tidying up the rooms and trying in many little ways to add to the
master’s comfort.  And that evening, when his pupil died, Nell’s grief
was almost as deep in its sympathy as the master’s own.

She bade him a reluctant farewell the next morning.  School had already
begun, but he rose from his desk and walked with them to the gate.

It was with a trembling and reluctant hand that the child held out to
him the money which a lady had given her at the races for some flowers;
faltering in her thanks as she thought how small the sum was, and
blushing as she offered it.  But he bade her put it up, and stooping to
kiss her cheek, turned back into his house.

They had not gone half-a-dozen paces when he was at the door again; the
old man retraced his steps to shake hands, and the child did the same.

"Good fortune and happiness go with you!" said the poor schoolmaster.
"I am quite a solitary man now.  If you ever pass this way again, you’ll
not forget the little village school."

"We shall never forget it, sir," rejoined Nell; "nor ever forget to be
grateful to you for your kindness to us."

"I have heard such words from the lips of children very often," said the
schoolmaster, shaking his head and smiling thoughtfully, "but they were
soon forgotten.  I had attached one young friend to me, the better
friend for being young—but that’s over—God bless you!"

They bade him farewell very many times and turned away, walking slowly
and often looking back, until they could see him no more.  At length
they had left the village far behind, and even lost sight of the smoke
among the trees.  They trudged onward now at a quicker pace, resolving
to keep the main road, and go wherever it might lead them.

But main roads stretch a long, long way. With the exception of two or
three inconsiderable clusters of cottages which they passed without
stopping, and one lonely roadside public-house where they had some bread
and cheese, this highway had led them to nothing—late in the
afternoon—and still lengthened out, far in the distance, the same dull,
tedious, winding course that they had been pursuing all day.  As they
had no resource, however, but to go forward, they still kept on, though
at a much slower pace, being very weary and fatigued.

Finally, just at dusk, they came upon a curious little house upon
wheels—a travelling show somewhat more pretentious than the Punch
performance they had run away from. This little house was mounted upon a
cart, with white dimity curtains at the windows and shutters of green
set in panels of bright red. Altogether it was a smart little
contrivance. Grazing in front of it were two comfortable-looking horses;
while at its open door sat a stout lady—evidently the proprietor—sipping
tea.

This lady, Mrs. Jarley by name, had seen Nell and her grandfather at the
races, so hailed them and asked about the success of the Punch show.
She was greatly astonished to learn that they had nothing to do with it,
and were wandering about without any object in view.

Her own performance was more "classic," as she expressed it.  It was a
Waxwork exhibition; and as she looked at Nell’s attractive face she was
seized with an idea.  This bright little girl was just the sort of
assistant she had been needing.  So she invited them to stop and have
some tea with her.  They did so; and when Mrs. Jarley presently unfolded
her plan—which was to engage Nell to exhibit the wax figures and
describe them in a set speech—Nell was delighted to accept the offer,
especially since it involved no separation from her grandfather, who
could dust the figures and do other light tasks.

It was really not a very hard position for Nell.  At the first town
where the Waxworks were to be shown, Nell was given a private view and
instructed in her new duties.  The figures were displayed on a raised
platform some two feet from the floor, running round the room and parted
from the rude public by a crimson rope breast high.  They represented
celebrated characters, singly and in groups, clad in glittering dresses
of various climes and times, and standing more or less unsteadily upon
their legs, with their eyes very wide open, and their nostrils very much
inflated, and the muscles of their legs and arms very strongly
developed, and all their countenances expressing great surprise.  All
the gentlemen were very pigeon-breasted and very blue about the beards,
and all the ladies were miraculous figures; and all the ladies and all
the gentlemen were looking with extraordinary earnestness at nothing at
all.

Nell was taught a little speech about each one of them, and so apt was
she that one rehearsal rendered her able to take the willow wand, which
Mrs. Jarley had formerly wielded, and tell the interesting history of
this very select Waxwork show to the audiences which presently began to
come.

Mrs. Jarley herself was delighted with her venture.  She saw at once
that Nell would be a strong drawing card.  And in order that the child
might remain contented she made her and her grandfather as comfortable
as possible, besides paying them a fair salary.

So the wanderers now rode in the van from town to town, and lived almost
happily.  Nell carefully saved all their money, and watched over her
feeble grandfather with the tenderness of a little mother.  She had one
scare in almost meeting face to face with Quilp, the dwarf, but he had
not recognized her.

