepresentations. And if it was 
 a toasting-fork, you'd go into brass and do 
 yourself no credit. And the oncommonest 
 workman can't show himself oncommon in a 
 gridiron — for a gridiron is a gridiron," said 
 Joe, steadfastly impressing it upon me, as if 
 he were endeavouring to rouse me from a 
 fixed delusion, " and you may haim at what 
 you like, but a gridiron it will come out, 
 either by your leave or again your leave, and 
 you can't help yourself " 
 
 " My dear Joe," I cried, in desperation, 
 takinor hold of his coat, " don't go on in 
 that way. I never thought of making Miss 
 Havisham any present." 
 
 " No, Pip," Joe assented, as if he had 
 been contending for that, all along ; " and 
 what I say to you is, you are right, 
 Pip." 
 
 " Yes, Joe ; but what I wanted to say, 
 was, that as we are rather slack just now, if 
 you would give me a half-holiday to-morrow, 
 I think I would go up-town and make a call 
 on Miss Est — Havisham." 
 
 " Which her name," said Joe, gravely,
 
 238 GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 
 
 " ain't Estavisham, Pip, unless she have 
 been rechris'enecl." 
 
 " I know, Joe, I know. It was a slip of 
 mine. What do you think of it, Joe ?" 
 
 In brief, Joe thouj^ht that if I thought 
 well of it, he thought well of it. But, he 
 was particular in stipulating that if I Avere 
 not received with cordiality, or if I were not 
 encouraged to rep'eat my visit as a visit 
 which had no ulterior object but was simply 
 one of gratitude for a favour received, then 
 this experimental trip should have no suc- 
 cessor. By these conditions I promised to 
 abide. 
 
 Now, Joe kept a journeyman at weekly 
 wages whose name was Orlick. He pre- 
 tended that his christian name was Dolge — 
 a clear impossibility — ^but he was a feUow of 
 that obstinate disposition that I believe him 
 to have been the prey of no delusion in this 
 particular, but wilfully to have imposed that 
 name upon the village as an affront to its 
 understanding. He was a broad-shouldered 
 loose -limbed swarthy fellow of great 
 strength, never in a hurry, and always 
 slouching. He never even seemed to come
 
 GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 239 
 
 to his work on purpose, but would slouch in 
 as if by mere accident ; and when he went 
 to the Jolly Bargemen to eat his dinner, or 
 went away at night, he would slouch out, 
 like Cain or the Wandering Jew, as if he 
 had no idea where he was going and no 
 intention of ever comino- back. He lodoed 
 
 o o 
 
 m 
 
 at a sluice-keeper's out on the marshes, and 
 on working days would come slouching 
 from his hermitage, with his hands in his 
 pockets and his dinner loosely tied in a 
 bundle round his neck and dano-liuo; on his 
 back. On Sundays he mostly lay all day on 
 sluice-gates, or stood against ricks and barns. 
 He always slouched, locomotively, with his 
 eyes on the ground ; and, when accosted or 
 othermse required to raise them, he looked 
 up in a half resentful, half puzzled way, as 
 though the only thought he ever had, was, 
 that it was rather an odd and injurious fact 
 that he should never be thinking. 
 
 This morose journeyman had no liking for 
 me. When I was veiy small and timid, he 
 gave me to understand that the Devil lived 
 in a black corner of the forge, and that he 
 knew the fiend very well : also that it was
 
 240 GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 
 
 necessary to make up the fire, once in seven 
 years, with a live bo}', and that I might con- 
 sider myself fuel. When I became Joe's 
 'prentice, Orlick was perhaps confirmed in 
 some suspicion that I should displace him ; 
 howbeit, he liked me still less. Not that he 
 ever said anything, or did anything, openly 
 importing hostility ; 1 only noticed that he 
 always beat his sparks in my direction, and 
 that whenever I sang Old Clem, he came in 
 out of time. 
 
 Dolge Orlick was at work and present, 
 next day, when I reminded Joe of my half- 
 holiday. He said nothing at the moment, 
 for he and Joe had just got a piece of hot 
 iron between them, and I was at the bel- 
 lows; but by-and-by he said, leaning on 
 his hammer : 
 
 " Now, master ! Sure you're not a going 
 to favour only one of us. If Young Pip has 
 a half-holiday, do as much for Old Orlick." 
 I suppose he was about five-and-twent}^, but 
 he usually spoke of himself as an ancient 
 person. 
 
 "Why, what'll you do with a half-holiday, 
 if you get it ?" said Joe.
 
 GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 241 
 
 " What'll / do with it ! What'll he do 
 with it ? I'll do as much with it as /izw," 
 said Orlick. 
 
 " As to Pip, he's going up-town," said 
 Joe. 
 
 "Well then, as to Old Orlick, hes a going 
 up-to-vNTi," retorted that worthy. " Two can 
 go up-town. Tan't only one wot can go up- 
 town." 
 
 " Don't lose your temper," said Joe. 
 
 " ShaU if I like," growled Orlick. " Some 
 and their up-towning ! Now, master ! 
 Come. No favouring in this shop. Be a 
 man !" 
 
 The master refusing to entertain the sub- 
 ject until the journeyman was in a better 
 temper, Orlick plunged at the furnace, drew 
 out a red-hot bar, made at me with it as if 
 he were going to run it through my body, 
 whisked it round my head, laid it on the 
 anvil, hammered it out — as if it were I, I 
 thought, and the sparks were my spirting 
 blood — and finally said, when he had ham- 
 mered himself hot and the iron cold, and he 
 again leaned on his hammer : 
 
 " Now, master !" 
 
 VOL. I. R
 
 242 GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 
 
 " Are you all right now ?" demanded Joe. 
 
 " Ah ! I am all right," said gruff Old 
 Orliek. 
 
 " Then, as in general you stick to your 
 work as well as most men," said Joe, " let it 
 be a half-holiday for all." 
 
 My sister had been standing silent in the 
 yard, within hearing — she was a most un- 
 scrupulous spy and listener — and she in- 
 stantly looked in at one of the windows. 
 
 " Like you, you fool !" said she to Joe, 
 " giving holidays to great idle hulkers like 
 that. You are a rich man, upon my Ufe, to 
 waste wages in that way. I wish / was his 
 master !" 
 
