Great Expectations

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 expression 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 dints. 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

mourning 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.

"O! 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."

"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 self-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

Holborn Hill before I knew that it was merely a mechanical appearance,

and that he was not smiling at all.