Quilp, indeed, was a perpetual nightmare to the child, who was
constantly haunted by a vision of his ugly face and stunted figure.  She
slept, for their better security, in the room where the waxwork figures
were, and she never retired to this place at night but she tortured
herself—she could not help it—with imagining a resemblance, in some one
or other of their death-like faces, to the dwarf, and this fancy would
sometimes so gain upon her that she would almost believe he had removed
the figure and stood within the clothes.

But presently a deeper and more real concern came to her.  Her
grandfather had never alluded to their former life, nor to his passion
for gambling.  He did not see the card-tables out in the country; and
that was the reason why she had been so eager to wander, even without a
roof over their heads.  But now, as the Waxworks exhibited only in the
towns, temptation came again to the poor, weak old man.  He saw some men
playing cards in a tavern, and instantly his slumbering passion was
aroused.  He would play again and win a great fortune—for Nell!

He began to play, and, of course, with the old result.  He was but a
tool in the hands of the sharpers, and presently he had exhausted all
the slender hoard which Nell had so carefully made.  She watched his
actions with a bursting heart, but was powerless to stop him or keep the
money out of his grasp.  At last the villains who had led him on—not
satisfied with their small winnings from him—urged him to get the money
belonging to the Waxwork show, saying that when he won he could pay it
all back.

Nell had followed her grandfather upon this visit to the gamblers, and
overheard their plot. She knew there was but one thing to do, to save
her grandfather.  They must flee out into the world again at once.  That
night she roused him from his sleep, and told him they must go away.

"What does this mean?" he cried.

"I have had dreadful dreams," said the child. "If we stay here another
night something awful will happen.  Come!"

The old man looked at her as if she were a spirit, and trembled in every
joint.

"Must we go to-night?" he asked.

"Yes, to-night," she replied.  "To-morrow night will be too late.  The
dream will have come again.  Nothing but flight can save us.  Up!"

The old man rose obediently and made ready to follow.  She had already
packed their scanty belongings.  She gave him his wallet and staff, and
secretly, in the night, they fled away.

The wanderings of the next few days seemed like a nightmare to them.
Nell had brought only a few pennies in her pockets and these went for a
scant supply of bread and cheese. Two days and a night they rode on an
open canal-boat in company with some rough but not unkind men.  It was
easier than walking, but the rain descended in torrents and drenched
them to the skin.

Finally the boat drew up to a wharf in an ugly manufacturing town, and
the travellers were cast adrift as lonely and helpless as though they
had just awakened from a sleep of a thousand years.  They had not one
friend, nor the least idea where to turn for shelter.  But a rough
stoker at one of the furnaces told them that they might pass the night
in front of his fire.  It was nothing but a bed of ashes, yet they were
warm and the heat dried out the poor travellers’ drenched garments.

The child felt stiff and weak in every joint the next morning, but the
furnace-tender told them that it was two days’ journey to the open
country and sweet, pure fields, and she felt that they must press
forward at any cost.  So they started forth, slowly and wearily, for
their journey and privations had almost exhausted them, but still with
brave hearts.  Through long rows of red brick houses that looked exactly
alike they wended their way, asking for bread to eat only when obliged
to, and meeting little else but scowls from the dirty factory workers.

Finally, to their great joy, the open country began again to appear; and
with fresh courage in their hearts they continued to press on.

They were dragging themselves along through the last street, and the
child felt that the time was close at hand when her enfeebled powers
would bear no more; when there appeared before them, going in the same
direction as themselves, a traveller on foot, who, with a portmanteau
strapped to his back, leaned upon a stout stick as he walked, and read
from a book which he held in his other hand.

It was not an easy matter to come up with him, and beseech his aid, for
he walked fast, and was a little distance in advance.  At length he
stopped to look more attentively at some passage in his book.  Animated
with a ray of hope, the child shot on before her grandfather, and going
close to the stranger without rousing him by the sound of her footsteps,
began, in a few faint words, to implore his help.

He turned his head.  The child clapped her hands together, uttered a
wild shriek, and fell senseless at his feet.

                   *III.  AT THE END OF THE JOURNEY*

It was the poor schoolmaster.  Scarcely less moved and surprised by the
sight of the child than she had been on recognizing him, he stood, for a
moment, without even the presence of mind to raise her from the ground.

But quickly recovering his self-possession, he threw down his stick and
book, and dropping on one knee beside her, endeavored by such simple
means as occurred to him to restore her to herself; while her
grandfather, standing idly by, wrung his hands, and implored her with
many endearing expressions to speak to him, were it only a word.

