Great Expectations

More composure came to me after a while, and we talked as we used

to talk, lying on the grass at the old Battery. There was no change

whatever in Joe. Exactly what he had been in my eyes then, he was in my

eyes still; just as simply faithful, and as simply right.

When we got back again, and he lifted me out, and carried me--so

easily!--across the court and up the stairs, I thought of that eventful

Christmas Day when he had carried me over the marshes. We had not yet

made any allusion to my change of fortune, nor did I know how much of

my late history he was acquainted with. I was so doubtful of myself now,

and put so much trust in him, that I could not satisfy myself whether I

ought to refer to it when he did not.

"Have you heard, Joe," I asked him that evening, upon further

consideration, as he smoked his pipe at the window, "who my patron was?"

"I heerd," returned Joe, "as it were not Miss Havisham, old chap."

"Did you hear who it was, Joe?"

"Well! I heerd as it were a person what sent the person what giv' you

the bank-notes at the Jolly Bargemen, Pip."

"So it was."

"Astonishing!" said Joe, in the placidest way.

"Did you hear that he was dead, Joe?" I presently asked, with increasing

diffidence.

"Which? Him as sent the bank-notes, Pip?"

"Yes."

"I think," said Joe, after meditating a long time, and looking rather

evasively at the window-seat, "as I did hear tell that how he were

something or another in a general way in that direction."

"Did you hear anything of his circumstances, Joe?"

"Not partickler, Pip."

"If you would like to hear, Joe--" I was beginning, when Joe got up and

came to my sofa.

"Lookee here, old chap," said Joe, bending over me. "Ever the best of

friends; ain't us, Pip?"

I was ashamed to answer him.

"Wery good, then," said Joe, as if I had answered; "that's all right;

that's agreed upon. Then why go into subjects, old chap, which as

betwixt two sech must be for ever onnecessary? There's subjects enough

as betwixt two sech, without onnecessary ones. Lord! To think of your

poor sister and her Rampages! And don't you remember Tickler?"

"I do indeed, Joe."

"Lookee here, old chap," said Joe. "I done what I could to keep you

and Tickler in sunders, but my power were not always fully equal to my

inclinations. For when your poor sister had a mind to drop into you, it

were not so much," said Joe, in his favorite argumentative way, "that

she dropped into me too, if I put myself in opposition to her, but that

she dropped into you always heavier for it. I noticed that. It ain't a

grab at a man's whisker, not yet a shake or two of a man (to which your

sister was quite welcome), that 'ud put a man off from getting a little

child out of punishment. But when that little child is dropped into

heavier for that grab of whisker or shaking, then that man naterally up

and says to himself, 'Where is the good as you are a doing? I grant you

I see the 'arm,' says the man, 'but I don't see the good. I call upon

you, sir, therefore, to pint out the good.'"