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Great Expectations

Page 418

For eleven years, I had not seen Joe nor Biddy with my bodily

Eyes,--though they had both been often before my fancy in the

East,--when, upon an evening in December, an hour or two after dark, I

laid my hand softly on the latch of the old kitchen door. I touched it

so softly that I was not heard, and looked in unseen. There, smoking his

pipe in the old place by the kitchen firelight, as hale and as strong as

ever, though a little gray, sat Joe; and there, fenced into the corner

with Joe's leg, and sitting on my own little stool looking at the fire,

was--I again!

"We giv' him the name of Pip for your sake, dear old chap," said Joe,

delighted, when I took another stool by the child's side (but I did not

rumple his hair), "and we hoped he might grow a little bit like you, and

we think he do."

I thought so too, and I took him out for a walk next morning, and we

talked immensely, understanding one another to perfection. And I took

him down to the churchyard, and set him on a certain tombstone there,

and he showed me from that elevation which stone was sacred to the

memory of Philip Pirrip, late of this Parish, and Also Georgiana, Wife

of the Above.

"Biddy," said I, when I talked with her after dinner, as her little girl

lay sleeping in her lap, "you must give Pip to me one of these days; or

lend him, at all events."

"No, no," said Biddy, gently. "You must marry."

"So Herbert and Clara say, but I don't think I shall, Biddy. I have so

settled down in their home, that it's not at all likely. I am already

quite an old bachelor."

Biddy looked down at her child, and put its little hand to her lips, and

then put the good matronly hand with which she had touched it into mine.

There was something in the action, and in the light pressure of Biddy's

wedding-ring, that had a very pretty eloquence in it.

"Dear Pip," said Biddy, "you are sure you don't fret for her?"

"O no,--I think not, Biddy."

"Tell me as an old, old friend. Have you quite forgotten her?

"My dear Biddy, I have forgotten nothing in my life that ever had a

foremost place there, and little that ever had any place there. But that

poor dream, as I once used to call it, has all gone by, Biddy,--all gone

by!"

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