 " You'd be everybody's master, if you 
 durst," retorted Orliek, with an ill-favoured 
 grin. 
 
 (" Let her alone," said Joe.) 
 
 " I'd be a match for all noodles and all 
 rogues," returned my sister, beginning to 
 work herself into a mighty rage. " And I 
 couldn't be a match for the noodles, without 
 being a match for your master, who's the 
 d under-headed king of the noodles. And I 
 couldn't be a match for the ro£^cs, without
 
 GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 243 
 
 being a match for you, who are the blackest- 
 looking and the worst rogne between this 
 and France. Now !" 
 
 "You're a foul shrew, Mother Gargery," 
 growled the journeyman. " If that makes 
 a judge of rogues, you ought to be a 
 good'un." 
 
 (" Let her alone, will you ?" said Joe.) 
 
 " AVhat did you say?" cried my sister, be- 
 ginning to scream. " ^Miat did you say? 
 What did that fellow Orlick say to me, Pip ? 
 What did he call me, with my husband 
 standing by? ! ! !" Each of these 
 exclamations was a shriek ; and I must 
 remark of my sister, what is equally true of 
 all the violent women I have ever seen, that 
 passion was no excuse for her, because it is 
 undeniable that instead of lapsing mto 
 passion, she consciously and deliberately 
 took extraordinary pains to force herself 
 into it, and became blindly furious by 
 regular stages; "what was the name he 
 gave me before the base man who swore to 
 defend me? 0! Hold me! 0!" 
 
 " Ah-h-h !" growled the journejmian, be- 
 tween his teeth, " I'd hold you, if you was 
 r2
 
 244 GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 
 
 my wife. I'd hold you under the pump, and 
 choke it out of you." 
 
 (" I tell you, let her alone," said Joe.) 
 " Oh ! -To hear him !" cried my sister, 
 with a clap of her hands and a scream to- 
 gether — which was her next stage. " To 
 hear the names he's giving me! That 
 Orlick ! In my own house ! Me, a married 
 woman ! With my husband standing by ! 
 ! !" Here my sister, after a fit of clap- 
 pings and screamings, beat her hands upon 
 her bosom and upon her knees, and threw 
 her cap ofi^, and pulled her hair down — 
 which were the last stages on her road to 
 frenzy. Being by this time a perfect Fury 
 and a complete success, she made a dash at 
 the door, which I had fortunately locked. 
 
 What could the -wretched Joe do now, 
 after his disregarded parenthetical interrup- 
 tions, but stand up to his journeyman, and 
 ask him what he meant by interfering be- 
 twixt himself and Mrs. Joe; and further 
 whether he was man enough to come on ? 
 Old Orlick felt that the situation admitted 
 of nothing less than coming on, and was 
 on his defence straightway ; so, without so
 
 GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 245 
 
 much as pulling off their singed and burnt 
 aprons, they went at One another, like two 
 giants. But, if any man in that neighbour- 
 hood could stand up long against Joe, I 
 never saw the man. Orlick, as if he had 
 been of no more account than the pale 
 young gentleman, was very soon among the 
 coal-dust, and in no hurry to come out of it. 
 Then, Joe unlocked the door and picked up 
 my sister, who had dropped insensible at the 
 window (but who had seen the fight first, I 
 think), and who was carried into the house 
 and laid doA\Ti, and who was recommended 
 to revive, and would do nothing but struggle 
 and clench her hands in Joe's hair. Then, 
 came that singular calm and silence which 
 succeed all uproars ; and then, with the 
 vague sensation which I have always con- 
 nected with such a lull — namely, that it was 
 Sunday, and somebody was dead — I went 
 up-stairs to dress myself. 
 
 When I came do\^Ti again, I found Joe 
 and Orlick sweeping up, without any other 
 traces of discomposure than a slit in one of 
 Orlick's nostrils, which was neither ex- 
 pressive nor ornamental. A pot of beer had
 
 246 GKEAT EXPECTATIONS. 
 
 appeared from the Jolly Bargemen, and 
 they were sharing it by turns in a peaceable 
 manner. The lull had a sedative and phi- 
 losophical influence on Joe, who followed 
 me out into the road to say, as a parting 
 observation that might do me good, " On 
 the Rampage, Pip, and oft" the Rampage, 
 Pip — such is Life !" 
 
 With what absurd emotions (for, we think 
 the feelings that are very serious in a man 
 quite comical in a boy) I found myself 
 again going to Miss Havisham's, matters 
 little here. Nor, how I passed and repassed 
 the gate many times before I could make 
 up my mind to ring. Nor, how I debated 
 whether I should go away without ringing ; 
 nor, how I should undoubtedly have gone, 
 if my time had been my own, to come back. 
 
 Miss Sarah Pocket came to the gate. No 
 Estella. 
 
 " How, then ? You here again ?" said 
 Miss Pocket. " What do you want?" 
 
 When I said that I only came to see how 
 Miss Ha\asham was, Sarah evidently -de- 
 liberated whether or no she should send me 
 about my busmess. But, unwilling to hazard
 
 GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 247 
 
 the responsibility, she let me in, and pre- 
 sently brought the sharp message that I 
 was to "come up." 
 
 Everything was unchanged, and Miss Ha- 
 visham was alone. " Well ?" said she, fixing 
 her eyes upon me. " I hope you want 
 nothing? You'll get nothing." 
 
 " No indeed. Miss Havisham. I only 
 wanted you to know that I am doing very 
 well in my apprenticeship, and am always 
 much obliged to you." 
 
 " There, there !" with the old restless 
 fingers. " Come now and then ; come on 
 your birthday. — Ay!" she cried suddenly, 
 turning herself and her chair towards me, 
 " you are looking round for Estella ? Hey ?" 
 
 I had been lookino- round — in fact, for 
 Estella — and I stammered that I hoped she 
 was well. 
 
 " Abroad," said Miss Havisham ; " edu- 
 cating for a lady ; far out of reach ; prettier 
 than ever ; admired by all who see her. Do 
 you feel that you have lost her?" 
 