"She is quite exhausted," said the schoolmaster, glancing upward into
his face.  "You have taxed her powers too far, friend."

"She is perishing of want," rejoined the old man.  "I never thought how
weak and ill she was till now."

Casting a look upon him, half reproachful and half compassionate, the
schoolmaster took the child in his arms, and, bidding the old man gather
up her little basket and follow him directly, bore her away at his
utmost speed.

There was a small inn within sight, to which, it would seem, he had been
directing his steps when so unexpectedly overtaken.  Towards this place
he hurried with his unconscious burden, and rushing into the kitchen
deposited it on a chair before the fire.

A doctor was hastily called in and restoratives were applied; after
which Nell was given what she most needed, some warm broth and toast,
and was put to bed.

The schoolmaster asked anxiously after her health the next morning, and
was greatly relieved to find that she was much better, though still so
weak that it would require a day’s careful nursing before she could
proceed upon her journey.  That evening he was allowed to see her, and
was greatly touched by the sight of her pale, pinched face.  But she
held out both hands to him.

"It makes me unhappy even in the midst of all this kindness," said the
child, "to think that we should be a burden upon you.  How can I ever
thank you?  If I had not met you so far from home, I must have died, and
poor grandfather would have no one to take care of him."

"We’ll not talk about dying," said the schoolmaster, "and as to burdens,
I have made my fortune since you slept at my cottage."

"Indeed!" cried the child, joyfully.

"Oh, yes," returned her friend.  "I have been appointed clerk and
schoolmaster to a village a long way from here—and a long way from the
old one as you may suppose—at five-and-thirty pounds[#] a year.
Five-and-thirty pounds!"

[#] About $175.

"I am very glad," said the child—"so very, very glad."

"I am on my way there now," resumed the schoolmaster.  "They allowed me
the stagecoach hire—outside stage-coach hire all the way.  Bless you,
they grudge me nothing. But as the time at which I am expected there
left me ample leisure, I determined to walk instead.  How glad I am to
think I did so!"

"How glad should we be!"

"Yes, yes," said the schoolmaster, moving restlessly in his chair,
"certainly, that’s very true.  But you—where are you going, where are
you coming from, what have you been doing since you left me, what had
you been doing before?  Now, tell me—do tell me.  I know very little of
the world, and perhaps you are better fitted to advise me in its affairs
than I am qualified to give advice to you; but I am very sincere, and I
have a reason (you have not forgotten it) for loving you.  I have felt
since that time as if my love for him who died had been transferred to
you."

Nell was moved in her turn by this allusion to the favorite pupil who
had died, and by the plain, frank kindness of the good schoolmaster. She
told him all—that they had no friend or relative—that she had fled with
the old man to save him from all the miseries he dreaded—that she was
flying now to save him from himself—and that she sought an asylum in
some quiet place, where the temptation before which he fell would never
enter, and her late sorrows and distresses could have no place.

The schoolmaster heard her with astonishment. "This child!" he thought;
"she is one of the heroines and saints of earth!"

Then he told her of a great idea which had occurred to him.  They were
all three to travel together to the village where his new school was
located, and he made no doubt he could find them some simple and
congenial employment.

The child joyfully accepted this; and the journey was made very
comfortably in a stage which went that way.  Stowed among the softer
bundles and packages she thought this to be a drowsy, luxurious way of
going, indeed.

At last they came upon a quiet, restful-looking hamlet clustered in a
valley among some stately trees.

"See—here’s the church!" cried the delighted schoolmaster, in a low
voice; "and that old building close beside it is the schoolhouse, I’ll
be sworn.  Five-and-thirty pounds a year in this beautiful place!"

They admired everything—the old gray porch, the green churchyard, the
ancient tower, the very weathercock; the brown thatched roofs of
cottage, barn, and homestead, peeping from among the trees; the stream
that rippled by the distant watermill; the blue Welsh mountains far
away.  It was for such a spot the child had wearied in the dense, dark,
miserable haunts of labor.  Upon her bed of ashes, and amidst the
squalid horrors through which they had forced their way, visions of such
scenes—beautiful indeed, but not more beautiful than this sweet
reality—had been always present to her mind.  They had seemed to melt
into a dim and airy distance, as the prospect of ever beholding them
again grew fainter; but, as they receded, she had loved and panted for
them more.

"I must leave you somewhere for a few minutes," said the schoolmaster,
at length breaking the silence into which they had fallen in their
gladness.  "I have a letter to present, and inquiries to make, you know.
Where shall I take you?  To the little inn yonder?"

