Great Expectations
Page 171I said I didn't know how much.
"Come!" retorted Mr. Jaggers. "How much? Fifty pounds?"
"O, not nearly so much."
"Five pounds?" said Mr. Jaggers.
This was such a great fall, that I said in discomfiture, "O, more than
that."
"More than that, eh!" retorted Mr. Jaggers, lying in wait for me, with
his hands in his pockets, his head on one side, and his eyes on the wall
behind me; "how much more?"
"It is so difficult to fix a sum," said I, hesitating.
"Come!" said Mr. Jaggers. "Let's get at it. Twice five; will that do?
I said I thought that would do handsomely.
"Four times five will do handsomely, will it?" said Mr. Jaggers,
knitting his brows. "Now, what do you make of four times five?"
"What do I make of it?"
"Ah!" said Mr. Jaggers; "how much?"
"I suppose you make it twenty pounds," said I, smiling.
"Never mind what I make it, my friend," observed Mr. Jaggers, with a
knowing and contradictory toss of his head. "I want to know what you
make it."
"Twenty pounds, of course."
written order, and pay him twenty pounds."
This strongly marked way of doing business made a strongly marked
impression on me, and that not of an agreeable kind. Mr. Jaggers never
laughed; but he wore great bright creaking boots, and, in poising
himself on these boots, with his large head bent down and his eyebrows
joined together, awaiting an answer, he sometimes caused the boots to
creak, as if they laughed in a dry and suspicious way. As he happened
to go out now, and as Wemmick was brisk and talkative, I said to Wemmick
that I hardly knew what to make of Mr. Jaggers's manner.
"Tell him that, and he'll take it as a compliment," answered Wemmick;
I looked surprised, "it's not personal; it's professional: only
professional."
Wemmick was at his desk, lunching--and crunching--on a dry hard biscuit;
pieces of which he threw from time to time into his slit of a mouth, as
if he were posting them.
"Always seems to me," said Wemmick, "as if he had set a man-trap and was
watching it. Suddenly-click--you're caught!"