A Tale of Two Cities and Great Expectations (Penguin) - Charles Dickens [280]
“Pray come in,” said Mr. Pocket, Junior. “Allow me to lead the way. I am rather bare here, but I hope you’ll be able to make out tolerably well till Monday. My father thought you would get on more agreeably through to-morrow with me than with him, and might like to take a walk about London. I am sure I shall be very happy to show London to you. As to our table, you won’t find that bad, I hope, for it will be supplied from our coffee-house here, and (it is only right I should add) at your expense, such being Mr. Jaggers’s directions. As to our lodging, it’s not by any means splendid, because I have my own bread to earn, and my father hasn’t anything to give me, and I shouldn’t be willing to take it, if he had. This is our sitting-room—just such chairs and tables and carpet and so forth, you see, as they could spare from home. You mustn’t give me credit for the tablecloth and spoons and castors, because they come for you from the coffee-house. This is my little bedroom; rather musty, but Barnard’s is musty. This is your 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 dare say. But, dear me, I beg your pardon, you’re holding the fruit all this time. Pray let me take these bags from you. I am quite ashamed.”
As I stood opposite to Mr. Pocket, Junior, delivering him the bags, One, Two, I saw the starting appearance come into his own eyes that I knew to be in mine, and he said falling back:
“Lord bless me, you’re the prowling boy!”
“And you,” said I, “are the pale young gentleman!”
CHAPTER III
The pale young gentleman and I stood contemplating one another in Barnard’s Inn until we both burst out laughing. “The idea of its being you!” said he. “The idea of its being you!” said I. And then we contemplated one another afresh, and laughed again. “Well!” said the pale young gentleman, reaching out his hand good humouredly, “it’s all over now, I hope, and it will be magnanimous in you if you’ll forgive me for having knocked you about so.”
I derived from this speech that Mr. Herbert Pocket (for Herbert was the pale young gentleman’s name) still rather confounded his intention with his execution. But I made a modest reply, and we shook hands warmly.
“You hadn’t come into your good fortune at that time?” said Herbert Pocket.
“No,” said I.
“No,” he acquiesced: “I heard it had happened very lately. I was rather on the look-out for good fortune then.”
“Indeed?”
“Yes. Miss Havisham had sent for me, to see if she could take a fancy to me. But she couldn’t—at all events, she didn’t.”
I thought it polite to remark that I was surprised to hear that. “Bad taste,” said Herbert, laughing, “but a fact. Yes, she had sent for me on a trial visit, and if I had come out of it successfully, I suppose I should have been provided for; perhaps I should have been what-you-may-called it to Estella.”
“What’s that?” I asked, with sudden gravity.
He was arranging his fruit in plates while we talked, which divided his attention, and was the cause of his having made this lapse of a word. “Affianced,” he explained, still busy with the fruit. “Betrothed. Engaged. What’s-his-named. Any word of that sort.”
“How did you bear your disappointment?” I asked.
“Pooh!” said he, “I didn’t care much for it. She’s a Tartar.”
“Miss Havisham?” I suggested.
“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,