 •There was such a malignant enjoyment in 
 her utterance of the last words, and she 
 broke into such a disagreeable laugh, that I
 
 248 GREAT EXPECTATION'S. 
 
 was at a loss what to say. She spared me 
 the trouble of considering, by dismissing 
 me. When the gate was closed upon me by 
 Sarah of the walnut-sheU countenance, I 
 felt more than ever dissatisfied with my 
 home and with my trade and with every- 
 thing ; and that was all I took by that 
 motion. 
 
 As I was loitering along the High-street, 
 looking in disconsolately at the shop- 
 windows, and thinking what I would buy 
 if I were a gentleman, who should come out 
 of the bookshop but Mr. Wopsle. Mr. 
 Wopsle had in his hand the affecting tragedy 
 of George Barnwell, in which he had that 
 moment invested sixpence, with the view of 
 heaping every word of it on the head of 
 Pumblechook, with whom he was going to 
 drink tea. No sooner did he see me, than 
 he appeared to consider that a special Pro- 
 vidence had put a 'prentice in his way to be 
 read at; and he laid hold of me, and in- 
 sisted on my accompanying him to the Pum- 
 blechookian parlour. As I knew it would*be 
 miserable at home, and as the nights were 
 dark and the way was dreary, and almost
 
 GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 249 
 
 any companionship on the road was better 
 than none, I made no great resistance ; 
 consequently, we turned into Piunblechook's 
 just as the street and the shops were light- 
 ing up. 
 
 As I never assisted at any other represen- 
 tation of George Barnwell, I don't know 
 how long it may usually take ; but I know 
 very well that it took until half-past nine 
 o'clock that night, and that when Mr. 
 Wopsle got into Newgate, I thought he 
 never Avould go to the scaffold, he became 
 so much slower than at any former period 
 of his disgraceful career. I thought it a 
 little too much that he should complain of 
 being cut short in his flower after all, as if 
 he had not been running to seed, leaf after 
 leaf, ever since his course began. This, 
 however, was a mere question of length 
 and wearisomenessr What stung me, was 
 the identification of the whole affair with 
 my unoffending self. When Barnwell began 
 to go wrong, I declare that I felt positively 
 apologetic, Pumblechook's indignant stare 
 so taxed me ^dth it. Wopsle, too, took 
 pains to present me in the worst light. At
 
 250 GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 
 
 once ferocious and maudlin, I was made to 
 murder my uncle with no extenuating cir- 
 cumstances whatever; Millwood put me 
 dovm in argument, on every occasion ; it 
 became sheer monomania in my master's 
 daughter to care a button for me ; and all 
 I can say for my gasping and procrastinat- 
 ing conduct on the fatal morning, is, that it 
 was worthy of the general feebleness of my 
 character. Even after I was happily hanged 
 and Wopsle had closed the book, Pumble- 
 chook sat starins; at me, and shakins: his 
 head, and saying, " Take warning, boy, take 
 warning !" as if it were a weU-knoAvn fact 
 that I contemplated murdering a near re- 
 lation, pro\T.ded I could only induce one 
 to have the weakness to become my bene- 
 factor. 
 
 It was a very dark night when it was all 
 over, and when I set out with Mr. Wopsle 
 on the walk home. Beyond town, we found 
 a heavy mist out, and it fell wet and thick. 
 The turnpike lamp was a blur, quite out of 
 the lamp's usual place apparently, and its 
 rays looked solid substance on the fog. We 
 were noticing this, and saying how that the
 
 GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 251 
 
 mist rose with a change of wind from a cer- 
 tain quarter of our marshes, when we came 
 upon a man, slouching imder the lee of the 
 turnpike house. 
 
 " Halloa !" we said, stopping. " Orlick, 
 there?" 
 
 " Ah !" he answered, slouching out. " I 
 was standing by, a minute, on the chance of 
 company." 
 
 " You are late," I remarked. 
 
 Orlick not unnaturally answered, " Well? 
 And yoiivQ. late." 
 
 "We have been," said Mr. Wopsle, ex- 
 alted with his late performance, " we have 
 been indulging, Mr. Orlick, in an intellec- 
 tual evening." 
 
 Old Orlick ofrowled, as if he had nothino^ 
 to say about that, and we all went on toge- 
 ther. I asked him presently whether he had 
 been spending his half-holiday up and doAMi 
 town? 
 
 " Yes," said he, " all of it. I come in 
 behind yourself. I didn't see you, but I 
 must have been pretty close behind you. 
 By-the-by, the gims is going again." 
 
 "At the Hulks?" said I.
 
 252 GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 
 
 " Ay ! There's some of the birds flown 
 from the cages. The guns have been going 
 since dark, about. You'll hear one pre- 
 sently." 
 
 In effect, we had not walked many yards 
 further, when the well-remembered boom 
 came towards us, deadened by the mist, and 
 heavily rolled away along the low grounds 
 by the river, as if it were pursuing and 
 threatening the fugitives. 
 
 "A good night for cutting off in," said 
 Orlick. " We'd be puzzled how to bring 
 down a jail-bird on the wing, to-night." 
 
 The subject was a suggestive one to me, 
 and I thought about it in silence. Mr. 
 Wopsle, as the ill-requited uncle of the 
 evening's tragedy, fell to meditating aloud 
 in his garden at Camberwell. Orlick, with 
 his hands in his pockets, slouched heavily 
 at my side. It was very dark, very wet, 
 very muddy, and so we splashed along. 
 Now and then, the sound of the signal 
 cannon broke upon us again, and again 
 rolled sulkily along the course of the river. 
 I kept myself to myself and my thoughts. 
 Mr. Wopsle died amiably at Camberwell,
 
 GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 253 
 
 and exceedingly game on Bosworth Field, 
 and in the greatest agonies at Glastonbury. 
 Orlick sometimes growled, " Beat it out, 
 beat it out — old Clem ! With a clink for 
 the stout — old Clem !" I thought he had 
 been drinking, but he was not drunk. 
 
 Thus, we came to the village. The way 
 by which we approached it, took us past 
 the Three Jolly Bargemen, which we were 
 surprised to find — it being eleven o'clock — 
 in a state of commotion, "vvith the door mde 
 open, and unwonted lights that had been 
 hastily caught up and put down, scattered 
 about. Mr. Wopsle dropped in to ask what 
 was the matter (surmising that a convict 
 had been taken), but came running out in a 
 great hurry. 
 
