It appeared to me that it would take time to become uncommon, under
these circumstances: nevertheless, I resolved to try it, and that
very evening Biddy entered on our special agreement, by imparting some
information from her little catalogue of Prices, under the head of moist
sugar, and lending me, to copy at home, a large old English D which she
had imitated from the heading of some newspaper, and which I supposed,
until she told me what it was, to be a design for a buckle.
Of course there was a public-house in the village, and of course Joe
liked sometimes to smoke his pipe there. I had received strict orders
from my sister to call for him at the Three Jolly Bargemen, that
evening, on my way from school, and bring him home at my peril. To the
Three Jolly Bargemen, therefore, I directed my steps.
There was a bar at the Jolly Bargemen, with some alarmingly long chalk
scores in it on the wall at the side of the door, which seemed to me to
be never paid off. They had been there ever since I could remember, and
had grown more than I had. But there was a quantity of chalk about our
country, and perhaps the people neglected no opportunity of turning it
to account.
It being Saturday night, I found the landlord looking rather grimly
at these records; but as my business was with Joe and not with him, I
merely wished him good evening, and passed into the common room at the
end of the passage, where there was a bright large kitchen fire,
and where Joe was smoking his pipe in company with Mr. Wopsle and a
stranger. Joe greeted me as usual with "Halloa, Pip, old chap!" and the
moment he said that, the stranger turned his head and looked at me.
He was a secret-looking man whom I had never seen before. His head was
all on one side, and one of his eyes was half shut up, as if he were
taking aim at something with an invisible gun. He had a pipe in his
mouth, and he took it out, and, after slowly blowing all his smoke away
and looking hard at me all the time, nodded. So, I nodded, and then he
nodded again, and made room on the settle beside him that I might sit
down there.
But as I was used to sit beside Joe whenever I entered that place of
resort, I said "No, thank you, sir," and fell into the space Joe made
for me on the opposite settle. The strange man, after glancing at Joe,
and seeing that his attention was otherwise engaged, nodded to me again
when I had taken my seat, and then rubbed his leg--in a very odd way, as
it struck me.