Great Expectations

The tidings of my high fortunes having had a heavy fall had got down

to my native place and its neighborhood before I got there. I found the

Blue Boar in possession of the intelligence, and I found that it made a

great change in the Boar's demeanour. Whereas the Boar had cultivated

my good opinion with warm assiduity when I was coming into property,

the Boar was exceedingly cool on the subject now that I was going out of

property.

It was evening when I arrived, much fatigued by the journey I had so

often made so easily. The Boar could not put me into my usual bedroom,

which was engaged (probably by some one who had expectations), and

could only assign me a very indifferent chamber among the pigeons and

post-chaises up the yard. But I had as sound a sleep in that lodging as

in the most superior accommodation the Boar could have given me, and the

quality of my dreams was about the same as in the best bedroom.

Early in the morning, while my breakfast was getting ready, I strolled

round by Satis House. There were printed bills on the gate and on bits

of carpet hanging out of the windows, announcing a sale by auction of

the Household Furniture and Effects, next week. The House itself was to

be sold as old building materials, and pulled down. LOT 1 was marked in

whitewashed knock-knee letters on the brew house; LOT 2 on that part of

the main building which had been so long shut up. Other lots were marked

off on other parts of the structure, and the ivy had been torn down to

make room for the inscriptions, and much of it trailed low in the dust

and was withered already. Stepping in for a moment at the open gate, and

looking around me with the uncomfortable air of a stranger who had no

business there, I saw the auctioneer's clerk walking on the casks and

telling them off for the information of a catalogue-compiler, pen in

hand, who made a temporary desk of the wheeled chair I had so often

pushed along to the tune of Old Clem.

When I got back to my breakfast in the Boar's coffee-room, I found Mr.

Pumblechook conversing with the landlord. Mr. Pumblechook (not improved

in appearance by his late nocturnal adventure) was waiting for me, and

addressed me in the following terms:-"Young man, I am sorry to see you brought low. But what else could be

expected! what else could be expected!"

As he extended his hand with a magnificently forgiving air, and as I was

broken by illness and unfit to quarrel, I took it.