"It's terrible, Joe; ain't it?"
"Terrible?" cried Joe. "Awful! What possessed you?"
"I don't know what possessed me, Joe," I replied, letting his shirt
sleeve go, and sitting down in the ashes at his feet, hanging my head;
"but I wish you hadn't taught me to call Knaves at cards Jacks; and I
wish my boots weren't so thick nor my hands so coarse."
And then I told Joe that I felt very miserable, and that I hadn't been
able to explain myself to Mrs. Joe and Pumblechook, who were so rude to
me, and that there had been a beautiful young lady at Miss Havisham's
who was dreadfully proud, and that she had said I was common, and that I
knew I was common, and that I wished I was not common, and that the lies
had come of it somehow, though I didn't know how.
This was a case of metaphysics, at least as difficult for Joe to deal
with as for me. But Joe took the case altogether out of the region of
metaphysics, and by that means vanquished it.
"There's one thing you may be sure of, Pip," said Joe, after some
rumination, "namely, that lies is lies. Howsever they come, they didn't
ought to come, and they come from the father of lies, and work round to
the same. Don't you tell no more of 'em, Pip. That ain't the way to get
out of being common, old chap. And as to being common, I don't make
it out at all clear. You are oncommon in some things. You're oncommon
small. Likewise you're a oncommon scholar."
"No, I am ignorant and backward, Joe."
"Why, see what a letter you wrote last night! Wrote in print even! I've
seen letters--Ah! and from gentlefolks!--that I'll swear weren't wrote
in print," said Joe.
"I have learnt next to nothing, Joe. You think much of me. It's only
that."
"Well, Pip," said Joe, "be it so or be it son't, you must be a common
scholar afore you can be a oncommon one, I should hope! The king upon
his throne, with his crown upon his ed, can't sit and write his acts
of Parliament in print, without having begun, when he were a unpromoted
Prince, with the alphabet.--Ah!" added Joe, with a shake of the head
that was full of meaning, "and begun at A. too, and worked his way to Z.
And I know what that is to do, though I can't say I've exactly done it."