 " There's something wrong," said he, 
 without stopping, "up at your place, Pip. 
 RunaU!" 
 
 "What is it?" I asked, keeping up with 
 him. So did Orlick, at my side. 
 
 " I can't quite understand. The house 
 seems to have been violently entered when 
 Joe Gargery was out. Supposed by convicts. 
 Somebody has been attacked and hurt."
 
 254 GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 
 
 We were running too fast to admit of 
 more being said, and we made no stop until 
 we got into our kitchen. It was full of 
 people; the whole village was there, or in 
 the yard ; and there was a surgeon, and 
 there was Joe, and there were a group of 
 women, aU on the floor in the midst of the 
 kitchen. The unemployed bystanders drew 
 back when they saw me, and so I became 
 aware of my sister — Ij^ng without sense or 
 movement on the bare boards where she 
 had been knocked do^vn by a tremendous 
 blow on the back of the head, dealt by some 
 unkno'wn hand when her face was turned 
 towards the fire — destined never to be on 
 the Rampage again, while she was wife of 
 Joe.
 
 GBEAT EXPECTATIONS. 255 
 
 CHAPTER XVI. 
 
 With my head full of George Barnwell, I 
 was at first disposed to believe that / must 
 have had some hand in the attack upon my 
 sister, or at all events that as her near re- 
 lation, popularly known to be under obliga- 
 tions to her, I was a more legitimate object 
 of suspicion than any one else. But when, 
 in the clearer li2;ht of next mornincf, I beo:an 
 to reconsider the matter and to hear it dis- 
 cussed around me on all sides, I took another 
 view of the case, which was more reasonable. 
 
 Joe had been at the Three Jolly Barge- 
 men, smoking his pipe, from a quarter after 
 eight o'clock to a quarter before ten. While 
 he was there, my sister had been seen stand-
 
 256 GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 
 
 iiig at the kitchen door, and had exchanged 
 Good Night with a fami-labourer going 
 home. The man could not be more par- 
 ticular 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 do"vvn 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 blo"\vn 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 dis- 
 arrangement of the kitchen, excepting such 
 as she herself had made, in falling and bleed- 
 ing. 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, some- 
 thing heavy had been thrown do^vn at her 
 with considerable violence, as she lay on her
 
 CxREAT EXPECTATIONS. 257 
 
 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 two convicts who had escaped 
 last night. Further, one of those two was 
 already retaken, and had not freed himself 
 of his iron. 
 
 Knomng what I knew, I set up an infe- 
 rence 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 pos- 
 sessed of it, and to have turned it to this 
 
 VOL. I. S
 
 258 GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 
 
 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 
 toAvn all the evening, he had been in divers 
 companies in several public-houses, and he 
 had come back Avith 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 pro- 
 vided the weapon, however undesignedly, 
 but I could hardly think otherwise. I 
 suffered unspeakable trouble while I con- 
 sidered and reconsidered whether I should 
 at last dissolve that spell of my childhood, 
 and tell Joe all the story. For months after-
 
 GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 259 
 
 ward.-, I every day settled the question finally 
 in the negative, and reopened and reargued 
 it next mominsr. The contention came, after 
 all, to this ; — ^the secret was such an old one 
 now, had so sto^ti 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 beheved it, I had the 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 temporised ^Yith. 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 ])retty much what I have heard and read 
 of li].:e authorities doing in other such cases. 
 s 2
 
 260 GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 
 
 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 circum- 
 stances. Also, they stood about the door of 
 the Jolly Bargemen, mth knowing and re- 
 served looks that filled the whole neigh- 
 bourhood 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 writino; what she could 
 not indicate in speech. As she was (very 
 bad hand^vriting apart) a more than indif- 
 ferent speller, and as Joe was a more than
 
 GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 261 
 
 indifferent reader, extraordinary complica- 
 tions 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 im- 
 proved, 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 suit- 
 able attendant for her, until a circumstance 
 happened conveniently to relieve us. Mr. 
 Wopsle's great-aunt conquered a confirmed 
 habit of li\'ing 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
 
 2.G2 GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 
 
 dear old fellow Avas sadly cut up by the con- 
 stant 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 be- 
 came 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 cha- 
 racteristic 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 en- 
 countered. 
 
 Biddy's first triumph in her new ofiice, 
 was to solve a difiiculty 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
 
 GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 263 
 
 eao-erness had called our attention to it as 
 
 o 
 
 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 Avord 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 be- 
 thought 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 cj[uick to understand her, this myste- 
 rious sign reappeared on the slate. Biddy 
 looked thoughtfully at it, heard my expla- 
 nation, looked thoughtfully at my sister, 
 looked thoughtfully at Joe (who was alwaj's 
 represented on the slate by his initial letter),
 
 264 GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 
 
 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 himT 
 
 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, Avas 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 pro- 
 pitiation in all she did, such as I have seen
 
 GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 265 
 
 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.
 
 266. GKEAT EXl'ECTATIOXS. 
 
 CHAPTER XVII. 
 
 I NOW fell into a regular routine of ap- 
 prenticeship-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 an- 
 other 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 
 intervicAv lasted but a few minutes, and she 
 gave me a guinea when I was going, and 
 told me to come again on iny next birthday. 
 I may mention at once that this became an 
 annual custom. I tried to decline takins; the
 
 GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 267 
 
 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 Hght 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 myste- 
 rious 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
 
 268 GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 
 
 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 be- 
 ginning to be rather vain of my knowledge, 
 for I spent my birthday guineas on it, and 
 set aside the greater part of my pocket-
 
 GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 269 
 
 money for similar investment ; though 1 
 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 !"
 
 270 GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 
 
 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 sur- 
 rounded 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 uneasi- 
 ness and^discontent I had turned to her for 
 help, as a'matter of course. Biddy sat quietly
 
 GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 271 
 
 sewinsT, 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 patro- 
 nised 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 
 hke her self-foro-etfulness, to transfer the 
 remark to my sister, and to get up and be 
 busy about her, making her more com- 
 fortable ; " 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
 
 272 GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 
 
 and I went out together. It was summer- 
 time, and lovely weather. When wc 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 with- 
 out 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 re- 
 turned. " 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
 
 GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 273 
 
 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 any- 
 thing 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 re- 
 gretted, but still it was not to be helped. 
 
