Great Expectations

"The last time."

He nodded. "First knowed Mr. Jaggers that way. Jaggers was for me."

It was on my lips to ask him what he was tried for, but he took up

a knife, gave it a flourish, and with the words, "And what I done is

worked out and paid for!" fell to at his breakfast.

He ate in a ravenous way that was very disagreeable, and all his actions

were uncouth, noisy, and greedy. Some of his teeth had failed him since

I saw him eat on the marshes, and as he turned his food in his mouth,

and turned his head sideways to bring his strongest fangs to bear upon

it, he looked terribly like a hungry old dog. If I had begun with any

appetite, he would have taken it away, and I should have sat much as

I did,--repelled from him by an insurmountable aversion, and gloomily

looking at the cloth.

"I'm a heavy grubber, dear boy," he said, as a polite kind of apology

when he made an end of his meal, "but I always was. If it had been in

my constitution to be a lighter grubber, I might ha' got into lighter

trouble. Similarly, I must have my smoke. When I was first hired out as

shepherd t'other side the world, it's my belief I should ha' turned into

a molloncolly-mad sheep myself, if I hadn't a had my smoke."

As he said so, he got up from table, and putting his hand into the

breast of the pea-coat he wore, brought out a short black pipe, and a

handful of loose tobacco of the kind that is called Negro-head. Having

filled his pipe, he put the surplus tobacco back again, as if his pocket

were a drawer. Then, he took a live coal from the fire with the tongs,

and lighted his pipe at it, and then turned round on the hearth-rug with

his back to the fire, and went through his favorite action of holding

out both his hands for mine.

"And this," said he, dandling my hands up and down in his, as he puffed

at his pipe,--"and this is the gentleman what I made! The real genuine

One! It does me good fur to look at you, Pip. All I stip'late, is, to

stand by and look at you, dear boy!"

I released my hands as soon as I could, and found that I was beginning

slowly to settle down to the contemplation of my condition. What I was

chained to, and how heavily, became intelligible to me, as I heard his

hoarse voice, and sat looking up at his furrowed bald head with its iron

gray hair at the sides.