"Let us wait here," rejoined Nell.  "The gate is open.  We will sit in
the church porch till you come back."

"A good place, too," said the schoolmaster, leading the way towards it.
"Be sure that I come back with good news, and am not long gone."

So the happy schoolmaster put on a brand-new pair of gloves which he had
carried in a little parcel in his pocket all the way, and hurried off,
full of ardor and excitement.

The child watched him from the porch until the intervening foliage hid
him from her view, and then stepped softly out into the old
churchyard—so solemn and quiet that every rustle of her dress upon the
fallen leaves, which strewed the path and made her footsteps noiseless,
seemed an invasion of its silence.  It was an aged, ghostly place; the
church had been built hundreds of years before; yet from this first
glimpse the child loved it and felt that in some strange way she was a
part of its crumbling walls and grass-grown churchyard.

After a time the schoolmaster reappeared, hurrying towards them and
swinging a bunch of keys.

"You see those two houses?" he asked, pointing, quite out of breath.
"Well, one of them is mine."

Without saying any more, or giving the child time to reply, the
schoolmaster took her hand, and, his honest face quite radiant with
exultation, led her to the place of which he spoke.

They stopped before its low, arched door. After trying several of the
keys in vain, the schoolmaster found one to fit the huge lock, which
turned back, creaking, and admitted them into the house.

It was a very old house, and, like the church, falling into decay, yet
still handsome with high vaulted ceilings and queer carvings.  It was
not quite destitute of furniture.  A few strange chairs, whose arms and
legs looked as though they had dwindled away with age; a table, the very
spectre of its race; a great old chest that had once held records in the
church, with other quaintly fashioned domestic necessaries, and store of
firewood for the winter, were scattered around, and gave evident tokens
of its occupation as a dwelling-place, at no very distant time.

The child looked around her, with that solemn feeling with which we
contemplate the work of ages that have become but drops of water in the
great ocean of eternity.  The old man had followed them, but they were
all three hushed for a space, and drew their breath softly, as if they
feared to break the silence, even by so slight a sound.

"It is a very beautiful place!" said the child, in a low voice.

"I almost feared you thought otherwise," returned the schoolmaster.
"You shivered when we first came in, as if you felt it cold or gloomy."

"It was not that," said Nell, glancing round with a slight shudder.
"Indeed, I cannot tell you what it was, but when I saw the outside, from
the church porch, the same feeling came over me.  It is its being so old
and gray, perhaps."

"A peaceful place to live in, don’t you think so?" said her friend.

"Oh, yes," rejoined the child, clasping her hands earnestly.  "A quiet,
happy place—a place to live and learn to die in!"

"A place to live, and learn to live, and gather health of mind and body
in," said the schoolmaster; "for this old house is yours."

"Ours!" cried the child.

"Aye," returned the schoolmaster, gaily, "for many a merry year to come,
I hope.  I shall be a close neighbor—only next door—but this house is
yours."

Having now disburdened himself of his great surprise, the schoolmaster
sat down, and drawing Nell to his side, told her how he had learned that
the ancient tenement had been occupied for a very long time by an old
person, who kept the keys of the church, opened and closed it for the
services, and showed it to strangers; how she had died not many weeks
ago, and nobody had yet been found to fill the office; how, learning all
this in an interview with the sexton, he had hurried to the clergyman
and obtained the vacant post for Nell and her grandfather.

"There’s a small allowance of money," said the schoolmaster.  "It is not
much, but still enough to live upon in this retired spot.  By clubbing
our funds together, we shall do bravely; no fear of that."

"Heaven bless and prosper you!" sobbed the child.

"Amen, my dear," returned her friend, cheerfully; "and all of us, as it
will, and has, in leading us through sorrow and trouble to this tranquil
life.  But we must look at my house now.  Come!"

They repaired to the other tenement; tried the rusty keys as before; at
length found the right one; and opened the worm-eaten door. It led into
a chamber, vaulted and old, like that from which they had come, but not
so spacious, and having only one other little room attached.  It was not
difficult to divine that the other house was of right the
schoolmaster’s, and that he had chosen for himself the least commodious,
in his care and regard for them. Like the adjoining habitation, it held
such old articles of furniture as were absolutely necessary, and had its
stack of firewood.

