This avenging phantom was ordered to be on duty at eight on Tuesday

morning in the hall, (it was two feet square, as charged for

floorcloth,) and Herbert suggested certain things for breakfast that he

thought Joe would like. While I felt sincerely obliged to him for being

so interested and considerate, I had an odd half-provoked sense of

suspicion upon me, that if Joe had been coming to see him, he wouldn't

have been quite so brisk about it.

However, I came into town on the Monday night to be ready for Joe, and

I got up early in the morning, and caused the sitting-room and

breakfast-table to assume their most splendid appearance. Unfortunately

the morning was drizzly, and an angel could not have concealed the fact

that Barnard was shedding sooty tears outside the window, like some weak

giant of a Sweep.

As the time approached I should have liked to run away, but the Avenger

pursuant to orders was in the hall, and presently I heard Joe on

the staircase. I knew it was Joe, by his clumsy manner of coming up

stairs,--his state boots being always too big for him,--and by the time

it took him to read the names on the other floors in the course of

his ascent. When at last he stopped outside our door, I could hear his

finger tracing over the painted letters of my name, and I afterwards

distinctly heard him breathing in at the keyhole. Finally he gave a

faint single rap, and Pepper--such was the compromising name of the

avenging boy--announced "Mr. Gargery!" I thought he never would have

done wiping his feet, and that I must have gone out to lift him off the

mat, but at last he came in.

"Joe, how are you, Joe?"

"Pip, how AIR you, Pip?"

With his good honest face all glowing and shining, and his hat put

down on the floor between us, he caught both my hands and worked them

straight up and down, as if I had been the last-patented Pump.

"I am glad to see you, Joe. Give me your hat."

But Joe, taking it up carefully with both hands, like a bird's-nest with

eggs in it, wouldn't hear of parting with that piece of property, and

persisted in standing talking over it in a most uncomfortable way.

"Which you have that growed," said Joe, "and that swelled, and that

gentle-folked;" Joe considered a little before he discovered this word;

"as to be sure you are a honor to your king and country."




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