Great Expectations

"Good again!" cried Uncle Pumblechook. "Well put! Prettily pointed! Good

indeed! Now Joseph, you know the case."

"No, Joseph," said my sister, still in a reproachful manner, while Joe

apologetically drew the back of his hand across and across his nose,

"you do not yet--though you may not think it--know the case. You may

consider that you do, but you do not, Joseph. For you do not know that

Uncle Pumblechook, being sensible that for anything we can tell, this

boy's fortune may be made by his going to Miss Havisham's, has offered

to take him into town to-night in his own chaise-cart, and to keep

him to-night, and to take him with his own hands to Miss Havisham's

to-morrow morning. And Lor-a-mussy me!" cried my sister, casting off her

bonnet in sudden desperation, "here I stand talking to mere Mooncalfs,

with Uncle Pumblechook waiting, and the mare catching cold at the door,

and the boy grimed with crock and dirt from the hair of his head to the

sole of his foot!"

With that, she pounced upon me, like an eagle on a lamb, and my face was

squeezed into wooden bowls in sinks, and my head was put under taps of

water-butts, and I was soaped, and kneaded, and towelled, and thumped,

and harrowed, and rasped, until I really was quite beside myself. (I

may here remark that I suppose myself to be better acquainted than

any living authority, with the ridgy effect of a wedding-ring, passing

unsympathetically over the human countenance.) When my ablutions were completed, I was put into clean linen of the

stiffest character, like a young penitent into sackcloth, and was

trussed up in my tightest and fearfullest suit. I was then delivered

over to Mr. Pumblechook, who formally received me as if he were the

Sheriff, and who let off upon me the speech that I knew he had been

dying to make all along: "Boy, be forever grateful to all friends, but

especially unto them which brought you up by hand!"

"Good-bye, Joe!"

"God bless you, Pip, old chap!"

I had never parted from him before, and what with my feelings and what

with soapsuds, I could at first see no stars from the chaise-cart.

But they twinkled out one by one, without throwing any light on the

questions why on earth I was going to play at Miss Havisham's, and what

on earth I was expected to play at.