 " If 1 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 
 
 VOL. I. T
 
 274 GREAT EXTECTATIONS. 
 
 could have settled down and been but half 
 as fond of the forge as I was when I -svas 
 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 
 saihng 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.
 
 GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 275 
 
 " 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. 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 inde- 
 pendently 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 erainino; over." 
 
 Exactly what I myself had thought, many 
 T 2
 
 276 GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 
 
 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 msest 
 of men fall every da}' ? 
 
 "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 kno-vving the madness 
 of my heart to be so very mad and mis- 
 placed, 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 Avith my 
 face upon my sleeve I cried a little — exactly 
 as I had done in the brewery yard — and
 
 GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 277 
 
 felt vaguely convinced tliat 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 her- 
 self!) 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
 
 278 GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 
 
 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 do^vn into the summer 
 evening, and it was very beautiful. I began 
 to consider whether I was not more natu- 
 rally 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 thfe 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
 
 GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 279 
 
 misera])le ? I was obliged to admit that I 
 did know it for a certainty, and I said to 
 myse¥, " 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 plea- 
 sure, from giving me pain ; she would far 
 rather have wounded her o"vvn breast than 
 miine. 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 thins: for me." 
 
 " But you never will, you see," said 
 Biddy. 
 
 It did not appear quite so unlikely to me
 
 280 GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 
 
 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 ivas^ 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 man- 
 kind, and convey an idea of something 
 savagely damaging. When I was younger.
 
 GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 281 
 
 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 mth 
 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 in- 
 formation 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."
 
 282 GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 
 
 However novel and peculiar this testi- 
 mony of attachment, I did not doubt the 
 accuracy of the interpretation. I was very 
 hot indeed upon old Orlick's daring to ad- 
 mire her ; as hot as if it were an outrage on 
 myself 
 
 " But it makes no diiference to yon, yon 
 know," said Biddy, calmly. 
 
 " ISTo^ ^iddy, 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 \dt\\ your own consent." 
 
 I kept an eye on Orlick after that night, 
 and, whenever circumstances were favour- 
 able 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 himy 
 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 con-
 
 GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 283 
 
 fused enough before, I complicated its con- 
 fusion fifty thousand-fold, by ha\ing 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 disaffec- 
 tion 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. Scat- 
 tered 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.
 
 284 GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 
 
 CHAPTER XVIIL 
 
 It was in the fourth year of my appren- 
 ticeship 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 com- 
 mitted, and Mr. Wopsle was imbrued in 
 blood to the eyebrows. He gloated over 
 every abhorrent adjective in the description, 
 and identified himself Avith every "vvitness at 
 the Inquest. He faintly moaned, '' I am 
 done for," as the victim, and he barbarously 
 bellowed, "I'U serve you out," as the mur- 
 derer. He gave the medical testimony, in
 
 GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 285 
 
 pointed imitation of our local practi- 
 tioner ; 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 dehghtfuUy comfortable. In this 
 cozy state of mind we came to the verdict 
 Wilful Murder. 
 
 Then, and not sooner, I became aware of 
 a strano;e 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 fore- 
 finger 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 ever)- 
 body coldly and sarcastically. 
 
 " Guilty, of course ?" said he. " Out 
 with it. Come !"
 
 286 GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 
 
 " 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 knoAv, 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 ques- 
 tion. Either you know it, or you don't 
 know it. Which is it to be ?" 
 
 He stood mth his head on one side and 
 himself on one side, in a bullying interroga- 
 tive manner, and he threw his forefinger at 
 Mr. Wopsle — as it were to mark him out — 
 before biting it again. 
 
 " NoAv !" said he. " Do you know it, or 
 don't you know it ?" 
 
 " Certainly I know it," rcphed Mr. 
 Wopsle. 
 
 " Certainly you know it. Then Avhy
 
 GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 287 
 
 didn't you say so at first ? Now, 111 ask 
 you another question ;" taking possession of 
 Mr. Wopsle, as if he had a right to him. 
 "Z)o 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 Jiave 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. \\'Tiat 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?"
 
 288 GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 
 
 " 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 readjust 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 mth your eye, 
 and tell me w^hether it distinctly states that 
 the prisoner expressly said that he was in- 
 structed by his legal advisers wholly to re- 
 serve his defence ? Come ! Do you make 
 that of it?"
 
 GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 289 
 
 Mr. Wopsle answered, " Those are not 
 the exact words." 
 
 " Not the exact words!" repeated the gen- 
 tleman, bitterly. " Is that the exact sub- 
 stance ?" 
 
 " 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," pur- 
 sued 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 
 
 VOL. I. U
 
 290 GREAT EXTECTATIONS. 
 
 Our Sovereign Lord the King and the 
 prisoner at the bar, and Avould a true ver- 
 dict 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, \vith an air of au- 
 thority not to be disputed, and with a 
 manner expressive of knoAving 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 be- 
 lieve there is a blacksmith among you, by 
 name Joseph — or Joe — Gargery. Which is 
 the man ?"
 
 GREAT EXPECTATIONS. ' 291 
 
 " 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 recognise me, but 
 I recognised 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 look- 
 ing 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 laro;e watch-chain, his strono- black dots 
 of beard and whisker, and even the smeU of 
 scented soap on his great hand. 
 
 " I wish to have a private conference 
 with you two," said he, when he had sur- 
 veyed me at his leisure. " It will take a 
 little time. Perhaps we had better go to 
 your place of residence. I prefer not to 
 u2
 
 292 GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 
 
 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 occa- 
 sionally 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 con- 
 ference 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 daggers, and I 
 am a lawyer in London. I am pretty well 
 kno^vn. I have unusual business to transact
 
 GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 293 
 
 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 con- 
 fidential agent of another, I do. No less, 
 no more." 
 
 Finding that he could not see us very 
 weU 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 re- 
 quest and for his good? You would not 
 want anything for so doing ?" 
 
 " Lord forbid that I should want any- 
 thing 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 ?"
 
 294 GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 
 
 " The answer is," returned Joe, sternly, 
 " No." 
 