To make these dwellings as habitable and full of comfort as they could,
was now their pleasant care.  In a short time, each had its cheerful
fire glowing and crackling on the hearth, and reddening the pale old
walls with a hale and healthy blush.  Nell, busily plying her needle,
repaired the tattered window-hangings, drew together the rents that time
had worn in the threadbare scraps of carpet, and made them whole and
decent.  The schoolmaster swept and smoothed the ground before the door,
trimmed the long grass, trained the ivy and creeping plants, which hung
their drooping heads in melancholy neglect; and gave to the outer walls
a cheery air of home. The old man, sometimes by his side and sometimes
with the child, lent his aid to both, went here and there on little
patient services, and was happy.  Neighbors, too, as they came from
work, proffered their help; or sent their children with such small
presents or loans as the strangers needed most.  So it was not many days
before they were quite cosy; and Nell felt again, in that strange way
which had come over her at the church, that she had always been a part
of the place.

And how she loved her work from the very first!  Hour after hour she
would spend in the old church, dusting off its pews or casements with
reverent fingers, or more often, sitting quietly before some tablet or
inscription looking at it or beyond it, with a dreamy light in her eyes.

Her grandfather noted her attitude anxiously. He saw that she grew more
listless and frail, day by day, and he sought constantly—poor old
man!—to lighten her few tasks.  But it was not these which wearied her;
it was merely the burden of all things earthly.

Every person in the village soon grew to love this frail,
spiritual-looking child; but from the first she seemed a being apart
from them. They were constantly showing her kindness, or pausing at the
church gate to speak with her; but as they went their way, a sad smile
or shake of the head told only too plainly of their fears.  She was like
some rare, delicate flower which, they knew, could not endure the frost
of winter.

The good schoolmaster gently chided her for spending so much of her time
in the church and among the graves, instead of out in the light and
sunshine.  But she only smiled and said she loved to tend the graves and
keep them neat, for she could not bear to think that any lying there
should be forgotten, or that she herself might be forgotten some day.

"There is nothing good that is forgotten," he replied kindly.  "There is
not an angel added to the host of Heaven but does its blessed work on
earth in those that loved it here."

As the cold days of autumn and winter drew on, the child spent more and
more time within doors, on a couch before the fire.  The slightest task
wearied her now, and her grandfather kept watch night and day to save
her needless steps. He could scarcely bear her out of his sight; and
often would creep to the side of her couch during the night, listening
to her breathing or stroking her slender fingers softly.  And if by
chance she awoke and smiled on him, he would creep back to his own bed
comforted.

But one chill morning in midwinter, when the snow lay thickly on the
ground, it seemed to him that she slept more quietly than usual. The
schoolmaster, coming in, found him crouched over a fire, muttering
softly to himself, and wondering why she slumbered so long.  The two
went softly into her chamber, and then the schoolmaster knew why she was
so quiet.

For she was dead.  Dear, gentle, patient, noble Nell was dead.  No sleep
so beautiful and calm, so free from trace of pain, so fair to look upon.
She seemed a creature fresh from the hand of God, and waiting the breath
of life; not one who had lived and suffered death.

The old man held one languid arm in his, and had the small hand tight
folded to his breast, for warmth.  It was the hand she had stretched out
to him with her last smile—the hand that had led him on, through all
their wanderings.  Ever and anon he pressed it to his lips, then hugged
it to his breast again, murmuring that it was warmer now; and, as he
said it, he looked in agony to the schoolmaster, as if imploring him to
help her.

She was dead, and past all help, or need of it.  The ancient rooms she
had seemed to fill with life, even while her own was waning fast; the
garden she had tended; the eyes she had gladdened; the noiseless haunts
of many a thoughtful hour; the paths she had trodden as it were but
yesterday—could know her nevermore.

"It is not," said the schoolmaster, as he bent down to kiss her on the
cheek, and gave his tears free vent, "it is not on earth that Heaven’s
justice ends.  Think what earth is, compared with the world to which her
young spirit has winged its early flight, and say, if one deliberate
wish expressed in solemn terms above this bed could call her back to
life, which of us would utter it!"

The whole village, young and old, came to the churchyard when they laid
her to rest—save only the old man.  He could not realize that she was
dead, and he had gone to pick winter berries to decorate her couch.

When he returned and could not find her, they were obliged to tell him
the truth—that her body had been put away in the cold earth—and then his
grief and distress were pitiful to see.  He seemed at once to lose all
power of thought or action, save as they concerned her alone.

Day by day he sought for her about the house or in the garden, calling
her name wildly.  At other times he sat before the fire staring dully,
and did not seem to hear when they spoke to him.

At length, they found, one day, that he had risen early, and, with his
knapsack on his back, his staff in hand, her own straw hat, and little
basket full of such things as she had been used to carry, was gone.  As
they were making ready to pursue him far and wide, a frightened
schoolboy came who had seen him, but a moment before, sitting in the
church—upon her grave, he said.

