 21 Casting my eyes on Mr. Wemmick as we went along, to see what he was like in the light of day, I found him to be a dry man, rather short in stature, with a square wooden face, whose expressions seemed to have been imperfectly chipped out with a dull-edged chisel. There were some marks in it that might have been dimples, if the material had been softer and the instrument finer, but which, as it was, were only dents. The chisel had made three or four of these attempts at embellishment over his nose, but had given them up without an effort to smooth them off. I judged him to be a bachelor from the frayed condition of his linen, and he appeared to have sustained a good many bereavements, for he wore at least four morning-rings, besides a brooch representing a lady and a weeping willow at a tomb with an urn on it. I noticed, too, that several rings and seals hung at his watch-chain, as if he were quite laden with remembrances of departed friends. He had glittering eyes, small, keen, and black, and thin, wide, mottled lips. He had had them to the best of my belief from forty to fifty years. "'So you were never in London before?' said Mr. Wemmick to me. "'No,' said I. "'I was new here once,' said Mr. Wemmick. "'Rum to think of now.' "'You are well acquainted with it now?' "'Why, yes,' said Mr. Wemmick. "'I know the moves of it.' "'Is it a very wicked place?' I asked, more for the sake of saying something than for information. "'You may get cheated, robbed, and murdered in London, but there are plenty of people anywhere who'll do that for you.' "'If there is bad blood between you and them,' said I, to soften it off a little. "'Oh, I don't know about bad blood,' returned Mr. Wemmick. "'There's not much bad blood about. They'll do it if there's anything to be got by it.' "'That makes it worse.' "'And you think so?' returned Mr. Wemmick. "'Much about the same, I should say.' He wore his hat on the back of his head and looked straight before him, walking in a soft-contained way as if there were nothing in the streets to claim his attention.' His mouth was such a post-office of a mouth that he had a mechanical appearance of smiling. We had got to the top of Holburn Hill before I knew that it was merely a mechanical appearance, and that it was not smiling at all. "'Do you know where Mr. Matthew Pocket lives?' I asked Mr. Wemmick. "'Yes,' said he, nodding in the direction. "'At Hammersmith, west of London.' "'Is that far?' "'Well, say five miles.' "'Do you know him?' "'Why, you're a regular cross-examiner,' said Mr. Wemmick, looking at me with an approving air. "'Yes, I know him. I know him.' There was an air of toleration or depreciation about his utterance of these words that rather depressed me, and I was still looking sideways at his block of a face in search of any encouraging note to the text, when he said, Here we were, at Barnard's Inn. My depression was not alleviated by the announcement, for I had supposed that establishment to be a hotel kept by Mr. Barnard, to which the blue boar in our own town was a mere public house. Whereas I had now found Barnard to be a disembodied spirit, or a fiction, and is in the dingiest collection of shabby buildings ever squeezed together in a ranked corner as a club for Tomcats. We entered this haven through a wicked gate, and was disgorged by an introductory passage into a melancholy little square that looked to me like a flat burying-ground. I thought it had the most dismal trees in it, and the most dismal sparrows, and the most dismal cats, and the most dismal houses, in number half a dozen or so, that I had ever seen. I thought the windows of the sets of chambers into which those houses were divided were in every stage of dilapidated blind and curtain, crippled flower-pot, cracked glass, dusty decay, and miserable makeshift, while to let, to let, to let, glared at me from empty rooms, as if no new wretches ever came there, and the vengeance of the soul of Barnard were being slowly appeased by the gradual suicide of the present occupants, and their unholy interment under the gravel. A frowsy morning of soot and smoke attired this forlorn creation of Barnard, and it had strewn ashes on its head, and was undergoing penance and humiliation as a mere dust-hole. Thus far my sense of sight, while dry rot and wet rot, and all the silent rots that rot in neglected roof and cellar, rot of rat and mouse and bug, and coaching stables near at hand besides, addressed themselves faintly to my sense of smell, and bemoaned, Try Barnard's mixture. So imperfect was this realization of the first of my great expectations, that I looked into smay at Mr. Wemmick. Ah! said he, mistaking me. The retirement reminds you of the country, so it does me. He led me into a corner and conducted me up a flight of stairs, which appeared to me to be slowly collapsing into sawdust, so that one of those days the upper lodgers would look out of their doors and find themselves without the means of coming down to a set of chambers on the top floor. Mr. Pocket Jr. was painted on the drawer, and there was a label on the letter-box, returned shortly. He hardly thought you come so soon, Mr. Wemmick explained. You don't want me any more? No, thank you, said I. As I keep the cash, Mr. Wemmick observed, we shall most likely meet pretty often. Good day. Good day. I put out my hand, and Mr. Wemmick at first looked at it as if he thought I wanted something. Then he looked at me and said, correcting himself, to be sure, yes, you're in the habit of shaking hands. I was rather confused, thinking it must be out of the London fashion, but said, yes. I have so got out of it, said Mr. Wemmick, except it last. Very glad, I'm sure, to make your acquaintance. Good day. When we had shaken hands, and he was gone, I opened the staircase window, and it nearly beheaded myself, for the lines had rotted away, and it came down like the guillotine. Happily it was so quick that I had not put my head out. After this escape I was content to take a foggy view of the inn through the window's encrusting dirt, and to stand dullfully looking out, saying to myself that London was decidedly overrated. Mr. Pocket Junior's idea of shortly was not mine, for I had nearly maddened myself with looking out for half an hour, and had written my name with my fingers several times in the dirt of every pane in the window, before I heard footsteps on the stairs. Gradually there arose before me the hat, head, neckcloth, waistcoat, trousers, boots, of a member of society of about my own standing. He had a paper bag under each arm, and a puddle of strawberries in one hand, and was out of breath. Mr. Pip, said he. Mr. Pocket, said I. Dear me, he exclaimed, I am extremely sorry, but I knew there was a coach from your part of the country at midday, and I thought you would come by that one. The fact is, I have been out on your account. Not that that is any excuse. For I thought, coming from the country, you might like a little fruit after dinner, and I went to Covent Garden Market to get it good. For a reason that I had, I felt as if my eyes would start out of my head. I acknowledged his attention incoherently, and began to think this was a dream. Dear me, said Mr. Pocket, Jr., this door sticks so. As he was fast making jam of his fruit by wrestling with the door, while the paper bags were under his arms, I begged him to allow me to hold them. He relinquished them with an agreeable smile, and combated with the door as if it were a wild beast. It yielded so suddenly at last that he staggered back upon me, and I staggered back upon the opposite door, and we both laughed. But still I felt as if my eyes must start out of my head, and as if this must be a dream. Pray come in, said Mr. Pocket, Jr., allow me to lead the way. I'm rather bare here, but I hope you'll be able to make out tolerably well till Monday. My father thought you would get on more agreeably through tomorrow with me than with him, and might like to take a walk about London. I'm sure I shall be very happy to show London to you. As to our table, you won't find that bad, I hope, for it will be supplied from our coffee house here, and, it is only right, I should add, at your expense, such being Mr. Jagger's directions. As to our lodging, it's not by any means splendid, because I have my own bread to earn, and my father hasn't anything to give me, and I shouldn't be willing to take it if he had. This is our sitting-room. Just such chairs and tables and carpet, and so forth, you see, as they could spare from home. You mustn't give me credit for the tablecloth and spoons and casters, because they come for you from the coffee house. This is my little bedroom. Rather musty, but Barnard's is musty. This is your bedroom. The furniture's hired for the occasion, but I trust it will answer the purpose. If you should want anything, I'll go and fetch it. The chambers are retired, and we shall be alone together. But we shan't fight, I daresay. But, dear me, I beg your pardon. You're holding the fruit all this time. Pray let me take those bags from you. I am quite ashamed. As I stood opposite to Mr. Pocket, Jr., delivering him the bags, one-two, I saw the starting appearance come into his own eyes that I knew to be in mine, and he said, falling back, Lord bless me, you're the prowling boy. And you, said I, are the pale young gentleman. End of chapter. Chapter 22 of Great Expectations This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. This recording is by Mark Smith of Simpsonville, South Carolina. Great Expectations by Charles Dickens. Chapter 22 The pale young gentleman and I stood contemplating one another and barnards in until we both burst out laughing. The idea of its being you, said he. The idea of its being you, said I. And then we contemplated one another afresh and laughed again. Well, said the pale young gentleman, reaching out his hand, good and humoredly. It's all over now, I hope, and it will be magnanimous in you if you'll forgive me for having knocked you about so. I derived from this speech that Mr. Herbert Pocket, for Herbert was the pale young gentleman's name, still rather confounded his intention with his execution. But I made a modest reply, and we shook hands warmly. You hadn't come into your good fortune at that time? said Herbert Pocket. No, said I. No, he acquiesced. I heard it had happened very lately. I was rather on the lookout for good fortune, then. Indeed? Yes. Ms. Havisham had sent for me to see if she could take a fancy to me. But she couldn't. At all events, she didn't. I thought it polite to remark that I was surprised to hear that. Bad taste! said Herbert, laughing. But a fact! Yes, she had sent for me on a trial visit, and if I had come out of it successfully, I suppose I should have been provided for. Perhaps I should have been what you may called it to Estella. What's that? I asked with sudden gravity. He was arranging his fruit in plates while we talked, which divided his attention, and was the cause of his having made this lapse of a word. Affianced, he explained, still busy with the fruit. Betrothed, engaged. What's his name? Any word of that sort. How did you bear your disappointment? I asked. Poo! said he. I didn't care much for it. She's a tartar. Miss Havisham? I don't say no to that, but I meant Estella. That girl's hard and haughty and capricious to the last degree, and has been brought up by Miss Havisham to wreak revenge on all the male sex. What relation is she to Miss Havisham? None, said he, only adopted. Why should she wreak revenge on all the male sex? What revenge? Lord Mr. Pip, said he. Don't you know? No, said I. Dear me, it's quite a story, and shall be saved till dinner time, and now let me take the liberty of asking you a question. How did you come there that day? I told him, and he was attentive till I had finished, and then burst out laughing again, and asked me if I was sore afterwards. I didn't ask him if he was, for my conviction on that point was perfectly established. Mr. Jaggers is your guardian, I understand? he went on. Yes. You know he is Miss Havisham's