Great Expectations

"Yes, Pip, dear boy, I've made a gentleman on you! It's me wot has

done it! I swore that time, sure as ever I earned a guinea, that guinea

should go to you. I swore arterwards, sure as ever I spec'lated and got

rich, you should get rich. I lived rough, that you should live smooth;

I worked hard, that you should be above work. What odds, dear boy? Do I

tell it, fur you to feel a obligation? Not a bit. I tell it, fur you to

know as that there hunted dunghill dog wot you kep life in, got his head

so high that he could make a gentleman,--and, Pip, you're him!"

The abhorrence in which I held the man, the dread I had of him, the

repugnance with which I shrank from him, could not have been exceeded if

he had been some terrible beast.

"Look'ee here, Pip. I'm your second father. You're my son,--more to me

nor any son. I've put away money, only for you to spend. When I was a

hired-out shepherd in a solitary hut, not seeing no faces but faces of

sheep till I half forgot wot men's and women's faces wos like, I see

yourn. I drops my knife many a time in that hut when I was a-eating my

dinner or my supper, and I says, 'Here's the boy again, a looking at

me whiles I eats and drinks!' I see you there a many times, as plain as

ever I see you on them misty marshes. 'Lord strike me dead!' I says each

time,--and I goes out in the air to say it under the open heavens,--'but

wot, if I gets liberty and money, I'll make that boy a gentleman!' And

I done it. Why, look at you, dear boy! Look at these here lodgings

o'yourn, fit for a lord! A lord? Ah! You shall show money with lords for

wagers, and beat 'em!"

In his heat and triumph, and in his knowledge that I had been nearly

fainting, he did not remark on my reception of all this. It was the one

grain of relief I had.

"Look'ee here!" he went on, taking my watch out of my pocket, and

turning towards him a ring on my finger, while I recoiled from his

touch as if he had been a snake, "a gold 'un and a beauty: that's a

gentleman's, I hope! A diamond all set round with rubies; that's a

gentleman's, I hope! Look at your linen; fine and beautiful! Look at

your clothes; better ain't to be got! And your books too," turning his

eyes round the room, "mounting up, on their shelves, by hundreds! And

you read 'em; don't you? I see you'd been a reading of 'em when I come

in. Ha, ha, ha! You shall read 'em to me, dear boy! And if they're in

foreign languages wot I don't understand, I shall be just as proud as if

I did."