Great Expectations
Page 225One day when I was busy with my books and Mr. Pocket, I received a note
by the post, the mere outside of which threw me into a great flutter;
for, though I had never seen the handwriting in which it was addressed,
I divined whose hand it was.
It had no set beginning, as Dear Mr. Pip,
or Dear Pip, or Dear Sir, or Dear Anything, but ran thus:-
"I am to come to London the day after to-morrow by the midday coach. I
believe it was settled you should meet me? At all events Miss Havisham
has that impression, and I write in obedience to it. She sends you her
regard.
If there had been time, I should probably have ordered several suits
of clothes for this occasion; but as there was not, I was fain to be
content with those I had. My appetite vanished instantly, and I knew
no peace or rest until the day arrived. Not that its arrival brought
me either; for, then I was worse than ever, and began haunting the
coach-office in Wood Street, Cheapside, before the coach had left the
Blue Boar in our town. For all that I knew this perfectly well, I still
felt as if it were not safe to let the coach-office be out of my sight
longer than five minutes at a time; and in this condition of unreason I
Wemmick ran against me.
"Halloa, Mr. Pip," said he; "how do you do? I should hardly have thought
this was your beat."
I explained that I was waiting to meet somebody who was coming up by
coach, and I inquired after the Castle and the Aged.
"Both flourishing thankye," said Wemmick, "and particularly the Aged.
He's in wonderful feather. He'll be eighty-two next birthday. I have
a notion of firing eighty-two times, if the neighborhood shouldn't
complain, and that cannon of mine should prove equal to the pressure.
"To the office?" said I, for he was tending in that direction.
"Next thing to it," returned Wemmick, "I am going to Newgate. We are in
a banker's-parcel case just at present, and I have been down the road
taking a squint at the scene of action, and thereupon must have a word
or two with our client."
"Did your client commit the robbery?" I asked.
"Bless your soul and body, no," answered Wemmick, very drily. "But he
is accused of it. So might you or I be. Either of us might be accused of
it, you know."