Great Expectations

On a moderate computation, it was many months, that Sunday, since I had

left Joe and Biddy. The space interposed between myself and them partook

of that expansion, and our marshes were any distance off. That I could

have been at our old church in my old church-going clothes, on the very

last Sunday that ever was, seemed a combination of impossibilities,

geographical and social, solar and lunar. Yet in the London streets so

crowded with people and so brilliantly lighted in the dusk of evening,

there were depressing hints of reproaches for that I had put the poor

old kitchen at home so far away; and in the dead of night, the footsteps

of some incapable impostor of a porter mooning about Barnard's Inn,

under pretence of watching it, fell hollow on my heart.

On the Monday morning at a quarter before nine, Herbert went to

the counting-house to report himself,--to look about him, too, I

suppose,--and I bore him company. He was to come away in an hour or

two to attend me to Hammersmith, and I was to wait about for him. It

appeared to me that the eggs from which young Insurers were hatched were

incubated in dust and heat, like the eggs of ostriches, judging from the

places to which those incipient giants repaired on a Monday morning. Nor

did the counting-house where Herbert assisted, show in my eyes as at

all a good Observatory; being a back second floor up a yard, of a grimy

presence in all particulars, and with a look into another back second

floor, rather than a look out.

I waited about until it was noon, and I went upon 'Change, and I saw

fluey men sitting there under the bills about shipping, whom I took to

be great merchants, though I couldn't understand why they should all be

out of spirits. When Herbert came, we went and had lunch at a celebrated

house which I then quite venerated, but now believe to have been the

most abject superstition in Europe, and where I could not help noticing,

even then, that there was much more gravy on the tablecloths and knives

and waiters' clothes, than in the steaks. This collation disposed of at

a moderate price (considering the grease, which was not charged for), we

went back to Barnard's Inn and got my little portmanteau, and then took

coach for Hammersmith. We arrived there at two or three o'clock in

the afternoon, and had very little way to walk to Mr. Pocket's house.

Lifting the latch of a gate, we passed direct into a little garden

overlooking the river, where Mr. Pocket's children were playing

about. And unless I deceive myself on a point where my interests or

prepossessions are certainly not concerned, I saw that Mr. and Mrs.

Pocket's children were not growing up or being brought up, but were

tumbling up.