They hastened there, and going softly to the door, espied him in the
attitude of one who waited patiently.  They did not disturb him then,
but kept a watch upon him all that day. When it grew quite dark, he rose
and returned home, and went to bed, murmuring to himself, "She will come
to-morrow!"

Upon the morrow he was there again from sunrise until night; and still
at night he laid him down to rest, and murmured, "She will come
to-morrow!"

And thenceforth, every day, and all day long, he waited at her grave for
her.  How many pictures of new journeys over pleasant country, of
resting-places under the free broad sky, of rambles in the fields and
woods, and paths not often trodden; how many tones of that one
well-remembered voice; how many glimpses of the form, the fluttering
dress, the hair that waved so gaily in the wind; how many visions of
what had been, and what he hoped was yet to be—rose up before him, in
the old, dull, silent church!  He never told them what he thought, or
where he went.  He would sit with them at night, pondering with a secret
satisfaction, they could see, upon the flight that he and she would take
before night came again; and still they would hear him whisper in his
prayers, "Lord!  Let her come to-morrow!"

The last time was on a genial day in spring. He did not return at the
usual hour, and they went to seek him.  He was lying dead upon the
stone.

They laid him by the side of her whom he had loved so well; and, in the
church where they had often prayed and mused and lingered hand in hand,
the child and the old man slept together.

                *THE STORY OF PAUL AND FLORENCE DOMBEY*

                   *I.  THE HOUSE OF DOMBEY AND SON*

Paul Dombey was a boy born to achieve great things.  His birth was the
one historic event of the Dombey household—at least, so his father said.
’T is true that Paul’s sister Florence was six years older than he, but
then Florence was only a girl.  What Mr. Dombey had long wanted was a
son who could grow up to carry on the business of the great export
house, and who from his birth would make possible the imposing title of
Dombey and Son.

So Florence, who had remained quietly neglected in her nursery, now came
into notice only as the sister of Paul, or as a faithful little nurse
who could help amuse him.

As for Mr. Dombey himself, he was a cold, haughty man, very proud of
what he had done, and at all times exacting obedience from every one
else.  Paul’s mother had died soon after he was born; and Mr. Dombey
having engaged the best nurses he could find, expected them forthwith to
bring the child through all the round of infant ailments—of which the
frail little fellow had more than his full share. Indeed, Mr. Dombey
loved his son with all the love he had.  If there were a warm place in
his frosty heart, his son occupied it; though not so much as an infant
or a boy, as a prospective man—the "Son" of the firm. Therefore he was
impatient to have him grow up; feeling as if the boy had a charmed life,
and must become the man around whom all his hopes centred.

Thus Paul grew to be nearly five years old. He was a pretty little
fellow, though there was something wan and wistful in his small face,
that gave occasion to many significant shakes of his nurse’s head.  His
temper gave abundant promise of being imperious, like his father’s, in
after life.  He was childish and sportive enough at times; but he had a
strange, old-fashioned, thoughtful way at other times of sitting
brooding in his miniature arm-chair, when he looked and talked like one
of those terrible little beings in the fairy tales, who, at a hundred
and fifty or two hundred years of age, fantastically represent the
children for whom they have been substituted.  He would frequently be
stricken with this mood upstairs in the nursery, and would sometimes
lapse into it suddenly, exclaiming that he was tired, even while playing
with Florence, or driving his nurse in single harness.  But at no one
time did he fall into it so surely, as when, his little chair being
carried down into his father’s room, he sat there with him after dinner
by the fire. They were the strangest pair at such a time that ever
firelight shone upon.  Mr. Dombey, so erect and solemn, gazing at the
blaze; his little image, with an old, old face, peering into the red
perspective with the fixed and rapt attention of a sage; the two so very
much alike, and yet so monstrously contrasted.

On one of these occasions, when they had both been perfectly quiet for a
long time, little Paul broke the silence thus:—

"Papa! what’s money?"

The abrupt question had such immediate reference to the subject of Mr.
Dombey’s thoughts, that Mr. Dombey was quite disconcerted.

"What is money, Paul?" he answered.  "Money?"

"Yes," said the child, laying his hands upon the elbows of his little
chair, and turning the old face up towards Mr. Dombey’s, "what is
money?"

Mr. Dombey was in a difficulty.  He would have liked to give him some
grown-up explanation; but looking down at the little chair, and seeing
what a long way down it was, he answered: "Gold, and silver, and copper.
Guineas, shillings, halfpence.  You know what they are?"

