Great Expectations

Bentley Drummle, who was so sulky a fellow that he even took up a book

as if its writer had done him an injury, did not take up an

acquaintance in a more agreeable spirit. Heavy in figure, movement,

and comprehension,--in the sluggish complexion of his face, and in

the large, awkward tongue that seemed to loll about in his mouth as

he himself lolled about in a room,--he was idle, proud, niggardly,

reserved, and suspicious. He came of rich people down in Somersetshire,

who had nursed this combination of qualities until they made the

discovery that it was just of age and a blockhead. Thus, Bentley Drummle

had come to Mr. Pocket when he was a head taller than that gentleman,

and half a dozen heads thicker than most gentlemen.

Startop had been spoilt by a weak mother and kept at home when he

ought to have been at school, but he was devotedly attached to her, and

admired her beyond measure. He had a woman's delicacy of feature,

and was--"as you may see, though you never saw her," said Herbert to

me--"exactly like his mother." It was but natural that I should take to

him much more kindly than to Drummle, and that, even in the earliest

evenings of our boating, he and I should pull homeward abreast of one

another, conversing from boat to boat, while Bentley Drummle came up

in our wake alone, under the overhanging banks and among the rushes. He

would always creep in-shore like some uncomfortable amphibious creature,

even when the tide would have sent him fast upon his way; and I always

think of him as coming after us in the dark or by the back-water,

when our own two boats were breaking the sunset or the moonlight in

mid-stream.

Herbert was my intimate companion and friend. I presented him with a

half-share in my boat, which was the occasion of his often coming down

to Hammersmith; and my possession of a half-share in his chambers often

took me up to London. We used to walk between the two places at all

hours. I have an affection for the road yet (though it is not so

pleasant a road as it was then), formed in the impressibility of untried

youth and hope.

When I had been in Mr. Pocket's family a month or two, Mr. and Mrs.

Camilla turned up. Camilla was Mr. Pocket's sister. Georgiana, whom I

had seen at Miss Havisham's on the same occasion, also turned up. She

was a cousin,--an indigestive single woman, who called her rigidity

religion, and her liver love. These people hated me with the hatred of

cupidity and disappointment. As a matter of course, they fawned upon

me in my prosperity with the basest meanness. Towards Mr. Pocket, as

a grown-up infant with no notion of his own interests, they showed the

complacent forbearance I had heard them express. Mrs. Pocket they

held in contempt; but they allowed the poor soul to have been heavily

disappointed in life, because that shed a feeble reflected light upon

themselves.