Great Expectations

For, though it includes what I proceed to add, all the merit of what I

proceed to add was Joe's. It was not because I was faithful, but because

Joe was faithful, that I never ran away and went for a soldier or

a sailor. It was not because I had a strong sense of the virtue of

industry, but because Joe had a strong sense of the virtue of industry,

that I worked with tolerable zeal against the grain. It is not possible

to know how far the influence of any amiable honest-hearted duty-doing

man flies out into the world; but it is very possible to know how it has

touched one's self in going by, and I know right well that any good that

intermixed itself with my apprenticeship came of plain contented Joe,

and not of restlessly aspiring discontented me.

What I wanted, who can say? How can I say, when I never knew? What

I dreaded was, that in some unlucky hour I, being at my grimiest and

commonest, should lift up my eyes and see Estella looking in at one

of the wooden windows of the forge. I was haunted by the fear that she

would, sooner or later, find me out, with a black face and hands, doing

the coarsest part of my work, and would exult over me and despise me.

Often after dark, when I was pulling the bellows for Joe, and we were

singing Old Clem, and when the thought how we used to sing it at Miss

Havisham's would seem to show me Estella's face in the fire, with her

pretty hair fluttering in the wind and her eyes scorning me,--often at

such a time I would look towards those panels of black night in the wall

which the wooden windows then were, and would fancy that I saw her just

drawing her face away, and would believe that she had come at last.

After that, when we went in to supper, the place and the meal would have

a more homely look than ever, and I would feel more ashamed of home than

ever, in my own ungracious breast.