 I thought Mr. Jaggers glanced at Joe, as 
 if he considered him a fool for his dis- 
 interestedness. But I was too much be- 
 wildered between breathless curiosity and 
 surprise, to be sure of it. 
 
 " Very well," said Mr. Jaggers. " Recol- 
 lect 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 an- 
 other. 
 
 " I am instructed to communicate to him," 
 said Mr. Jaggers, thro^ving his finger at me,
 
 GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 295 
 
 sideways, " that he will come into a hand- 
 some property. Further, that it is the de- 
 sire 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 expecta- 
 tions." 
 
 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 tune to 
 mention it." 
 
 My heart Avas 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 ! Kow you are to
 
 296 GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 
 
 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 po- 
 sitively prohibited from making any inquiry 
 on this head, or any allusion or reference, 
 however distant, to any individual whomso- 
 ever as the individual, in all the communica- 
 tions 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. That is not for you to inquire into. 
 The condition is laid do^vn. Your accept- 
 ance 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
 
 GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 297 
 
 I am not otherwise responsible. That person 
 is the person from whomjyou derive your 
 expectations, and the secret is solely held by 
 that person and by'me. Again, not a very 
 difficult condition mth 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 Avhile 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 ' expec- 
 tations' more than once, you are not en- 
 dowed with expectations only. There is 
 already lodged in my hands, a sum of money 
 amply sufficient for your suitable education
 
 298 GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 
 
 and maintenance. You Avill 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 mth 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 tliink that wise, mind, 
 but it's my trust. Have you ever heard of 
 any tutor whom you would prefer to an- 
 other?" 
 
 I had never heard of any tutor but Biddy 
 and Mr. Wopsle's great-aunt; so, I replied 
 in the negative. 
 
 " There is a certain tutor, of whom I have 
 some knowledge, who I think might suit the
 
 GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 299 
 
 purpose," said Mr. Jaggers. "I don't re- 
 commend him, observe ; because I never re- 
 commend 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. " Recol- 
 lect yourself!" 
 
 Not recollecting myself, I began again 
 
 that I was much obliored to him for his re- 
 
 o 
 
 commendation 
 
 " No, my young friend," he interrupted.
 
 300 GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 
 
 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 
 obliofed to him for his mention of Mr. Mat- 
 thew Pocket 
 
 " That's more hke it !" cried Mr. Jaggers. 
 
 — And (I added), I would gladly try that 
 o^entleman. 
 
 " 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 Lon- 
 don?" 
 
 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, mth the 
 sreatest coolness, and counted them out on
 
 GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 301 
 
 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 dumb- 
 foundered ?" 
 
 " I am r said Joe, in a very decided 
 manner. 
 
 " It was understood that you wanted no- 
 thing for yourself, remember?" 
 
 "It were understood," said Joe. "And 
 it are understood. And it ever mil be 
 similar according." 
 
 "But what," said Mr. Jaggers, smnging 
 his purse, " what if it was in my instructions 
 to make you a present, as compensation ?" 
 
 "As compensation what for?" Joe de- 
 manded. 
 
 " 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 eggshell, in his com- 
 bination of strength with gentleness. " Pip 
 is that hearty welcome," said Joe, "to go
 
 302 GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 
 
 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 ! " 
 
 dear good Joe, Avhom 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. 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 
 anoel's wincr ! 
 
 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 to2:ether. I beorsred Joe to be com- 
 forted, 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 dis- 
 engaged wrist, as if he were bent on gouging 
 himself, but said not another word. 
 
 Mr. Jaggers had looked on at this, as one 
 who recognised in Joe the •village idiot, and 
 in me his keeper. When it was over, he
 
 GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 303 
 
 said, weighing in his hand the purse he had 
 ceased to s\\dng : 
 
 " Now, Joseph Gargery, I warn you this 
 is your last chance. No half measures ^xith. 
 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 sud- 
 denly working round him with every de- 
 monstration of a feU pugilistic purpose. 
 
 "Which I meantersay," cried Joe, "that 
 if you come into my place bull-baiting and 
 badgering me, come out ! Which I meanter- 
 say 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 be- 
 came placable ; merely stating to me, in an 
 obhging manner and as a polite expostu- 
 latory 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 de- 
 monstrated, and had backed near the door. 
 Without evincing any inclination to come
 
 304 GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 
 
 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 mean time. 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 under- 
 taking it, and I do so. Now, understand 
 that, finally. Understand that !" 
 
 He was throA\'ino; 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 in- 
 duced 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
 
 GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 305 
 
 I had better ask. "Would there be any ob- 
 jection 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 ah'eady locked 
 the front door and vacated the state parlour, 
 and was seated by the kitchen lire 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 needle- 
 work 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. 
 
 VOL. I. X
 
 306 GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 
 
 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 in- 
 tended 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 Avould all come 
 out in good time, I observed, and in the 
 mean while 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
 
 GREAT EXPECTATIONS. o07 
 
 work again, and said she would be very 
 particular; and Joe, still detaining his 
 knees, said, "Ay, ay, I'll be ekervally par- 
 tickler, Pip ;" and then they congratulated 
 me again, and went on to express so much 
 wonder at the notion of my being a gentle- 
 man, 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, Avithout quite know- 
 ing it, dissatisfied Avith myself. 
 
 Anyhow, I sat with my elbow on my knee 
 and my face upon my hand, looking into 
 X 2
 
 308 GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 
 
 the fire, as those two talked about my going 
 away, and about what they should do with- 
 out 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 2'litterino; 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 o-o " said Biddv. 
 
 " I have been thinking, Joe, that when I
 
 GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 309 
 
 go do"\vn town on Monday, and order niy 
 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 gen-teel 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 com- 
 pliment." 
 
 " 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 ?"
 
 310 GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 
 
 " Biddy," I returned with some resent- 
 ment, " 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 forgiv- 
 ing 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 do^vn 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 remem- 
 brances 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
 
 GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 311 
 
 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 com- 
 forting, for some reason or other 
 
 He presently stood at the door imme- 
 diately 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 knowai. 
 