man of business and solicitor, and has her confidence when nobody else has. This was bringing me, I felt, towards dangerous ground. I answered with a constraint, I made no attempt to disguise, that I had seen Mr. Jaggers and Miss Havisham's house on the very day of our combat, but never at any other time, and that I believed he had no recollection of having ever seen me there. He was so obliging as to suggest my father for your tutor, and he called on my father to propose it. Of course he knew about my father from his connection with Miss Havisham. My father is Miss Havisham's cousin. Not that that implies familiar intercourse between them, for he is a bad courtier, and will not propitiate her. Herbert Pocket had a frank and easy way with him that was very taking. I had never seen any one then, and I have never seen any one since, who more strongly expressed to me, in every look and tone, a natural incapacity to do anything secret and mean. There was something wonderfully hopeful about his general air, and something that at the same time whispered to me he would never be very successful or rich. I don't know how this was. I became imbued with the notion on that first occasion before we sat down to dinner, but I cannot define by what means. He was still a pale young gentleman, and had a certain conquered langer about him, and the midst of his spirits and bristness that did not seem indicative of natural strength. He had not a handsome face, but it was better than handsome, being extremely amiable and cheerful. His figure was a little ungainly, as in the days when my knuckles had taken such liberties with it, but it looked as if it would always be light and young. Whether Mr. Trapp's local work would have sat more gracefully on him than on me, may be a question, but I am conscious that he carried off his rather old clothes much better than I carried off my new suit. As he was so communicative, I felt that reserve on my part would be a bad return unsuited to our years. I therefore told him my small story, and laid stress on my being forbidden to inquire whom I benefactor was. I further mentioned that, as I had been brought up a blacksmith in a country place, and knew very little of the ways of politeness, I would take it as a great kindness in him, if he would give me a hint whenever he saw me at a loss or going wrong. With pleasure, said he, though I venture to prophesy that you'll want very few hints. I daresay we shall be often together, and I should like to banish any needless restraint between us. Will you do me the favor to begin at once to call me by my Christian name, Herbert? I thanked him, and said I would. I informed him in exchange that my Christian name was Philip. I don't take to Philip, said he, smiling, for it sounds like a moral boy out of the spelling book, who was so lazy that he fell into a pond, or so fat that he couldn't see out of his eyes, or so avaricious that he locked up his cake till the mice ate it, or so determined to go a bird's nesting that he got himself eaten by bears who lived handy in the neighborhood. I tell you what I should like. We are so harmonious, and you have been a blacksmith. Would you mind it? I shouldn't mind anything that you propose, I answered, but I don't understand you. Would you mind Handel for a familiar name? There's a charming piece of music by Handel, called the Harmonious Blacksmith. I should like it very much. Then, my dear Handel, said he, turning round as the door opened. Here is the dinner, and I must beg of you to take the top of the table, because the dinner is of your providing. This I would not hear of, so he took the top, and I faced him. It was a nice little dinner, seemed to me then a very Lord Mayor's feast, and it acquired additional relish from being eaten under those independent circumstances, with no old people by, and with London to all around us. This again was heightened by a certain gypsy character that set the banquet off, for while the table was, as Mr. Pumblechook might have said, the lap of luxury, being entirely furnished forth from the coffee-house, the circumjacent region of sitting-room was of a comparatively pastureless and shifty character, imposing on the waiter the wandering habits of putting the covers on the floor, where he fell over them, the melted butter in the armchair, the bread on the bookshelves, the cheese in the coal-scuttle, and the boiled foul into my bed in the next room, where I found much of its parsley and butter in a state of conglulation when I retired for the night. All this made the feast delightful, and when the waiter was not there to watch me, my pleasure was without a lull. We had made some progress in the dinner when I reminded Herbert of his promise to tell me about Miss Havisham. True, he replied, I'll redeem it at once. Let me introduce the topic-handle by mentioning that in London it is not the custom to put the knife in the mouth, for fear of accidents, and that while the fork is reserved for that use it is not put further in than necessary. It is scarcely worth mentioning, only it's as well to do as other people do. Also, the spoon is not generally used overhand, but under. This is two advantages. You get at your mouth better, which, after all, is the object, and you save a good deal of the attitude of opening oysters on the part of the right elbow. He offered these friendly suggestions in such a lively way that we both laughed, and I scarcely blushed. Now, he pursued, conserving Miss Havisham. Miss Havisham, you must know, was a spoiled child. Her mother died when she was a baby, and her father denied her nothing. Her father was a country gentleman down in your part of the world, and was a brewer. I don't know why it should be a crack thing to be a brewer, but it is indisputable that while you cannot possibly be a genteel and bake, you may be as genteel as never was, and brew, you see it every day. Yet a gentleman may not keep a public house, may he, said I. Not on any account, returned Herbert, but a public house may keep a gentleman. Well, Mr. Havisham was very rich and very proud. So was his daughter. Miss Havisham was an only child? I hazarded. Stop a moment, I'm coming to that. No, she was not an only child. She had a half-brother. Her father privately married again. His cook, I rather think. I thought he was proud, said I. My good handle, so he was. He married his second wife privately because he was proud, and in course of time she died. When she was dead, I apprehend he first told his daughter what he had done, and then the son became a part of the family, residing in the house you are acquainted with. As the son grew a young man, he turned out riotous, extravagant, undudiful, altogether bad. At last his father disinherited him, but he softened when he was dying, and left him well off, though not nearly so well off as Miss Havisham. Take another glass of wine, and excuse my mentioning that society as a body does not expect one to be so strictly conscientious in emptying one's glass, as to turn it bottom upwards with a rim on one's nose. I had been doing this in an excess of attention to his recital. I thanked him and apologized. He said, not at all, and resumed. Miss Havisham was now an heiress, and you may suppose was looked after as a great match. Her half-brother had now ample means again, but what with debts and what with new madness wasted them most fearfully again. There were stronger differences between him and her than there had been betwixt him and his father, and it is suspected that he cherished a deep immortal grudge against her as having influenced the father's anger. Now I come to the cruel part of the story, merely breaking off my dear handle to remark that a dinner napkin will not go into a tumbler. Why I was trying to pack mine into my tumbler I am wholly unable to say. I only know that I found myself with a perseverance worthy of a much better cause, making the most strenuous exertions to compress it within those limits. Again I thanked him and apologized, and again he said in the cheerfulness manner, not at all, I am sure, and resumed. There appeared upon the scene, say, at the races, or the public balls, or anywhere else you like, a certain man who made love to Miss Havisham. I never saw him, for this happened five and twenty years ago, before you and I were handled, but I have heard my father mention that he was a showy man, and the kind of man for the purpose. But that he was not to be, without ignorance or prejudice, mistaken for a gentleman, my father most strongly acervates, because it is a principle of his that no man who was not a true gentleman at heart ever was, since the world began, a true gentleman in manner. He says, no varnish can hide the grain of the wood, and that the more varnish you put on, the more the grain will express itself. Well, this man pursued Miss Havisham closely, and professed to be devoted to her. I believe she had not much shown susceptibility up to that time, but all the susceptibility she possessed certainly came out then, had she passionately loved him. There is no doubt that she perfectly idolized him. He practiced on her affection in that systematic way, that he got great sums of money from her, and he induced her to buy her brother out of a share in the brewery, which had been weakly left him by his father, at an immense price, on the plea that when he was her husband he must hold and manage it all. Your guardian was not at that time in Miss Havisham's councils, and she was too haughty and too much in love to be advised by anyone. Her relations were poor and scheming, with the exception of my father. He was poor enough, but not time-serving or jealous. The only independent one among them, he warned her that she was doing too much for this man, and was placing herself too unreservedly in his power. She took the first opportunity of angrily ordering my father out of the house, in his presence, and my father has never seen her since. I thought of her having said, Matthew will come and see me at last when I am laid dead upon that table, and I asked Herbert whether his father was so inveterate against her. It's not that, said he, but she charged him, in the presence of her intended husband, with being disappointed in the hope of fawning upon her for his own advancement, and, if he were to go to her now, it would look true, even to him and even to her. To return to the man, and make an end of him. The marriage day was fixed, the wedding dresses were bought, the wedding tour was planned out, the wedding guests were invited. The day came, but not the bridegroom. He wrote her a letter. Which she received, I struck in. When she was dressing for her marriage, at twenty minutes to nine? At the hour and minute, said Herbert, nodding, at which she afterwards stopped all the clocks. What was in it, further than that it most heartlessly broke the marriage off. I can't tell you, because I don't know. When she recovered from a bad illness that she had, she laid the whole place waste, as you have seen it, and she has never since looked upon the light of day. Is that all the story? I asked, after considering it. All I know of it, and indeed I only know so much, through piecing it out for myself, for my father always avoids it, and, even when Miss Havisham invited me to go there, told me no more of it than was absolutely requisite I should understand. But I have forgotten one thing. It has been supposed that the man to whom she gave her misplaced confidence acted throughout in concert with her half-brother, that it was a conspiracy between them, and that they shared the profits. I wonder he didn't marry her and get all the property, said I. He may have been married already, and her cruel mortification may have been a part of her half-brother's scheme, said Herbert. Mind, I don't know that. What became of the two men, I asked, after again considering the subject. They fell into deeper shame and degradation, if there can be deeper, and ruin. Are they alive now? I don't know. You said just now that Estella was not related to Miss Havisham, but