"Oh, yes, I know what they are," said Paul. "I don’t mean that, papa.  I
mean what’s money, after all."

"What is money, after all?" said Mr. Dombey, backing his chair a little,
that he might the better gaze at the atom that made such an inquiry.

"I mean, papa, what can it do?" returned Paul.

Mr. Dombey drew his chair back to its former place, and patted him on
the head. "You’ll know better, by and by, my man," he said.  "Money,
Paul, can do anything."

"Anything, papa?"

"Yes.  Anything—almost," said Mr. Dombey.

"Anything means everything, don’t it, papa?" asked his son, not
observing, or possibly not understanding the qualification.

"Yes," said Mr. Dombey.

"Why didn’t money save me my mamma?" returned the child.  "It isn’t
cruel, is it?"

"Cruel!" said Mr. Dombey, settling his neckcloth, and seeming to resent
the idea. "No.  A good thing can’t be cruel."

"If it’s a good thing, and can do anything," said the little fellow
thoughtfully, as he looked back at the fire, "I wonder why it didn’t
save me my mamma."

Mr. Dombey having recovered from his surprise, not to say his alarm (for
it was the very first occasion on which the child had ever broached the
subject of his mother to him), expounded to him how that money, though a
very potent spirit, could not keep people alive whose time was come to
die; and how that we must all die, unfortunately, even in the city,
though we were never so rich.

Paul listened to all this and much more with grave attention, and then
suddenly asked a question which was still more alarming.

"It can’t make me strong and quite well, either, papa, can it?"

"Why, you _are_ strong and quite well," returned Mr. Dombey.  "Are you
not?"

Oh! the age of the face that was turned up again, with an expression,
half of melancholy, half of slyness on it!

"You are as strong and well as such little people usually are, eh?" said
Mr. Dombey.

"Florence is older than I am, but I’m not as strong and well as
Florence, I know," returned the child; "but I believe that when Florence
was as little as me, she could play a great deal longer at a time
without tiring herself.  I am so tired sometimes that I don’t know what
to do."

"But that’s at night," said Mr. Dombey, drawing his own chair closer to
his son’s, and laying his hand gently on his back; "little people should
be tired at night, for then they sleep well."

"Oh, it’s not at night, papa," returned the child, "it’s in the day; and
I lie down in Florence’s lap, and she sings to me.  At night I dream
about such cu-ri-ous things!"

Mr. Dombey was so astonished, and so perfectly at a loss how to pursue
the conversation, that he could only sit looking at his son by the light
of the fire.

Here they sat until Florence came timidly into the room to take Paul
upstairs to bed; when he raised towards his father, in bidding him
good-night, a countenance so much brighter, so much younger, and so much
more childlike altogether, that Mr. Dombey, while he felt greatly
reassured by the change, was quite amazed at it.

After they had left the room together, he thought he heard a soft voice
singing; and remembering that Paul had said his sister sang to him, he
had the curiosity to open the door and listen, and look after them.  She
was toiling up the great, wide staircase, with him in her arms; his head
was lying on her shoulder, one of his arms thrown negligently round her
neck.  So they went, toiling up; she singing all the way, and Paul
sometimes crooning out a feeble accompaniment.

Mr. Dombey was so alarmed about Paul’s remarks as to his health, that he
called the family doctor in consultation the very next day.  The doctor
admitted that Paul was not as strong as he could hope, and suggested
that sea air might benefit him.  So the boy was sent to the home of a
Mrs. Pipchin at Brighton. But he refused to go without Florence, much to
the secret displeasure of Mr. Dombey, who did not like to see any
one—especially this neglected daughter—gain more influence with Paul
than he himself had.

Mrs. Pipchin was a cross-grained old lady who gained a livelihood by
taking care of delicate children.  But she was not unkind to Paul, whose
patient little face and strange way of asking questions attracted her,
as they did everybody else.

When he had been with her for some time and it was found that he did not
gain in strength, a little carriage was hired for him, in which he could
lie at his ease with his books and be wheeled down to the seaside.

Consistent in his odd tastes, the child set aside a ruddy-faced lad who
was proposed as the drawer of this carriage, and selected, instead, the
boy’s grandfather—a weazen, old, crab-faced man, in a suit of battered
oilskin.  With this attendant to pull him along, and Florence always
walking by his side, he went down to the margin of the ocean every day;
and there he would sit or lie in his carriage for hours together; never
so distressed as by the company of children—Florence alone excepted,
always.

