I signified that he was addressing Mr. Pip.

"Mr. Jaggers left word, would you wait in his room. He couldn't say how

long he might be, having a case on. But it stands to reason, his time

being valuable, that he won't be longer than he can help."

With those words, the clerk opened a door, and ushered me into an inner

chamber at the back. Here, we found a gentleman with one eye, in a

velveteen suit and knee-breeches, who wiped his nose with his sleeve on

being interrupted in the perusal of the newspaper.

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

I began to say that I hoped I was not interrupting, when the clerk

shoved this gentleman out with as little ceremony as I ever saw used,

and tossing his fur cap out after him, left me alone.

Mr. Jaggers's room was lighted by a skylight only, and was a most dismal

place; the skylight, eccentrically pitched like a broken head, and the

distorted adjoining houses looking as if they had twisted themselves to

peep down at me through it. There were not so many papers about, as I

should have expected to see; and there were some odd objects about, that

I should not have expected to see,--such as an old rusty pistol, a

sword in a scabbard, several strange-looking boxes and packages, and

two dreadful casts on a shelf, of faces peculiarly swollen, and twitchy

about the nose. Mr. Jaggers's own high-backed chair was of deadly black

horsehair, with rows of brass nails round it, like a coffin; and I

fancied I could see how he leaned back in it, and bit his forefinger at

the clients. The room was but small, and the clients seemed to have had

a habit of backing up against the wall; the wall, especially opposite to

Mr. Jaggers's chair, being greasy with shoulders. I recalled, too, that

the one-eyed gentleman had shuffled forth against the wall when I was

the innocent cause of his being turned out.

I sat down in the cliental chair placed over against Mr. Jaggers's

chair, and became fascinated by the dismal atmosphere of the place. I

called to mind that the clerk had the same air of knowing something to

everybody else's disadvantage, as his master had. I wondered how many

other clerks there were up-stairs, and whether they all claimed to have

the same detrimental mastery of their fellow-creatures. I wondered what

was the history of all the odd litter about the room, and how it came

there. I wondered whether the two swollen faces were of Mr. Jaggers's

family, and, if he were so unfortunate as to have had a pair of such

ill-looking relations, why he stuck them on that dusty perch for the

blacks and flies to settle on, instead of giving them a place at home.

Of course I had no experience of a London summer day, and my spirits may

have been oppressed by the hot exhausted air, and by the dust and grit

that lay thick on everything. But I sat wondering and waiting in Mr.

Jaggers's close room, until I really could not bear the two casts on the

shelf above Mr. Jaggers's chair, and got up and went out.




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