adopted. When adopted? Herbert shrugged his shoulders. There has always been an Estella since I have heard of a Miss Havisham. I know no more. And now Handel, said he, finally throwing off the story as it were, there was a perfectly open understanding between us, all that I know about Miss Havisham, you know. And all that I know, I retorted, you know. I fully believe it. So there can be no competition or perplexity between you and me. And as to the condition in which you hold your advancement in life, namely, that you are not to inquire or discuss to whom you owe it, you may be very sure that it will never be encroached upon or even approached by me or by anyone belonging to me. In truth, he said this with so much delicacy that I felt the subject done with, even though I should be under his father's roof for years and years to come. Yet he said it with so much meaning, too, that I felt he as perfectly understood Miss Havisham to be my benefactress as I understood the fact myself. It did not occur to me before that he had led up to the theme for the purpose of clearing it out of our way, but we were so much the lighter and easier for having broached it that I now perceived this to be the case. We were very gay and sociable, and I asked him, in the course of conversation, what he was. He replied, a capitalist, an insurer of ships. I suppose he saw me glancing about the room in search of some tokens of shipping or capital, for he added, in the city. I had grand ideas of the wealth and importance of insurers of ships in the city, and I began to think with awe of having laid a young insurer on his back, blackened his enterprising eye, and cut his responsible head open. But, again, there came upon me, for my relief, that odd impression that Herbert Pocket would never be very successful or rich. I shall not rest satisfied with merely employing my capital in insuring ships. I shall buy up some good life assurance shares and cut into the direction. I shall also do it little in the mining way. None of these things will interfere with my chartering a few thousand tokens on my own account. I think I shall trade," said he, leaning back in his chair, to the East Indies, for silks, shawls, spices, dyes, drugs, and precious woods. It's an interesting trade. And the profits are large, said I. Tremendous, said he. I wavered again, and began to think here were greater expectations than my own. I think I shall trade also," said he, putting his thumbs in his waistcoat pockets, to the West Indies, for sugar, tobacco, and rum. Also to Ceylon, especially for elements tusks. You will want a good many ships, said I. A perfect fleet, said he. A perfect fleet, said he. Quite overpowered by the magnificence of these transactions, I asked him where the ships he insured mostly traded to a present. I haven't begun insuring yet, he replied. I am looking about me. Somehow that pursuit seemed more in keeping with Barnard's in. I said, in a tone of conviction, ah! Yes, I am in a counting-house and looking about me. Is a counting-house profitable? I asked. To do you mean to the young fellow who's in it? He asked, in reply. Yes, to you. Why, no, not to me. He said this with the air of one carefully reckoning up and striking a balance. Not directly profitable. That is, it doesn't pay me anything, and I have to keep myself. This certainly had not been a profitable appearance, and I shook my head as if I would imply that it would be difficult to lay by much accumulative capital from such a source of income. But the thing is, said Herbert Pocket, that you look about you. That's the grand thing. You're in a counting-house, you know, and you look about you. It struck me as a singular implication that you couldn't be out of a counting-house, you know, and look about you. But I silently deferred to his experience. Then the time comes, said Herbert, when you see your opening, and you go in, and you swoop upon it, and you make your capital, and then there you are. When you have once made your capital, you have nothing to do but employ it. This was very like his way of conducting that encounter in the garden, very like. His manner of bearing his poverty, too, exactly corresponded to his manner of bearing that defeat. It seemed to me that he took all blows and puppets now with just the same air as he had taken mine then. It was evident that he had nothing around him but the simplest necessaries, for everything that I remarked upon turned out to have been sent in on my account from the coffee-house or somewhere else. Yet, having already made his fortune in his own mind, he was so unassuming with it that I felt quite grateful to him for not being puffed up. It was a pleasant addition to his naturally pleasant ways, and we got on famously. In the evening we went out for a walk in the streets, and went half-priced to the theatre, and next day we went to church at Westminster Abbey, and in the afternoon we walked in the parks, and I wondered who shot all the horses there, and wished Joe did. On a moderate computation it was many months that Sunday since I had left Joe and Biddy. The space interposed between myself and them partook of that expansion, and our marshes were any distance off. That I could have been at our old church and my old church going close, on the very last Sunday that ever was, seemed a combination of impossibilities, geographical and social, solar and lunar. Yet in the London streets so crowded with people, and so brilliantly lighted in the dusk of evening, there were depressing hints of reproaches for that I had put the poor old kitchen at home so far away, and in the dead of night the footsteps of some incapable imposter of a porter mooring about Barnard's Inn under pretence of watching it fell hollow on my heart. On the Monday morning at a quarter before nine Herbert went to the counting-house to report himself, to look about him too, I suppose, and I bore him company. He was to come away in an hour or two to attend me to Hammersmith, and I was to wait about for him. It appeared to me that the eggs from which young insurers were hatched, were incubated in dust and heat, like the eggs of ostriches, judging from the places to which those insipient giants repaired on a Monday morning. Nor did the counting-house where Herbert assisted, showing my eyes as at all a good observatory, being a back-second floor up a yard, of a grimy presence in all particulars, and with a look into another back-second floor, rather than a lookout. I waited about until it was noon, and I went upon change, and I saw fluey men sitting there under the bills about shipping, whom I took to be great merchants, though I couldn't understand why they should be all out of spirits. When Herbert came we went and had lunch at a celebrated house which I then quite venerated, but now believed to have been the most abject superstition in Europe, and where I could not hope noticing, even then, that there was much more gravy on the tablecloths and knives and waiters' clothes than in the stakes. This collation disposed of at a moderate price, considering the grease which was not charged for. We went back to Barnard's Inn and got my little portmanteau, and then took coach for Hammersmith. We arrived there at two or three o'clock in the afternoon, and had very little way to walk to Mr. Pocket's house. Lifting the latch of a gate, we passed directly into a little garden overlooking the river, where Mr. Pocket's children were playing about. And unless I deceived myself on a point where my interests or preposessions are certainly not concerned, I saw that Mr. and Mrs. Pocket's children were not growing up or being brought up, but were tumbling up. Mrs. Pocket was sitting on a garden chair under a tree, reading, with her legs upon another garden chair, and Mrs. Pocket's two nursemaids were looking about them while the children played. Mama, said Herbert, this is young Mr. Pip, upon which Mrs. Pocket received me with an appearance of amiable dignity. Master Alec and Miss Jane cried one of the nurses to two of the children. If you go abouncing up against them bushes, you'll fall over into the river, and be drowned in, and what'll your paws say then? At the same time, this nurse picked up Mrs. Pocket's handkerchief and said, If I don't make six times you've dropped it, Mum. Upon which Mrs. Pocket laughed and said, I thank you, Flopsen. And settling herself in one chair only, resumed her book. Her countenance immediately assumed a knitted and intent expression as if she had been reading for a week, but before she could have read half a dozen lines, she fixed her eyes upon me and said, I hope your mama is quite well. This unexpected inquiry put me into such a difficulty that I began saying in the absurdist way that if there had been any such person I had no doubt she would have been quite well. And would have been very much obliged and would have sent her compliments when the nurse came to my rescue. Well, she cried, picking up the pocket handkerchief. If that don't make seven times, what are you a doing of this afternoon, Mum? Mrs. Pocket received her property at first with a look of unutterable surprise as if she had never seen it before, and then with a laugh of recognition and said, Thank you, Flopsen, and forgot me and went on reading. I found, now I had leisure to count them, that there were no fewer than six little pockets present in various stages of tumbling up. I had scarcely arrived at the total when a seventh was heard, as in the region of air, wailing dofully. If there ain't baby, said Flopsen, appearing to think at most surprising, make haste up, Millers! Millers, who was the other nurse, retired into the house, and by degrees the child's wailing was hushed and stopped, as if it were a young ventriloquist with something in its mouth. Mrs. Pocket read all the time, and I was curious to know what the book could be. We were waiting, I suppose, for Mr. Pocket to come out to us. At any rate we waited there, and so I had an opportunity of observing the remarkable family phenomenon, that whenever any of the children strayed near Mrs. Pocket in their play, they always tripped themselves up and tumbled over her, always very much to her momentary astonishment and their own more enduring lamentation. I was at a loss to account for this surprising circumstance, and could not help giving my mind to speculations about it, until, by and by, Millers came down with the baby, which baby was handed to Flopson, which Flopson was handing it to Mrs. Pocket, when she, too, went fairly head foremost over Mrs. Pocket, baby in all, and was caught by Herbert and myself. Gracious me, Flopson, said Mrs. Pocket, looking off her book for a moment. Everybody's tumbling. Gracious you indeed, Mum! return Flopson, very red in the face. What have you got there? I got here, Flopson, asked Mrs. Pocket. Why, if it ain't your footstool, cried Flopson, and if you keep it under your skirts like that, who's to help tumbling? Here, take the baby, Mum, and give me your book. Mrs. Pocket acted on the advice and inexpertly danced the infant a little in her lap, while the other children played about it. This had lasted but a very short time when Mrs. Pocket issued summary orders that they were all to be taken into the house for a nap. Thus I made the second discovery on that first occasion that the nurture of the little pockets consisted of alternately tumbling up and lying down. Under these circumstances, when Flopson and Millers had got the children into the house like a little flock of sheep, and Mr. Pocket came out of it to make my acquaintance, I was not much surprised to find that Mr. Pocket was a gentleman with a rather perplexed expression of face, and with his very gray hair disordered on his head, as if he didn't quite see his way to putting anything straight. End of Chapter 23 OF GREAT EXPECTATIONS This is a lever-box recording. All lever-box recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit lever-box.org. This recording is by Mark Smith of Simpsonville, South Carolina. GREAT EXPECTATIONS By Charles Dickens, Chapter 