 Looking towards the open window, I saw 
 light ^vreaths from Joe's pipe floating there, 
 and I fancied it was like a blessing from 
 Joe — not obtruded on me or paraded before
 
 312 GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 
 
 me, but pervading the air we shared to- 
 gether. I put my light out, and crept into 
 bed ; and it was an uneasy bed noAv, and 
 I never slept the old sound sleep in it any 
 more.
 
 GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 313 
 
 CHAPTER XIX. 
 
 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 con- 
 sideration that six days intervened between 
 me and the day of departure ; for, I could 
 not divest myself of a misgiving that some- 
 thing might happen to London in the mean 
 while, 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
 
 314 GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 
 
 felt that I was free. AVith all the novelty of 
 my emancipation on ine, I Avent to church 
 with Joe, and thought, perhaps the clergy- 
 man 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 Avould do something for them one of 
 these days, and formed a plan in outline for 
 bestoA\dng a dinner of roast beef and plum- 
 pudding, a pint of ale, and a gallon of con- 
 descension, upon everybody in the village. 
 
 If I had often thought before, Avith some- 
 thing aUied to shame, of my companionship 
 A\dth the fugitive whom I had once seen 
 limping among those graA'CS, AA'hat Avere my 
 thoughts on this Sunday, Avhen the place 
 recalled the wretch, ragged and shivering,
 
 GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 315 
 
 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 bar- 
 gain. 
 
 jSTo 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 
 gi*eat 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 do'svn there to consider the ques- 
 tion whether Miss Havisham intended me 
 for Estella, fell asleep. 
 
 When I aw^oke, 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 foUer."
 
 316 GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 
 
 " 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, " J'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. "Asto- 
 nishing !"
 
 GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 317 
 
 "It's a pity noAv, 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 some- 
 thing for Joe, it would have been much 
 more agreeable if he had been better quali- 
 fied for a rise in station. He Avas 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 
 Avill not omit any opportunity of helping 
 Joe on, a little."
 
 318 GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 
 
 "How helping liim on?" asked Biddy, 
 witli 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 Avhen 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 ?" inter- 
 posed 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 pro- 
 perty, they would hardly do him justice." 
 
 "And don't you think he knows that?" 
 asked Biddy. 
 
 It was such a very provoking question
 
 GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 319 
 
 (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
 
 320 GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 
 
 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," re- 
 turned 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 oif 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 aU 
 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.
 
 GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 321 
 
 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-feUow- 
 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 
 
 VOL. I. T
 
 322 GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 
 
 in between the blankets, and covering it up. 
 Pie was a prosperous old bachelor, and his 
 open window looked into a prosperous little 
 garden and orchard, and there was a pro- 
 sperous 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 hand- 
 some 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 Lon- 
 don," 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, "^vith ready money." 
 
 " My dear sir," said Mr. Trabb, as he re- 
 spectfully bent his body, opened his arms, 
 and took the liberty of touching me on the
 
 GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 323 
 
 outside of each elbow, " don't hurt me by 
 mentioning that. May I venture to con- 
 gratulate you? Would you do me the 
 favour of stepping into the shop?" 
 
 Mr. Trabb's boy was the most audacious 
 boy in aU that countr}'-side. When I had 
 entered he was sweeping the shop, and he 
 had svf eetened his labours by sweeping over 
 me. He was still sweeping when I came 
 out into the shop with j\Ir. Trabb, and he 
 knocked the broom against all possible 
 corners and obstacles, to express (as I 
 understood it) equality with any black- 
 smith, ahve 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, 
 su\ Now, this," said Mr. Trabb, taking 
 down a roll of cloth, and tiding it out in 
 a flowing manner over the counter, pre- 
 paratory to getting his hand iinder it to 
 show the gloss, " is a very sweet article. I 
 can recommend it for your purpose, sir, be- 
 cause it really is extra super. But you shall 
 see some others. Give me Niunber Four, 
 you !" (To the boy, and with a dreadftdly 
 y2
 
 624: GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 
 
 severe stare : foreseeing the danger of that 
 miscreant's brushing me with it, or making 
 some other sign of familiarity.) 
 
 Mr. Trabl) never removed his stern eye 
 from the boy until he had deposited number 
 four on the counter and was at a safe dis- 
 tance 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 re- 
 commended 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-toT\T]is- 
 man's (if he might claim me for a fellow- 
 townsman) having worn. "Are you bring- 
 ing 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
 
 GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 325 
 
 the assistance of Mr. Trabb's judgment, and 
 re-entered the parlour to be measured. For, 
 although Mr. Trabb had my measure al- 
 ready, and had previously been quite con- 
 tented Avith 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 can- 
 not be expected to patronise local work, as 
 a rule ; but if you would give me a turn 
 now and then in the quality of atoAVTisman, 
 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
 
 326 GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 
 
 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 Hub- 
 bard's dog whose outfit required the ser- 
 vices 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 when- 
 ever I said anji^hing to that effect, it fol- 
 lowed that the officiating tradesman ceased 
 to have his attention diverted through the 
 window by the High-street, and concen- 
 trated his mind upon me. When I had 
 ordered everything I wanted, I directed my 
 steps towards Pumblechook's, and, as I ap- 
 proached that gentleman's place of business, 
 I saw him standing at his door. 
 
 He was waiting for me ^vith great impa- 
 tience. He had been out early mth the 
 chaise-cart, and had called at the forge and 
 heard the news. He had prepared a colla- 
 tion for me in the Barnwell parlour, and
 
 GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 327 
 
 he too ordered his shopman to " come out 
 of the gangway " as my sacred person 
 passed. 
 
 " My dear friend," said Mr. Pumble- 
 chook, taking me by both hands, when he 
 and I and the collation were alone, " I give 
 you joy of your good fortune. Well de- 
 served, well deserved !" 
 
 This was coming to the point, and I 
 thought it a sensible way of expressing him- 
 self. 
 
 " To think," said Mr. Puml)lechook, after 
 snorting admiration at me for some mo- 
 ments, " that I should have been the humble 
 instrument of leading up to this, is a proud 
 reward." 
 
 I begged ]\Ir. Pumblechook to remember 
 that nothing was to be ever said or hinted, 
 on that point. 
 
