Great Expectations

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.