23 Mr. Pocket said he was glad to see me, and he hoped I was not sorry to see him. For I really am not, he added with his son's smile, an alarming personage. He was a young-looking man, in spite of his perplexities and his very gray hair, and his manner seemed quite natural. I used the word natural, in the sense of its being unaffected. There was something comic in his distraught way, as though it would have been downright ludicrous, but for his own perception that it was very near being so. When he had talked with me a little, he said to Mrs. Pocket with a rather anxious contraction of his eyebrows, which were black and handsome. Belinda, I hope you have welcomed Mr. Pip. And she looked up from her book and said, Yes. She then smiled upon me in an absent state of mind, and asked me if I had liked the taste of orange-flower water. As the question had no bearing, near or remote, on any foregone or subsequent transaction, I consider it to have been thrown out, like her previous approaches, in general conversational condescension. I found out within a few hours, and may mention at once, that Mrs. Pocket was the only daughter of a certain quite accidental deceased knight, who had invented for himself a conviction that his deceased father would have made a baronette, but for somebody's determined apposition arising out of entirely personal motives. I forget whose, if I ever knew. The Sovereigns, the Prime Ministers, the Lord Chancellors, the Archbishop of Canterbury's, anybodies, and had tacked himself on to the nobles of the earth in right of this quite superstitious fact. I believe he had benighted himself for storming the English grammar, at the point of the pen, in a desperate address and grossed on vellum, on the occasion of the laying of the first stone of some building or other, and for handing some royal personage, either the trowel or the mortar. Be that as it may, he had directed Mrs. Pocket to be brought up from her cradle as one who, in the nature of things, must marry a title, and who was to be guarded from the acquisition of plebeian domestic knowledge. So successful a watch and ward have been established over the young lady by this judicious parent, that she had grown up highly ornamental, but perfectly helpless and useless. With her character thus happily formed, in the first bloom of her youth she had encountered Mr. Pocket, who was also in the first bloom of youth, and not quite decided whether to mount to the woolsack, or to roof himself in with a miter. As is doing the one or the other was a mere question of time, he and Mrs. Pocket had taken time by the forelock, when, to judge from its length, it would seem to have wanted cutting. And it married without the knowledge of the judicious parent. The judicious parent, having nothing to bestow or withhold but his blessing, had handsomely settled that dour upon them after a short struggle, and had informed Mr. Pocket that his wife was a treasure for a prince. Mr. Pocket had invested the prince's treasure in the ways of the world ever since, and it was supposed to have brought him in but indifferent interest. Still, Mrs. Pocket was in general the object of a queer sort of respectful pity, because she had not married a title, while Mr. Pocket was the object of a queer sort of forgiving reproach, because he had never got one. Mr. Pocket took me into the house and showed me my room, which was a pleasant one, and so furnished as that I could use it with comfort for my own private sitting-room. He then knocked at the doors of two other similar rooms and introduced me to their occupants, by name Drummel and Star Top. Drummel, an odd-looking young man of a heavy order of architecture, was whistling. Star Top, younger in years in appearance, was reading and holding his head, as if he thought himself in danger of exploding it with too strong a charge of knowledge. Both Mr. and Mrs. Pocket had such a noticeable air of being in somebody else's hands that I wondered who really was in possession of the house and let them live there, until I found this unknown power to be the servants. It was a smooth way of going on, perhaps, in respect of saving trouble, but it had the appearance of being expensive, for the servants felt at duty the ode to themselves to be nice in their eating and drinking and to keep a deal of company downstairs. They allowed a very liberal table to Mr. and Mrs. Pocket, yet it always appeared to me that by far the best part of the house to have boarded in would have been the kitchen. Always supposing the board are capable of self-defense, for before I had been there a week, a neighbouring lady with whom the family were personally unacquainted, wrote in to say that she had seen millers slapping the baby. This greatly distressed Mrs. Pocket, who burst into tears on receiving the note, and said that it was an extraordinary thing that the neighbours couldn't mind their own business. By degrees I learnt, and chiefly from Herbert, that Mr. Pocket had been educated at Harrow and at Cambridge, where he had distinguished himself, but that when he had had the happiness of marrying Mrs. Pocket very early in life, he had impaired his prospects and taken up the calling of a grinder. After grinding a number of dull blades, of whom it was remarkable that their fathers, when influential, were always going to help him to perform it, but always forgot to do it when the blades had left the grindstone, he had wearied of that poor work and had come to London. Here, after gradually failing and loftier hopes, he had read with divers who had lacked opportunities or neglected them, and had refurbished divers others for special occasions, and had turned his acquirements to the account of literary compilation and correction, and on such means added to some very moderate private resources, still maintained the house I saw. Mr. and Mrs. Pocket had a toady neighbour, a widow lady of that highly sympathetic nature that she agreed with everybody, blessed everybody, and shed smiles and tears on everybody, according to circumstances. This lady's name was Mrs. Coiler, and I had the honour of taking her down to dinner on the day of my installation. She gave me to understand on the stairs that it was a blow to dear Mrs. Pocket that dear Mr. Pocket should be under the necessity of receiving gentlemen to read with him. That did not extend to me, she told me, in a gush of love and confidence. At that time I had known her something less than five minutes. If they were all like me, it would be quite another thing. But dear Mr. Pocket, said Mrs. Coiler, after her early disappointment, not that dear Mr. Pocket was to blame in that, requires so much luxury and elegance. Yes, ma'am, I said to stop her, for I was afraid she was going to cry. And she is of so aristocratic a disposition. Yes, ma'am, I said again with the same object as before. That it is hard, said Mrs. Coiler, to have dear Mr. Pocket's time and attention diverted from dear Mrs. Pocket. I could not help thinking that it might be harder if the butcher's time and attention were diverted from dear Mrs. Pocket. But I said nothing, and indeed had enough to do in keeping a bashful watch upon my company manners. It came to my knowledge, through what passed between Mrs. Pocket and Drummel, while I was attentive to my knife and fork, spoon, glasses, and other instruments of self-destruction, that Drummel, whose Christian name was Bentley, was actually the next heir but one to a baronet scene. It further appeared that the book I had seen Mrs. Pocket reading in the garden was all about titles, and that she knew the exact date at which her grandpa Pa would have come into the book, if he had ever come at all. Drummel didn't say much, but in his limited way, he struck me as a sulky kind of fellow. He spoke as one of the elect, and recognized Mrs. Pocket as a woman and a sister. No one but themselves and Mrs. Coiler, the toady neighbor, showed any interest in this part of the conversation, and it appeared to me that it was painful to Herbert, but it promised to last a long time, when the page came in with the announcement of a domestic affliction. It was, in effect, that the cook had mislaid the beef. To my unutterable amazement I now, for the first time, saw Mr. Pocket relieve his mind by going through a performance that struck me as very extraordinary, but which made no impression on anybody else, and with which I soon became as familiar as the rest. He laid down the carving knife and fork, being engaged in carving at the moment, put his two hands into his disturbed hair, and appeared to make an extraordinary effort to lift himself up by it. When he had done this, and had not lifted himself up at all, he quietly went on with what he was about. Mrs. Coiler then changed the subject and began to flatter me. I liked it for a few moments, but she flattered me so very grossly that the pleasure was soon over. She had a serpentine way of coming close at me when she pretended to be vitally interested in the friends and localities I had left, which was altogether snaky and fork-tongued, and when she made an occasional bounce upon start-top, who said very little to her, or upon drummel, who said less, I rather envied them for being on the opposite side of the table. After dinner the children were introduced, and Mrs. Coiler made admiring comments on their eyes, noses, and legs, a sagacious way of improving their minds. There were four little girls and two little boys, besides the baby who might have been either, and the baby's next successor who was as yet neither. They were brought in by Flopsin and Millers, much as though those two non-commissioned officers had been recruiting somewhere for children, and had enlisted these, while Mrs. Pocket looked at the young nobles that ought to have been, as if she rather thought she had had the pleasure of inspecting them before, but didn't quite know what to make of them. Here, give me a fork, mom, and take the baby, said Flopsin. Don't take it that way, or you'll get its head under the table. Thus advised Mrs. Pocket took it the other way, and got its head upon the table, which was announced to all present by a prodigious concussion. Dear, dear, give it me back, mom, said Flopsin, and Miss Jane, come and dance to baby, do. One of the little girls, Amir Might, who seemed to have prematurely taken upon herself some charge of the others, stepped out of her place by me, and danced to and from the baby until it left off crying and laughed. Then all the children laughed, and Mr. Pocket, who in the meantime had twice endeavored to lift himself up by the hair, laughed, and we all laughed and were glad. Flopsin, by dint of doubling the baby at the joints like a Dutch doll, then got it safely into Mrs. Pocket's lap, and gave it the nutcrackers to play with, at the same time recommending Mrs. Pocket to take notice that the handles of that instrument were not likely to agree with its eyes, and sharply charging Miss Jane to look after the same. Then the two nurses left the room, and had a lively scuffle on the staircase with the dissipated page who had waited at dinner, and who had clearly lost half his buttons at the gaming table. I was made very uneasy, in my mind, by Mrs. Pocket's falling into a discussion with Dremel, respecting two baronetsies, while she ate a sliced orange, steeped in sugar and wine, and forgetting all about the baby on her lap, who did most appalling things with the nutcrackers. At length little Jane, perceiving its young brains to be imperiled, softly left her place, and with many small artifices, coaxed the dangerous weapon away. Mrs. Pocket finishing her orange at about the same time, and not approving of this, said to Jane, You naughty child! How dare you! Go and sit down this instant! Mama, dear, lifts the little girl. Baby would have put his eyes out. How dare you tell me so! retorted Mrs. Pocket. Go and sit down in your chair this moment. Mrs. Pocket's dignity was so crushing that I felt quite abashed, as if I myself had done something to rouse it. Belinda! remonstrated Mr. Pocket from