Great Expectations

The client looked scared, but bewildered too, as if he were unconscious

what he had done.

"Spooney!" said the clerk, in a low voice, giving him a stir with his

elbow. "Soft Head! Need you say it face to face?"

"Now, I ask you, you blundering booby," said my guardian, very sternly,

"once more and for the last time, what the man you have brought here is

prepared to swear?"

Mike looked hard at my guardian, as if he were trying to learn a lesson

from his face, and slowly replied, "Ayther to character, or to having

been in his company and never left him all the night in question."

"Now, be careful. In what station of life is this man?"

Mike looked at his cap, and looked at the floor, and looked at the

ceiling, and looked at the clerk, and even looked at me, before

beginning to reply in a nervous manner, "We've dressed him up like--"

when my guardian blustered out,-"What? You WILL, will you?"

("Spooney!" added the clerk again, with another stir.) After some helpless casting about, Mike brightened and began again:-"He is dressed like a 'spectable pieman. A sort of a pastry-cook."

"Is he here?" asked my guardian.

"I left him," said Mike, "a setting on some doorsteps round the corner."

"Take him past that window, and let me see him."

The window indicated was the office window. We all three went to

it, behind the wire blind, and presently saw the client go by in an

accidental manner, with a murderous-looking tall individual, in a short

suit of white linen and a paper cap. This guileless confectioner was not

by any means sober, and had a black eye in the green stage of recovery,

which was painted over.

"Tell him to take his witness away directly," said my guardian to the

clerk, in extreme disgust, "and ask him what he means by bringing such a

fellow as that."

My guardian then took me into his own room, and while he lunched,

standing, from a sandwich-box and a pocket-flask of sherry (he seemed to

bully his very sandwich as he ate it), informed me what arrangements he

had made for me. I was to go to "Barnard's Inn," to young Mr. Pocket's

rooms, where a bed had been sent in for my accommodation; I was to

remain with young Mr. Pocket until Monday; on Monday I was to go with

him to his father's house on a visit, that I might try how I liked it.

Also, I was told what my allowance was to be,--it was a very liberal

one,--and had handed to me from one of my guardian's drawers, the cards

of certain tradesmen with whom I was to deal for all kinds of clothes,

and such other things as I could in reason want. "You will find your

credit good, Mr. Pip," said my guardian, whose flask of sherry smelt

like a whole caskful, as he hastily refreshed himself, "but I shall by

this means be able to check your bills, and to pull you up if I find you

outrunning the constable. Of course you'll go wrong somehow, but that's

no fault of mine."