“Good-bye, dear Joe! — No, don’t
wipe it off — for God’s sake, give me
your blackened hand! — I shall be down soon,
and often.”
“Never too soon, sir,” said Joe, “and
never too often, Pip!”
Biddy was waiting for me at the kitchen door, with
a mug of new milk and a crust of bread. “Biddy,”
said I, when I gave her my hand at parting, “I
am not angry, but I am hurt.”
“No, don’t be hurt,” she pleaded
quite pathetically; “let only me be hurt, if
I have been ungenerous.”
Once more, the mists were rising as I walked away.
If they disclosed to me, as I suspect they did, that
I should not come back, and that Biddy was quite right,
all I can say is — they were quite right too.
Herbert and I went on from bad to worse, in the way
of increasing our debts, looking into our affairs,
leaving Margins, and the like exemplary transactions;
and Time went on, whether or no, as he has a way of
doing; and I came of age — in fulfilment of Herbert’s
prediction, that I should do so before I knew where
I was.
Herbert himself had come of age, eight months before
me. As he had nothing else than his majority
to come into, the event did not make a profound sensation
in Barnard’s Inn. But we had looked forward
to my one-and-twentieth birthday, with a crowd of
speculations and anticipations, for we had both considered
that my guardian could hardly help saying something
definite on that occasion.
I had taken care to have it well understood in Little
Britain, when my birthday was. On the day before
it, I received an official note from Wemmick, informing
me that Mr. Jaggers would be glad if I would call
upon him at five in the afternoon of the auspicious
day. This convinced us that something great
was to happen, and threw me into an unusual flutter
when I repaired to my guardian’s office, a model
of punctuality.
In the outer office Wemmick offered me his congratulations,
and incidentally rubbed the side of his nose with
a folded piece of tissuepaper that I liked the look
of. But he said nothing respecting it, and motioned
me with a nod into my guardian’s room.
It was November, and my guardian was standing before
his fire leaning his back against the chimney-piece,
with his hands under his coattails.
“Well, Pip,” said he, “I must call
you Mr. Pip to-day. Congratulations, Mr. Pip.”
We shook hands — he was always a remarkably
short shaker — and I thanked him.
“Take a chair, Mr. Pip,” said my guardian.
As I sat down, and he preserved his attitude and bent
his brows at his boots, I felt at a disadvantage,
which reminded me of that old time when I had been
put upon a tombstone. The two ghastly casts on
the shelf were not far from him, and their expression
was as if they were making a stupid apoplectic attempt
to attend to the conversation.
“Now my young friend,” my guardian began,
as if I were a witness in the box, “I am going
to have a word or two with you.”