the other end of the table. How can you be so unreasonable? Jane only interfered for the protection of Baby. I will not allow anybody to interfere, said Mrs. Pocket. I am surprised, Matthew, that you should expose me to the affront of interference. Good God! cried Mr. Pocket, in an outbreak of desolate desperation. Are infants to be nutcrackered into their tombs, and is nobody to save them? I will not be interfered with by Jane, said Mrs. Pocket, with a majestic glance at that innocent little offender. I hope I know my poor grandpa's position. Jane, indeed. Mr. Pocket got his hands in his hair again, and this time really did lift himself some inches out of his chair. Here, this, he helplessly exclaimed, Baby's are to be nutcrackered dead for people's poor grandpa's positions. Then he let himself down again, and became silent. We all looked awkwardly at the tablecloth while this was going on. A pause succeeded, during which the honest and irrepressible Baby made a series of leaps and crows at Little Jane, who appeared to me to be the only one who could be the only one of the family, irrespective of servants, with whom it had any decided acquaintance. Mr. Dremel, said Mrs. Pocket, were you rigging for flopsen? Jane, you undoody-for-little thing, go and lie down. Now, baby darling, come with me. The baby was the soul of honour, and protested with all its might. It doubled itself up the wrong way over Mrs. Pocket's arm, exhibited a pair of knitted shoes and dimpled ankles to the company, in lieu of its soft face, and was carried out in the highest state of mutiny. And it gained its point after all, for I saw it through the window within a few minutes, being nursed by Little Jane. It happened that the other five children were left behind at the dinner-table, through flopsens having some private engagement, and the other five children were left behind at some private engagement, and they're not being anybody else's business. I thus became aware of the mutual relations between them and Mr. Pocket, which were exemplified in the following manner. Mr. Pocket, with the normal perplexity of his face heightened, and his hair rumpled, looked at them for some minutes, as if he couldn't make out how they came to be boarding and lodging in that establishment, and why they hadn't been billeted by nature on somebody else. Then, in a distant missionary way, he asked them certain questions, as why Little Joe had that hole in his frill, who said pa, Flopsen was going to mend it when she had time, and how little fan he came by that Whitlow, who said pa, Millers was going to polis it when she didn't forget. Then he melted into parental tenderness and gave them a shilling apiece, and told them to go and play. And then as they went out, with one very strong effort to lift himself up by the hair, he dismissed the hopeless subject. In the evening there was rowing on the river. As Dremel and Star Top had each a boat, I resolved to set up mine and cut them both out. I was pretty good at most exercises in which country boys are adepts, but as I was conscious of wanting elegance of style for the Thames, not to say for other waters, I at once engaged to place myself under the tuition of the winner of a prize-weary, who plied at our stairs, and to whom I was introduced by my new allies. This practical authority confused me very much by saying I had the arm of a blacksmith. If he could have known how nearly the compliment lost him his pupil, I doubt if he would have paid it. There was a suppertree after we got home at night, and I think we should all have enjoyed ourselves, but for a rather disagreeable domestic occurrence. Mr. Pocket was in good spirits when a housemaid came in and said, If you please, sir, I should wish to speak to you. Speak to your master? said Mrs. Pocket, whose dignity was roused again. How can you think of such a thing? Go and speak to Flopsen, or speak to me, at some other time. Begging your pardon, ma'am, returned the housemaid. I should wish to speak at once, and to speak to master. Hereupon Mr. Pocket went out of the room, and we made the best of ourselves until he came back. This is a pretty thing, Belinda, said Mr. Pocket, returning with a countenance expressive of grief and despair. Here's the cook lying insensibly drunk on the kitchen floor, with a large bundle of fresh butter made up in the cupboard ready to sell for grease. Mrs. Pocket instantly showed such amiable emotion and said, This is that odious Sophia's doing. What do you mean, Belinda? demanded Mr. Pocket. Sophia has told you, said Mrs. Pocket, Did I not see her with my own eyes, and hear her with my own ears, coming to the room just now and asked to speak to you? But has she not taken me downstairs, Belinda? returned Mr. Pocket, and shown me the woman and the bundle too. And do you defend her, Matthew, said Mrs. Pocket, for making mischief? Mr. Pocket uttered a dismal groan. Am I Grandpa Papa's granddaughter to be nothing in this house? said Mrs. Pocket. Besides, the cook has always been a very nice, respectful woman, and said in the most natural manner when she came to look after the situation that she felt I was born to be a duchess. There was a sofa where Mr. Pocket stood, and he dropped upon it in the attitude of the dying gladiator. Still in that attitude, he said, with a hollow voice, Good night, Mr. Pip. When I deemed it advisable to go to bed, and leave him. End of Chapter 24 Of Great Expectations This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. This recording is by Mark Smith of Simpsonville, South Carolina. Great Expectations By Charles Dickens, Chapter 24 After two or three days, when I had established myself in my room and had gone backwards and forwards to London several times, and had ordered all I wanted of my tradesmen, Mr. Pocket and I had a long talk together. He knew more of my intended career than I knew myself, for he referred to his having been told by Mr. Jaggers that I was not designed for any profession, and that I should be well enough educated for my destiny if I could hold my own with the average of young men in prosperous circumstances. I acquiesced, of course, knowing nothing to the contrary. He advised my attending certain places in London, for the acquisition of such mere rudiments as I wanted, and my investing him with the functions of explainer and director of all my studies. He hoped that with intelligent assistance I should meet with little do discourage me, and should soon be able to dispense with any aid but his. Through his way of saying this, and much more to similar purpose, he placed himself on confidential terms with me in an admirable manner, and I may state at once that he was always so zealous and honorable in fulfilling his combat with me that he made me zealous and honorable in fulfilling mine with him. If he had shown indifference as a master, I have no doubt I should have returned the compliment as a pupil. He gave me no such excuse, and each of us did the other justice. Nor did I ever regard him as having anything ludicrous about him, or anything but what was serious, honest, and good, in his tutor communication with me. When these points were settled, and so far carried out, as that I had begun to work in earnest, it occurred to me that if I could retain my bedroom in Barnard's Inn, my life would be agreeably varied, while my manners would be none the worse for Herbert's Society. Mr. Pocket did not object to this arrangement, but urged that before any step could possibly be taken in it, it must be submitted to my guardian. I felt that this delicacy arose out of the consideration that the plan would save Herbert some expense, so I went off to Little Britain and imparted my wish to Mr. Jaggers. If I could buy the furniture now hired for me, said I, and one or two other little things, I should be quite at home there. Go it, said Mr. Jaggers, with a short laugh. I told you you'd get on? Well, how much do you want? I said I didn't know how much. Come, retorted Mr. Jaggers, how much? Fifty pounds. Oh, not nearly so much. Five pounds, said Mr. Jaggers. This was such a great fall that I said in discomforture. Oh, more than that. More than that, eh? retorted Mr. Jaggers, lying in wait for me, with his hands in his pockets, his head on one side, and his eyes on the wall behind me. How much more? It is so difficult to fix a sum, said I, hesitating. Come, said Mr. Jaggers, let's get at it. Twice five, will that do? Three times five, will that do? Four times five, will that do? I said I thought that would do handsomely. Four times five will do handsomely, will it? Said Mr. Jaggers, knitting his brow. Now, what do you make of four times five? What do I make of it? Ah, said Mr. Jaggers, how much? I suppose you make it twenty pounds, said I, smiling. Never mind what I make it, my friend. Observe, Mr. Jaggers, with a knowing and contradictory toss of his head. I want to know what you make it. Twenty pounds, of course. Wemmick! Said Mr. Jaggers, opening his office door. Take Mr. Pip's written order and pay him twenty pounds. This strongly marked way of doing business made a strongly marked impression on me, and that not of an agreeable kind. Mr. Jaggers never laughed, but he wore great, bright, creaking boots, and in poising himself on these boots, with his large head bent down, and his eyebrows joined together, awaiting an answer, he sometimes caused the boots to creak, as if they laughed in a dry and suspicious way. As he happened to go out now, and as Wemmick was brisk and talkative, I said to Wemmick that I hardly knew what to make of Mr. Jaggers' manner. Tell him that, and he'll take it as a compliment. Answered Wemmick. He don't mean that you should know what to make of it. Ho! for I look surprised. It's not personal, it's professional, only professional. Wemmick was at his desk, launching and crunching on a hard dry biscuit, pieces of which he threw from time to time into his slit of a mouth, as if he were posting them. Oh, he seems to me, said Wemmick, as if he had set a man-trap and was watching it. Suddenly, click, you're caught! Without remarking that man-traps were not among the amenities of life, I said I supposed he was very skillful. Deep, said Wemmick, as Australia. Pointing with his pan at the office floor to express that Australia was understood for the purposes of the figure to be symmetrically on the opposite spot of the globe. If there was anything deeper, said Wemmick, bringing his pen to paper, he'd be it. Then I said I supposed he had a fine business, and Wemmick said, Capitol! Then I asked if there were many clerks, to which he replied, We don't run much into clerks, because there's only one Jaggers, and people won't have him at sick in hand. There are only four of us. Would you like to see him? You are one of us, as I may say. I accepted the offer. When Mr. Wemmick had put all the biscuit into the post, and it paid me my money from a cash-box, and a safe, the key of which safe he kept somewhere down his back, and produced from his coat collar like an iron pigtail, we went upstairs. The house was dark and shabby, and the greasy shoulders that had left their mark in Mr. Jagger's room seemed to have been shuffling up and down the staircase for years. In the front first floor, a clerk who looked something between a publican and a rat-catcher, a large, pale, puffed, swollen man, was attentively engaged with three or four people of shabby appearance, whom he treated as unceremoniously as everybody seemed to be treated, who contributed to Mr. Jagger's coffers. Getting evidence together, said Mr. Wemmick as we came out, for the Bailey. In the room over that, a little flabby terrier of a clerk with dangling hair, his cropping seemed to have been forgotten when he was a puppy, was similarly engaged with a man with weak eyes, whom Mr. Wemmick presented to me as a smelter who kept his pot always boiling, and who would melt me anything I pleased, and who was in an excessive white perspiration as if he had been trying his art on himself. In a back room, a high-shouldered man with a faceache tied up