The second piece was the last new grand comic Christmas pantomime, in

the first scene of which, it pained me to suspect that I detected

Mr. Wopsle with red worsted legs under a highly magnified phosphoric

countenance and a shock of red curtain-fringe for his hair, engaged

in the manufacture of thunderbolts in a mine, and displaying great

cowardice when his gigantic master came home (very hoarse) to dinner.

But he presently presented himself under worthier circumstances; for,

the Genius of Youthful Love being in want of assistance,--on account of

the parental brutality of an ignorant farmer who opposed the choice

of his daughter's heart, by purposely falling upon the object, in a

flour-sack, out of the first-floor window,--summoned a sententious

Enchanter; and he, coming up from the antipodes rather unsteadily, after

an apparently violent journey, proved to be Mr. Wopsle in a high-crowned

hat, with a necromantic work in one volume under his arm. The business

of this enchanter on earth being principally to be talked at, sung at,

butted at, danced at, and flashed at with fires of various colors,

he had a good deal of time on his hands. And I observed, with great

surprise, that he devoted it to staring in my direction as if he were

lost in amazement.

There was something so remarkable in the increasing glare of Mr.

Wopsle's eye, and he seemed to be turning so many things over in his

mind and to grow so confused, that I could not make it out. I sat

thinking of it long after he had ascended to the clouds in a large

watch-case, and still I could not make it out. I was still thinking

of it when I came out of the theatre an hour afterwards, and found him

waiting for me near the door.

"How do you do?" said I, shaking hands with him as we turned down the

street together. "I saw that you saw me."

"Saw you, Mr. Pip!" he returned. "Yes, of course I saw you. But who else

was there?"

"Who else?"

"It is the strangest thing," said Mr. Wopsle, drifting into his lost

look again; "and yet I could swear to him."

Becoming alarmed, I entreated Mr. Wopsle to explain his meaning.

"Whether I should have noticed him at first but for your being there,"

said Mr. Wopsle, going on in the same lost way, "I can't be positive;

yet I think I should."

Involuntarily I looked round me, as I was accustomed to look round me

when I went home; for these mysterious words gave me a chill.




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