Great Expectations

By these approaches we arrived at unrestricted conversation. I was slow

to gain strength, but I did slowly and surely become less weak, and Joe

stayed with me, and I fancied I was little Pip again.

For the tenderness of Joe was so beautifully proportioned to my need,

that I was like a child in his hands. He would sit and talk to me in the

old confidence, and with the old simplicity, and in the old unassertive

protecting way, so that I would half believe that all my life since the

days of the old kitchen was one of the mental troubles of the fever that

was gone. He did everything for me except the household work, for which

he had engaged a very decent woman, after paying off the laundress on

his first arrival. "Which I do assure you, Pip," he would often say, in

explanation of that liberty; "I found her a tapping the spare bed, like

a cask of beer, and drawing off the feathers in a bucket, for sale.

Which she would have tapped yourn next, and draw'd it off with you a

laying on it, and was then a carrying away the coals gradiwally in

the soup-tureen and wegetable-dishes, and the wine and spirits in your

Wellington boots."

We looked forward to the day when I should go out for a ride, as we had

once looked forward to the day of my apprenticeship. And when the day

came, and an open carriage was got into the Lane, Joe wrapped me up,

took me in his arms, carried me down to it, and put me in, as if I were

still the small helpless creature to whom he had so abundantly given of

the wealth of his great nature.

And Joe got in beside me, and we drove away together into the country,

where the rich summer growth was already on the trees and on the grass,

and sweet summer scents filled all the air. The day happened to be

Sunday, and when I looked on the loveliness around me, and thought

how it had grown and changed, and how the little wild-flowers had been

forming, and the voices of the birds had been strengthening, by day and

by night, under the sun and under the stars, while poor I lay burning

and tossing on my bed, the mere remembrance of having burned and tossed

there came like a check upon my peace. But when I heard the Sunday

bells, and looked around a little more upon the outspread beauty, I felt

that I was not nearly thankful enough,--that I was too weak yet to be

even that,--and I laid my head on Joe's shoulder, as I had laid it long

ago when he had taken me to the Fair or where not, and it was too much

for my young senses.