in dirty flannel, who was dressed in old black clothes that bore the appearance of having been waxed, was stooping over his work of making fair copies of the notes of the other two gentlemen for Mr. Jagger's own use. This was all the establishment. When we went downstairs again, Wemmick led me into my guardian's room and said, This you've seen already. Pray, said I, as the two odious castes, with a twitchy leer upon them, caught my sight again. Whose likenesses are those? These, said Wemmick, getting upon a chair and blowing the dust off the horrible heads before bringing them down, These are two celebrated ones, themes clients of ours that got us a world of credit. This chap, why, you must have come down in the night and been peeping into the ink-stand to get this blot upon your eyebrow, you old rascal. Murdered his master, and considering that he wasn't brought up to evidence, didn't plan it badly. Is it like him? I asked, recalling from the brute, as Wemmick spat upon his eyebrow and gave it a rub with a sleeve. Like him? It's himself, you know. The cast was made in Newgate, directly after he was taken down. You had a particular fancy for me, hadn't you, old artful? Said Wemmick. He then explained this affectionate apostrophe, by touching his brooch representing the lady and the weeping willow at the tomb with the urn upon it, and saying, Had it made for me express? Is the lady anybody? said I. No. returned Wemmick. Only his game. You liked your bit of game, didn't you? No. Doos a bit of a lady in the case, Mr Pip, except one. And she wasn't of this slender lady-like sort, and you wouldn't have caught her looking after this urn, unless there was something to drink in it. Wemmick's attention, being thus directed to his brooch, he put down the cast and polished the brooch with his pocket-hanger-chief. Did that other creature come to the same end? I asked. He has the same look. You're right, said Wemmick. It's the genuine look, much as if one nostril was caught up with a horsehair and a little fishook. Yes, he came to the same end. Quite the natural end here, I assure you. He forged wills. This blade did, if he didn't also put the supposed testators to sleep, too. You were a gentlemanly cove, though. Mr. Wemmick was again apostrophizing. And you said you could write Greek. Yeah, bounce-able! What a liar you were! Ha! I never met such a liar as you! Before putting his late friend on his shelf again, Wemmick touched the largest of his morning-rings and said, SENT OUT TO BUY IT FOR ME ONLY THE DAY BEFORE! While he was putting up the other cast and coming down from the chair, the thought crossed my mind that all his personal jury was derived from like sources. As he had shown no diffidence on the subject, I ventured on the liberty of asking him the question when he stood before me, dusting his hands. Oh, yes, he returned. These are all gifts of that kind. One brings another, you see, that's the way of it. I always take them. They're curiosities. And they're property. They may not be worth much, but after all, they're property and portable. It don't signify to you with your brilliant lookout. But as to myself, my guiding star always is, get hold of portable property. When I had rendered homage to this light, he went on to say in a friendly manner, If at any odd time when you have nothing better to do, you wouldn't mind coming over to see me at Walworth, I could offer you a bed, and I should consider it an honour. I have not much to show you, but such two or three curiosities as I have got you might like to look over, in am fond of a bit of a garden and a summer house. I said I should be delighted to accept his hospitality. Think he, said he, then we'll consider that it's to come off when convenient to you. Have you dined with Mr. Jaggers yet? Not yet. Well, said Wemmick, he'll give you wine and good wine. I'll give you punch and not bad punch. And now I'll tell you something. When you go to dine with Mr. Jaggers, look at his housekeeper. Shall I see something very uncommon? Well, said Wemmick, you'll see a wild beast tamed. Not so very uncommon, you'll tell me. I reply that depends on the original wildness of the beast and the amount of taming. It won't lower your opinion of Mr. Jaggers' powers. Keep your eye on it. I told him I would do so with all the interest and curiosity that his preparation awakened. As I was taking my departure he asked me if I would like to devote five minutes to seeing Mr. Jaggers at it. For several reasons, and not least because I didn't clearly know what Mr. Jaggers would be found to be at. I replied in the affirmative. We dived into the city and came up in a crowded police court, where a blood relation, in the murderous sense, of the deceased, with the fanciful taste in brooches, was standing at the bar, uncomfortably chewing something, while my guardian had a woman under examination, or cross-examination, I don't know which, and was striking her and the bench everybody present with awe. If anybody of whatsoever degree said a word that he didn't approve of, he instantly required to have it taken down. If anybody wouldn't make an admission he said, I'll have it out of you. And if anybody made an admission he said, Now I have got you. The magistrate shivered under a single bite of his finger. Thieves and thief-takers hung in dread rapture on his words, and shrank when a hair of his eyebrows turned in their direction. Which side he was on I couldn't make out, for he seemed to me to be grinding the whole place in a mill. I only know that when I stole out on tiptoe he was not on the side of the bench, for he was making the legs of the old gentleman who presided, quite convulsive under the table, by his denunciations of his conduct as the representative of British law and justice in that chair that day. Great Expectations by Charles Dickens Chapter 25 Bentley Drummel, who was so sulky a fellow that he even took up a book as if its writer had done him an injury, did not take up an acquaintance in a more agreeable spirit. Heavy in figure, movement, and comprehension, in the sluggish complexion of his face, and in the large, awkward tongue that seemed to lull about in his mouth as he himself lulled about in a room, he was idle, proud, niggardly, reserved, and suspicious. He came of rich people down in Somersetshire, who had nursed this combination of qualities until they made the discovery that it was just of age and a blockhead. Thus Bentley Drummel had come to Mr. Pocket when he was a head taller than that gentleman, and half a dozen heads thicker than most gentlemen. Star-top had been spoiled by a weak mother and kept at home when he ought to have been at school, but he was devotedly attached to her and admired her beyond measure. He had a woman's delicacy of feature, and was, as you may see, though you never saw her, said Herbert to me, exactly like his mother. It was but natural that I should take to him much more kindly than to Drummel, and that, even in the earliest evenings of our boating, he and I should pull homeward a breast of one another, conversing from boat to boat, while Bentley Drummel came up in our wake alone, under the overhanging banks and among the rushes. He would always creep in shore like some uncomfortable amphibious creature, even when the tide would have sent him fast upon his way, and I always think of him as coming after us in the dark, or by the back-water, when our own two boats were breaking the sunset or the moonlight in midstream. Herbert was my intimate companion and friend. I presented him with a half-share in my boat, which was the occasion of his often coming down to Hammersmith, and my possession of a half-share in his chambers often took me up to London. We used to walk between the two places at all hours. I have an affection for the road yet, though it is not so pleasant a road as it was then, formed in the impressibility of untried youth and hope. When I had been in Mr. Pocket's family a month or two, Mr. and Mrs. Camilla turned up. Camilla was Mr. Pocket's sister, Georgiana, whom I had seen at Ms. Havishams on the same occasion, also turned up. She was a cousin, an indigestive single woman who called her rigidity, religion, and her liver, love. These people hated me with a hatred of cupidity and disappointment. As a matter of course they fawned upon me in my prosperity with a basest meanness. Towards Mr. Pocket, as a grown-up infant with no notion of his own interests, they showed the complacent forbearance I had heard them express. Mrs. Pocket they held in contempt, but they allowed the poor soul to have been heavily disappointed in life because that shed a feeble reflected light upon themselves. These were the surroundings among which I settled down and applied myself to my education. I soon contracted expensive habits and began to spend an amount of money that within a few short months I should have thought almost fabulous, but through good and evil I stuck to my books. There was no other merit in this than my having sense enough to feel my deficiencies, between Mr. Pocket and Herbert I got on fast, and with one or the other always at my elbow to give me the start I wanted, and clear obstructions out of my road, I must have been as great a doled as drummel if I had done less. I had not seen Mr. Wimmick for some weeks when I thought I would write him a note and propose to go home with him on a certain evening. He replied that it would give him much pleasure and that he would expect me at the office at six o'clock. Thither I went, and there I found him putting the key of his safe down his back as the clock struck. Did you think of walking down to Walworth? said he. Certainly, said I, if you approve. Very much, was Wimmick's reply, for I have had my legs under the desk all day and shall be glad to stretch them. Now I'll tell you what I have got for supper, Mr. Pip. I have got a stewed steak, which is of home preparation, and a cold roast fowl, which is from the cook's shop. I think it's tender, because the master of the shop was a juryman in some cases of ours the other day, and we let him down easy. I reminded him of it when I bought the fowl, and I said, pick us out a good one, old Britain, because if we had chosen to keep you in the box another day or two we could have easily done it. He said to that, let me make you a present of the best fowl in the shop. I let him, of course. As far as it goes it's property and portable. You don't object to an aged parent, I hope. I really thought he was still speaking of the fowl until he added, because I have got an aged parent at my place. I then said what politeness required. So you haven't dined with Mr. Jaggers yet? He pursued as we walked along. Not yet. He told me so this afternoon when he heard you were coming. I expect you'll have an invitation to-morrow. He's going to ask your pals, too. Three of them ain't there. Although I was not in the habit of counting drummel as one of my intimate associates, I answered, yes. Well, he's going to ask the whole gang. I hardly felt complimented by the word. And whatever he gives you he'll give you good. Don't look forward to variety, but you'll have excellence. And there's another rum thing in his house, preceded Wemmick after a moment's pause, as if the remark followed on the housekeeper understood. He never lets a door or a window be fastened at night. Is he never robbed? That's it, returned Wemmick. He says, and gives it out publicly, I want to see the man who'll rob me. Lord bless you, I have heard him a hundred times, if I have heard him once, say to regular cracksmen in our front office, you know where I live now, no bolt is ever drawn there. Why don't you do a stroke of business with me? Come, can't I tempt you? Not a man of them, sir, would be bold enough to try it on, for love or money. They dread him so much, said I. Dread him, said Wemmick, I believe you, they dread him. Nobody's artful, even in his defiance of them. No silver, sir, Britannia metal every spoon. So they wouldn't have much, I observed, even if they, ah, but he would have much, said