Great Expectations

The Hall was a queer place, I thought, with higher pews in it than a

church,--and with people hanging over the pews looking on,--and with

mighty Justices (one with a powdered head) leaning back in chairs, with

folded arms, or taking snuff, or going to sleep, or writing, or reading

the newspapers,--and with some shining black portraits on the walls,

which my unartistic eye regarded as a composition of hardbake and

sticking-plaster. Here, in a corner my indentures were duly signed and

attested, and I was "bound"; Mr. Pumblechook holding me all the while

as if we had looked in on our way to the scaffold, to have those little

preliminaries disposed of.

When we had come out again, and had got rid of the boys who had been put

into great spirits by the expectation of seeing me publicly tortured,

and who were much disappointed to find that my friends were merely

rallying round me, we went back to Pumblechook's. And there my sister

became so excited by the twenty-five guineas, that nothing would serve

her but we must have a dinner out of that windfall at the Blue Boar, and

that Pumblechook must go over in his chaise-cart, and bring the Hubbles

and Mr. Wopsle.

It was agreed to be done; and a most melancholy day I passed. For,

it inscrutably appeared to stand to reason, in the minds of the whole

company, that I was an excrescence on the entertainment. And to make it

worse, they all asked me from time to time,--in short, whenever they

had nothing else to do,--why I didn't enjoy myself? And what could I

possibly do then, but say I was enjoying myself,--when I wasn't!

However, they were grown up and had their own way, and they made the

most of it. That swindling Pumblechook, exalted into the beneficent

contriver of the whole occasion, actually took the top of the table;

and, when he addressed them on the subject of my being bound, and had

fiendishly congratulated them on my being liable to imprisonment if I

played at cards, drank strong liquors, kept late hours or bad company,

or indulged in other vagaries which the form of my indentures appeared

to contemplate as next to inevitable, he placed me standing on a chair

beside him to illustrate his remarks.

My only other remembrances of the great festival are, That they wouldn't

let me go to sleep, but whenever they saw me dropping off, woke me up

and told me to enjoy myself. That, rather late in the evening Mr. Wopsle

gave us Collins's ode, and threw his bloodstained sword in thunder

down, with such effect, that a waiter came in and said, "The Commercials

underneath sent up their compliments, and it wasn't the Tumblers' Arms."

That, they were all in excellent spirits on the road home, and sang, O

Lady Fair! Mr. Wopsle taking the bass, and asserting with a tremendously

strong voice (in reply to the inquisitive bore who leads that piece

of music in a most impertinent manner, by wanting to know all about

everybody's private affairs) that he was the man with his white locks

flowing, and that he was upon the whole the weakest pilgrim going.