 " My dear young friend," said Mr. Pum- 
 blechook, " if you will allow me to call you 
 so " 
 
 I murmured " Certainly," and Mr. Pum- 
 blechook took me by l)oth hands again, and 
 communicated a movement to his waistcoat, 
 which had an emotional appearance, though
 
 328 GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 
 
 it was rather Ioav 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 compas- 
 sionate 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 doA^m, 
 " 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 do-\\Ti again. 
 
 " Here is wine," said Mr. Pumblechook. 
 " Let us drink, Thanks to Fortune, and may
 
 GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 329 
 
 she ever pick out her favourites with equal 
 judgment! And yet I cannot," said Mr. 
 Pumblechook, getting up again, "see afore 
 me One — and likemse drink to One — with- 
 out '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 do^vn. 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, apostrophising the fowl 
 ■ in the dish, " when you was a young fledg- 
 ling, what was in store for you. You little 
 thought you was to be refreshment beneath 
 this humble roof for one as — Call it a w^eak- 
 ness, 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
 
 330 GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 
 
 once. How he ever did it so often Avithout 
 wounding himself mth 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. Ma}^ " 
 
 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 "svith admira- 
 tion, " 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 
 noble minded, sir ! Ever forgiving and ever 
 affal^le. It might," said the servile Pumble- 
 chook, 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
 
 GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 331 
 
 faults of temper, but it is to be hoped slie 
 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 
 smartinsf. 
 
 I mentioned to Mr. Pumblechook that I 
 wished to have my new clothes sent to his 
 house, and he was ecstatic on my so distin- 
 guishing hun. I mentioned my reason for 
 desirino- to avoid observ'^ation in the VLlla2:e, 
 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 bopsh 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 kno^m 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 feelinor com-inced that I had 
 been much mistaken in him, and that he
 
 332 GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 
 
 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 re- 
 ference 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 en- 
 larged, such as had never occurred before in 
 that, or any other neighbourhood. What 
 alone was wanting to the realisation 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 — ^^vhich sleeping partner would have no- 
 thing to do but walk in, by self or deputy, 
 whenever he pleased, and examine the 
 books — and Avalk 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
 
 GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 333 
 
 in my o"pmion, 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 Avith me, but said he 
 really must — and did. 
 
 We drank all the wine, and Mr. Pumble- 
 chook 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 kno^vn 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 sino-ular thino; 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 slumber- 
 ously got to the turnpike 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
 
 334 GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 
 
 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 Avas not a moment to be lost. 
 
 So, Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday, 
 passed ; and on Friday morning I went to
 
 GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 665 
 
 Mr. Pumblechook's, to put on my new 
 clothes and pay my visit to Miss Havisliam. 
 Mr. Pumblechook's own room was given up 
 to me to dress in, and was decorated Avith 
 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 neiorhbourino- town some ten 
 miles off, Mr. Pumblechook was not at 
 home. I had not told him exactly when 
 I meant to leave, and Avas not likely to 
 shake hands with him again before depart- 
 ing. 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 per- 
 sonal disadvantage, something like Joe's in 
 his Sunday suit.
 
 336 GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 
 
 I went circuitously to Miss Havisham's 
 ]jy 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 gra- 
 cious ! What do you want ?" 
 
 " I am going to London, Miss Pocket," 
 said I, " and want to say good-by 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, lean- 
 ing 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. " WeU, 
 Pip ?"
 
 GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 337 
 
 " 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 dis- 
 comfited and envious Sarah, mth delight. 
 " I have seen Mr. Jaggers. / have heard 
 about it, Pip. So you go to-morrow ?" 
 
 "Yes, Miss Havisham." 
 
 " And you are adopted by a rich per- 
 son ?" 
 
 " Yes, Miss Havisham." 
 
 " Not named ?" 
 
 " No, Miss Havisham." 
 
 " And Mr. Jaggers is made your guar- 
 dian ?'" 
 
 " Yes, Miss Havisham, ' 
 
 VOL. 1. z
 
 338 GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 
 
 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-by, 
 Pip ! — you will always keep the name of 
 Pip, you know." 
 
 " Yes, Miss Havisham." 
 
 " Good-by, 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 mo- 
 ment, 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, stand- 
 ing in the midst of the dimly lighted room 
 beside the rotten bride-cake that was hidden 
 in cobwebs. 
 
 Sarah Pocket conducted me down, as if I
 
 GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 339 
 
 were a ghost who must be seen out. She 
 could not get over my appearance, and 
 was m the last degree confounded. I said 
 " Good-by, 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 carr}-. 
 
 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 myself 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 in- 
 evitable roast fowl, and we had some flip to
 
 340 GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 
 
 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-portman- 
 teau, and I had told Joe that I mshed to 
 walk away all alone. I am afraid — sore 
 afraid — that this purpose originated in my 
 sense of the contrast there would be be- 
 tween me and Joe, if we went to the coach 
 together. I had pretended with myself that 
 there was nothing of this taint in the ar- 
 rangement ; but when I Avent up to my 
 little room on this last night, I felt com- 
 pelled 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 morn- 
 ing. I did not. 
 
 All night there were coaches in my 
 broken sleep, going to ^vrong places in- 
 stead 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 sinoiiiof. Then, I jrot
 
 GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 341 
 
 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 break- 
 fast, 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 ter- 
 rible idea that it must be late in the after- 
 noon. 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 doAvn 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 Avith no taste 
 in it. I got up from the meal, saying witli 
 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 lauo;hino: and noddino; and shakinfj in 
 her usual chair, and kissed Biddy, and 
 threw my arms around Joe's neck. Then 
 I took up my little portmanteau and walked
 
 342 GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 
 
 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 ann 
 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 gTeat, that 
 in a moment ^viih a strong heave and sob I 
 broke into tears. It was by the iinger-post 
 at the end of the village, and I laid my 
 liand upon it, an (J said, " Good-l^y my 
 dear, dear fi-iend !" 
 
 Heaven knows we need never be ashamed
 
 GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 343 
 
 of our tears, for they are rain upon the 
 blmding dust of earth, overlaying 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 deli- 
 berated with an aching heart whether I 
 would not get do-\vn 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 chana:ed again. And 
 while I was occupied with these delibera- 
 tions, 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
 
 344 GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 
 
 was noAv 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. 
 
 C. WHITINQ, BKAITFORT HOUSE, STRAND.
 
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