Wemmick, cutting me short. And they know it. He'd have their lives, and the lives of scores of them. He'd have all he could get. And it's impossible to say what he couldn't get, if he gave his mind to it. I was falling into meditation on my guardian's greatness, when Wemmick remarked, As to the absence of plate, that's only his natural depth, you know. A river's its natural depth, and he's his natural depth. Look at his watch chain, that's real enough. It's very massive, said I. Massive, repeated Wemmick, I think so, and his watch is a gold repeater, and worth a hundred pound, if it's worth a penny. Mr. Pip, there are about seven hundred thieves in this town who know all about that watch. There's not a man, a woman, or a child among them, who wouldn't identify this smallest link in that chain, and drop it as if it was red-hot, if invagled into touching it. At first, with such discourse, and afterwards with conversation of a more general nature, did Mr. Wemmick and I beguile the time and the road, until he gave me to understand that we had arrived in the district of Walworth. It appeared to be a collection of back lanes, ditches, and little gardens, and to present the aspect of a rather dull retirement. Wemmick's house was a little wooden cottage in the midst of plots of garden, and the top of it was cut out and painted like a battery mounted with guns. My own doing, said Wemmick, looks pretty, don't it? I highly commended it. I think it was the smallest house I ever saw, with the queerest gothic windows, by far the greater part of them sham, and a gothic door almost too small to get in at. That's a real flagstaff, you see, said Wemmick, and on Sundays I run up a real flag. Then look here. After I have crossed this bridge, I hoisted up, so, and cut off the communication. The bridge was a plank, and it crossed a chasm about four feet wide and too deep. But it was very pleasant to see the pride with which he hoisted it up and made it fast, smiling as he did so, with a relish and not merely mechanically. At nine o'clock every night, Greenwich time, said Wemmick, the gun fires. There he is, you see, and when you hear him go, I think you'll say he's a stinger. The piece of ordinance referred to was mounted in a separate fortress, constructed of latticework. It was protected from the weather by an ingenious little tarpaulin contrivance in the nature of an umbrella. Then, at the back, said Wemmick, out of sight, so as not to impede the idea of fortifications, for it's a principle with me. If you have an idea, carry it out and keep it up. I don't know whether that's your opinion. I said, decidedly. At the back there's a pig, and there are fowls and rabbits. Then I knock together my own little frame, you see, and grow cucumbers, and you'll judge at supper what sort of a salad I can raise. So, sir, said Wemmick, smiling again, but seriously, too, as he shook his head. If you can suppose a little place besieged, it would hold out a devil of a time in point of provisions. Then he conducted me to a bower about a dozen yards off, but which was approached by such ingenious twists of path that it took quite a long time to get at, and in this retreat our glasses were already set forth. Our punch was cooling in an ornamental lake on whose margin the bower was raised. This piece of water, with an island in the middle which might have been the salad for supper, was of a circular form, and he had constructed a fountain in it, which, when you set a little mill going and took a cork out of a pipe, played to that powerful extent that it made the back of your hand quite wet. I am my own engineer, and my own carpenter, and my own plumber, and my own gardener, and my own jack of all trades, said Wemmick, and acknowledging my compliments. Well, it's a good thing you know. It brushes the new-get cobwebs away, and pleases the aged. You wouldn't mind being at once introduced to the aged, would you? It wouldn't put you out? I expressed the readiness I felt, and we went into the castle. There we found, sitting by a fire, a very old man in a flannel coat, clean, cheerful, comfortable, and well cared for, but intensely deaf. Well, aged parent, said Wemmick, shaking hands with him in a cordial and jocos way. How am you? All right, John, all right, replied the old man. Here's Mr. Pip, aged parent, said Wemmick, and I wish you could hear his name. Not away of him, Mr. Pip, that's what he likes. Not away of him, if you please, like winking. This is a fine place of my sons, sir, cried the old man, while I nodded as hard as I possibly could. This is a pretty pleasure, ground, sir. This spot, and these beautiful works upon it, ought to be kept together by the nation, after my son's time, for the people's enjoyment. You're as proud of it as punch, each aged, said Wemmick, contemplating the old man, whether his hard face really softened. There's a nod for you, giving him a tremendous one. There's another for you, giving him a still more tremendous one. You like that, don't you? If you're not tired, Mr. Pip, though I know it's tiring to strangers, will you tip him one more? You can't think how it pleases him. I tipped him several more, and he was in great spirits. We left him bestowing himself to feed the fowls, and we sat down to our punch in the arbor, where Wemmick told me, as he smoked a pipe, that it had taken him a good many years to bring the property up to his present pitch of perfection. Is it your own, Mr. Wemmick? Oh, yes, said Wemmick. I have got hold of it a bit at a time. It's a freehold by George. Is it indeed? I hope Mr. Jaggers admires it. Never seen it, said Wemmick. Never heard of it. Never seen the aged. Never heard of him. No. The office is one thing. In private life is another. When I go into the office, I leave the castle behind me, and when I come into the castle, I leave the office behind me. If it's not in any way disagreeable to you, you'll oblige me by doing the same. I don't wish it professionally spoken about. Of course I felt my good faith involved in the observance of his request. The punch being very nice, we sat there drinking it and talking, until it was almost nine o'clock. Getting near gunfire, said Wemmick then, as he laid down his pipe, it's the aged's treat. Proceeding into the castle again, we found the aged heating the poker, with expectant eyes, as a preliminary to the performance of this great nightly ceremony. Wemmick stood with his watch in his hand until the moment was come for him to take the red-hot poker from the aged and repair to the battery. He took it and went out, and presently the stinger went off with a bang that shook the crazy little box of a cottage, as if it must fall to pieces, and made every glass and teacup in it ring. Upon this the aged, who I believe would have been blown out of his armchair, but for holding on by the elbows, cried out exultingly, He's fired! I heard him! and I nodded at the old gentleman, until it is no figure of speech, to declare that I absolutely could not see him. The interval between that time and supper, Wemmick devoted to showing me his collection of curiosities. There were mostly of a felonious character, comprising the pen with which a celebrated forgery had been committed, a distinguished razor or two, some walks of hair, and several manuscript confessions written under condemnation, upon which Mr. Wemmick set particular value as being, to use his own words, Every one of them lies, sir! These were agreeably dispersed among small specimens of china and glass, various neat trifles made by the proprietor of the museum, and some tobacco stoppers carved by the aged. They were all displayed in that chamber of the castle into which I had been first inducted, and which served not only as the general sitting-room, but as the kitchen, too, if I might judge from a saucepan on the hob, in a brazen bijou over the fireplace, designed for the suspension of a roasting-jack. There was a neat little girl in attendance who looked after the aged in the day. When she had laid the supper-cloth, the bridge was lowered to give her means of egress, and she withdrew for the night. The supper was excellent, and though the castle was rather subject to dry rot in so much that it tasted like a bad nut, and though the pig might have been farther off, I was hardly pleased with my whole entertainment. Nor was there any drawback of my little turret bedroom, beyond there being such a very thin ceiling between me and the flag-staff, that when I lay down on my back in bed, it seemed as if I had to balance that pole on my forehead all night. Wemmick was up early in the morning, and I am afraid I heard him cleaning my boots. After that he fell to gardening, and I saw him from my gothic window pretending to employ the aged, and nodding at him in a most devoted manner. Our breakfast was as good as the supper, and at half-past eight precisely we started for little Britain. By degrees Wemmick got drier and harder as we went along, and his mouth tightened into a post-office again. At last, when we got to his place of business and he pulled out his key from his coat collar, he looked as unconscious of his Walworth property, as if the castle and the drawbridge and the arbor and the lake and the fountain and the aged had all been blown into space together by the last discharge of the stinger. XXVI It fell out as Wemmick had told me at wood that I had an early opportunity of comparing my guardian's establishment with that of his cashier and clerk. My guardian was in his room, washing his hands with his scented soap, when I went into the office from Walworth, and he called me to him and gave me the invitation for myself and friends which Wemmick had prepared me to receive. No ceremony, he stipulated, had no dinner dress and say to-morrow. I asked him where we should come to, for I had no idea where he lived, and I believe it was in his general objection to make anything like an admission that he replied, Come here, and I'll take you home with me. I embraced this opportunity of remarking that he washed his clients off as if he were a surgeon or a dentist. He had a closet in his room fitted up for the purpose, which smelt of the scented soap like a perfumer's shop. It had an unusually large jack-towel on a roller inside the door, and he would wash his hands and wipe them and dry them all over his towel, whenever he came in from a police court or dismissed a client from his room. When I and my friends repaired to him at six o'clock next day, he seemed to have been engaged on a case of a darker complexion than usual, for we found him with his head butted into this closet, not only washing his hands but loving his face and gargling his throat. And even when he had done all that, and had gone all round the jack-towel, he took out his pen-knife and scraped the case out of his nails before he put his coat on. There were some people slinking about as usual when we passed out into the street, who were evidently anxious to speak with him, but there was something so conclusive in the halo of scented soap which encircled his presence that they gave it up for that day. As we walked along westward, he was recognized ever and again by some face in the crowd of the streets, and whenever that happened he talked louder to me, but he never otherwise recognized anybody, or took notice that anybody recognized him. He conducted us to Gerard Street, Soho, to a house on the south side of that street, rather a stately house of its kind, but dolefully in want of painting and with dirty windows. He took out his key and opened the door, and we all went into a stone hall, bare, gloomy, and little used. So up a dark brown staircase into a series of three dark brown rooms on the first floor. There were carved garlands on the paneled walls, and as he stood among them giving us welcome, I know what kind of loops I thought they looked like. Dinner was laid in the best of these rooms. The second was his dressing room, the third his bedroom. He told us that he held the whole house, but rarely used more of it than we saw. The table was comfortably laid, no