Great Expectations

My state of mind regarding the pilfering from which I had been so

unexpectedly exonerated did not impel me to frank disclosure; but I hope

it had some dregs of good at the bottom of it.

I do not recall that I felt any tenderness of conscience in reference

to Mrs. Joe, when the fear of being found out was lifted off me. But

I loved Joe,--perhaps for no better reason in those early days than

because the dear fellow let me love him,--and, as to him, my inner self

was not so easily composed. It was much upon my mind (particularly when

I first saw him looking about for his file) that I ought to tell Joe the

whole truth. Yet I did not, and for the reason that I mistrusted that

if I did, he would think me worse than I was. The fear of losing Joe's

confidence, and of thenceforth sitting in the chimney corner at night

staring drearily at my forever lost companion and friend, tied up my

tongue.

I morbidly represented to myself that if Joe knew it, I never

afterwards could see him at the fireside feeling his fair whisker,

without thinking that he was meditating on it. That, if Joe knew it, I

never afterwards could see him glance, however casually, at yesterday's

meat or pudding when it came on to-day's table, without thinking that he

was debating whether I had been in the pantry. That, if Joe knew it, and

at any subsequent period of our joint domestic life remarked that his

beer was flat or thick, the conviction that he suspected Tar in it,

would bring a rush of blood to my face. In a word, I was too cowardly

to do what I knew to be right, as I had been too cowardly to avoid doing

what I knew to be wrong. I had had no intercourse with the world at

that time, and I imitated none of its many inhabitants who act in this

manner. Quite an untaught genius, I made the discovery of the line of

action for myself.

As I was sleepy before we were far away from the prison-ship, Joe took

me on his back again and carried me home. He must have had a tiresome

journey of it, for Mr. Wopsle, being knocked up, was in such a very bad

temper that if the Church had been thrown open, he would probably have

excommunicated the whole expedition, beginning with Joe and myself. In

his lay capacity, he persisted in sitting down in the damp to such

an insane extent, that when his coat was taken off to be dried at the

kitchen fire, the circumstantial evidence on his trousers would have

hanged him, if it had been a capital offence.