silver in the service, of course, and at the side of his chair was a capacious dumbwaiter, with a variety of bottles and decanters on it, and four dishes of fruit for dessert. I noticed throughout that he kept everything under his own hand and distributed everything himself. There was a bookcase in the room. I saw from the backs of the books that they were about evidence, criminal law, criminal biography, trials, acts of parliament, and such things. The furniture was all very solid and good, like his watch chain. It had an official look, however, and there was nothing merely ornamental to be seen. In a corner was a little table of papers with a shaded lamp, so that he seemed to bring the office home with him in that respect, too, and to wheel it out of an evening and fall to work. As he had scarcely seen my three companions until now, for he and I had walked together, he stood on the hearth-rug, after ringing the bell, and took a searching look at them. To my surprise, he seemed at once to be principally if not solely interested in drummel. Peep, said he, putting his large hand on my shoulder, and moving me to the window. I don't know one from the other. Who's the spider? The spider? said I. The blotchy, sprawly, sulky fellow. That's Bentley Drummel, I replied. The one with the delicate face is Star-Top. Not making the least account of the one with the delicate face, he returned, Bentley Drummel is his name, is it? I like the look of that fellow. He immediately began to talk to Drummel, not at all deterred by his replying in his heavy reticent way, but apparently led on by it to screw discourse out of him. I was looking at the two when there came between me and them, the housekeeper, with the first dish for the table. She was a woman of about forty, I supposed, but I may have thought her younger than she was. Rather tall, of a lithe, nimble figure, extremely pale, with large faded eyes and a quantity of streaming hair. I cannot say whether any diseased affection of the heart caused her lips to be parted as if she were panting, and her face to bear a curious expression of suddenness and flutter. But I know that I have been to see Macbeth at the theatre a night or two before, and that her face looked to me as if it were all disturbed by fiery air, like the faces I had seen rise out of the witch's cauldron. She set the dish on, touched my guardian quietly on the arm with a finger to notify that dinner was ready, and vanished. We took our seats at the round table, and my guardian kept drummel on one side of him, while Star Top sat on the other. It was a noble dish of fish that the housekeeper had put on table, and we had a joint of equally-choiced mutton afterwards, and then an equally-choiced bird. Saucers, wines, all the accessories we wanted, and all of the best were given out by our host from his dumbwaiter, and when they had made the circuit of the table he always put them back again. Similarly he dealt us clean plates and knives and forks for each course, and dropped those just disused into two baskets on the ground by his chair. No other attendant than the housekeeper appeared. She set on every dish, and I always saw in her face a face rising out of the cauldron. Years afterwards I made a dreadful likeness of that woman by causing a face that had no other natural resemblance to it than it derived from flowing hair to pass behind a bowl of flaming spirits in a dark room. Induced to take particular notice of the housekeeper, both by her own striking appearance and by Wemmick's preparation, I observed that whenever she was in the room she kept her eyes attentively on my guardian, and that she would remove her hands from any dish she put before him, hesitatingly, as if she dreaded his calling her back, and wanted him to speak when she was nigh if he had anything to say. I fancied that I could detect in his manner a consciousness of this, and a purpose of always holding her in suspense. Dinner went off gaily, and although my guardian seemed to follow rather than originate subjects, I knew that he wrenched the weakest part of our dispositions out of us. For myself, I found that I was expressing my tendency to lavish expenditure and to patronize Herbert, and to boast of my great prospects before I quite knew that I had opened my lips. It was so with all of us, but with no one more than Dremel, the development of whose inclination degerred in a grudging and suspicious way at the rest, was screwed out of him before the fish was taken off. It was not then, but when we had got to the cheese, that our conversation turned upon our rowing feats, and that Dremel was rallied for coming up behind of a night in that slow amphibious way of his. Dremel, upon this, informed our host that he much preferred our room to our company, and that as to skill he was more than our master, and that as to strength he could scatter us like chaff. By some invisible agency my guardian wound him up to a pitch little short of ferocity about this trifle, and he fell to bearing and spanning his arm to show how muscular it was, and we all fell to bearing and spanning our arms in a ridiculous manner. Now the housekeeper was at this time clearing the table. My guardian, taking no heat of her, but with the side of his face turned from her, was leaning back in his chair, biting the side of his forefinger, and showing an interest in Dremel, that to me was quite inexplicable. Suddenly he clapped his large hand on the housekeepers like a trap, as she stretched it across the table. So suddenly and smartly did he do this, that we all stopped in our foolish contention. If you talk of strength, said Mr. Jaggers, I'll show you a wrist. Molly, let them see your wrist. Her entrapped hand was on the table, but she had already put her other hand behind her waist. Master! she said in a low voice, with her eyes attentively and intriguingly fixed upon him. Don't. I'll show you a wrist, repeated Mr. Jaggers, with an immovable determination to show it. Molly, let them see your wrist. Master! she again murmured. Please! Molly! said Mr. Jaggers, not looking at her, but obstinately looking at the opposite side of the room. Let them see both your wrists. Show them. Come! He took his hand from hers and turned that wrist up on the table. She brought her other hand from behind her and held the two out side by side. The last wrist was much disfigured, deeply scarred, and scarred across and across. When she held her hands out she took her eyes from Mr. Jaggers and turned them watchfully on every one of the rest of us in succession. There's power here, said Mr. Jaggers, coolly tracing out the sinews with his forefinger. Very few men have the power of wrist that this woman has. It's remarkable what mere force of grip there is in these hands. I have had occasion to notice many hands, but I never saw stronger in that respect, man's or woman's, than these. While he said these words in a leisurely, critical style, she continued to look at every one of us in regular succession as we sat. The moment he ceased, she looked at him again. That'll do, Molly, said Mr. Jaggers, giving her a slight nod. You have been admired and can go. She withdrew her hands and went out of the room, and Mr. Jaggers, putting the decanters on from his dumbwaiter, billed his glass and passed round the wine. At half-past nine, gentlemen, said he, we must break up. Pray make the best use of your time. I'm glad to see you all. Mr. Drummel, I drink to you. If his object in singling out Drummel was to bring him out still more, it perfectly succeeded. In a sulky triumph, Drummel showed his morose depreciation of the rest of us in a more and more offensive degree until he became downright intolerable. Through all his stages Mr. Jaggers followed him with the same strange interest. He actually seemed to serve as a zest to Mr. Jaggers' wine. In our boyish want of discretion I daresay we took too much to drink, and I know we talked too much. We became particularly hot upon some boorish sneer of Drummel's to the effect that we were too free with our money. It led to my remarking, with more zeal than discretion, that it came with a bad grace from him, to whom Star-Top had lent money in my presence but a week or so before. Well, retorted Drummel, he'll be paid. I don't mean to imply that he won't, said I, but it might make you hold your tongue about us and our money, I should think. You should think, retorted Drummel, oh Lord. I daresay I went on meaning to be very severe, that you wouldn't lend money to any of us if we wanted it. You are right, said Drummel. I wouldn't lend one of you a sixpence. I wouldn't lend anybody a sixpence. Rather mean to borrow under those circumstances I should say. You should say, retorted Drummel, oh Lord. This was so very aggravating, the more especially as I found myself making no way against his surly obtuseness, that I said, disregarding Herbert's efforts to check me. Come, Mr. Drummel, since we are on the subject, I'll tell you what passed between Herbert here and me when you borrowed that money. I don't want to know what passed between Herbert there and you. Growl, Drummel, and I think he added in a lower growl that we might both go to the devil and shake ourselves. I'll tell you, however, said I, whether you want to know or not. We said that as you put it in your pocket, very glad to get it, you seem to be immensely amused at his being so weak as to lend it. Drummel laughed outright and sat laughing in our faces, with his hands in his pockets and his round shoulders raised, plainly signifying that it was quite true and that he despised us as asses all. Hereupon Star Top took him in hand, though with a much better grace than I had shown, and exhorted him to be a little more agreeable. Star Top, being a lively bright young fellow, and Drummel being the exact opposite, the latter was always disposed to resent him as a direct personal affront. He now retorted in a coarse, lumpish way, and Star Top tried to turn the discussion aside with some small pleasantry that made us all laugh. Resenting this little success more than anything, Drummel, without any threat or warning, pulled his hands out of his pockets, dropped his round shoulders, swore, took up a large glass and would have flung it at his adversary's head, but for our entertainers dexterously seizing it at the instant when it was raised for that purpose. Gentlemen! said Mr. Jaggers, deliberately putting down the glass, and hauling out his gold repeater by its massive chain. I am exceedingly sorry to announce that it's half past nine. On this hint we all rose to depart. Before we got to the street door, Star Top was cheerily calling Drummel, old boy, as if nothing had happened, but the old boy was so far from responding that he would not even walk to Hammersmith on the same side of the way. So Herbert and I, who remained in town, saw them going down the street on opposite sides, Star Top leading, and Drummel lagging behind in the shadow of the houses, much as he was want to follow in his boat. As the door was not yet shut, I thought I would leave Herbert there for a moment and run upstairs again to say a word to my guardian. I found him in his dressing-room surrounded by his stock of boots, already hard at it, washing his hands of us. I told him I had come up again to say how sorry I was that anything disagreeable should have occurred, and that I hoped he would not blame me much. Poo! said he, sluicing his face, and speaking through the water-drops. It's nothing, Pip! I like that spider, though. He had turned towards me now and was shaking his head and blowing and tolling himself. I am glad you like him, sir, said I, but I don't. No, no, my guardian assented. Don't have too much to do with him. Keep as clear of him as you can. But I like the fellow, Pip. He is one of the true sort. Why, if I was a fortune-teller, looking out of the towel, he caught my eye. But I am not a fortune-teller, he said, letting his head drop into a festoon of towel and tolling away at his two ears. You know what I am, don't you? Good night, Pip. Good night, sir.