Some small voice, near his ear, would ask him how he was, perhaps.

"I am very well, I thank you," he would answer.  "But you had better go
and play, if you please."

Then he would turn his head, and watch the child away, and say to
Florence, "We don’t want any others, do we?  Kiss me, Floy."

His favorite spot was quite a lonely one, far away from most loungers;
and with Florence sitting by his side at work, or reading to him, or
talking to him, and the wind blowing on his face, and the water coming
up among the wheels of his bed, he wanted nothing more.

"Floy," he said one day, "where’s India?"

"Oh, it’s a long, long distance off," said Florence, raising her eyes
from her work.

"Weeks off?" asked Paul.

"Yes, dear.  Many weeks’ journey, night and day."

"If you were in India, Floy," said Paul, after being silent for a
minute.  "I should—what is it that mamma did?  I forget."

"Loved me?" answered Florence.

"No, no.  Don’t I love you now, Floy? What is it?—Died.  If you were in
India, I should die, Floy."

She hurriedly put her work aside, and laid her head down on his pillow,
caressing him. And so would she, she said, if he were there. He would be
better soon.

"Oh!  I am a great deal better now!" he answered.  "I don’t mean that.
I mean that I should die of being so sorry and so lonely, Floy!"

Another time, in the same place, he fell asleep, and slept quietly for a
long time. Awaking suddenly, he started up, and sat listening.

Florence asked him what he thought he heard.

"I want to know what it says," he answered, looking steadily in her
face.  "The sea, Floy; what is it that it keeps on saying?"

She told him that it was only the noise of the rolling waves.

"Yes, yes," he said.  "But I know that they are always saying something.
Always the same thing.  What place is over there?"  He rose up, looking
eagerly at the horizon.

She told him that there was another country opposite, but he said he
didn’t mean that; he meant farther away—farther away.

Very often afterwards, in the midst of their talk, he would break off to
try to understand what it was that the waves were always saying; and
would rise up in his couch to look towards that invisible region far
away.

But in spite of Paul’s brooding fancies, the days in the open air, and
with the salt spray blowing about him, began to have good effect. Little
by little he grew stronger until he became able to do without his
carriage; though he still remained the same old, quiet, dreamy child.

One day after he had been with Mrs. Pipchin about a year, Mr. Dombey
came to see her. He informed Mrs. Pipchin that, as Paul was now six
years old and so much stronger, it was time his education was being
considered; and so the child was to be sent to a certain Dr. Blimber,
who lived near by and managed a select school of boys.  Meanwhile,
Florence could continue to live here, so that Paul need not be entirely
separated from his sister.

Accordingly, a few days later, Paul stood upon the Doctor’s doorsteps,
with his small right hand in his father’s, and his other locked in that
of Florence.  How tight the tiny pressure of that one, and how loose and
cold the other!

The doctor was sitting in his portentous study, with a globe at each
knee, books all round him, Homer over the door, and Minerva on the
mantel-shelf.

"And how do you do, sir," he said to Mr. Dombey, when they had been
ushered in, "and how is my little friend?"

Grave as an organ was the doctor’s speech; and when he ceased, the great
clock in the hall seemed (to Paul at least) to take him up, and to go on
saying, "how-is-my-lit-tle-friend-how-is-my-lit-tle-friend," over and
over and over again.

The little friend being something too small to be seen at all from where
the doctor sat, over the books on his table, the doctor made several
futile attempts to get a view of him round the legs; which Mr. Dombey
perceiving, relieved the doctor from his embarrassment by taking Paul up
in his arms and sitting him on another little table, over against the
doctor, in the middle of the room.

"Ha!" said the doctor, leaning back in his chair with his hand in his
breast.  "Now I see my little friend.  How do you do, my little friend?"

The clock in the hall wouldn’t subscribe to this alteration in the form
of words, but continued to repeat
"how-is-my—lit-tle-friend—how-is-my-lit-tle-friend!"

"Very well, I thank you, sir," returned Paul, answering the clock quite
as much as the doctor.

"Ha!" said Doctor Blimber.  "Shall we make a man of him?"

"Do you hear, Paul?" added Mr. Dombey, Paul being silent.

"Shall we make a man of him?" repeated the doctor.

"I had rather be a child," replied Paul.

"Indeed!" said the doctor.  "Why?"

The child sat on the table looking at him, with a curious expression of
suppressed emotion in his face, and beating one hand proudly on his knee
as if he had the rising tears beneath it, and crushed them.  But his
other hand strayed a little way the while, a little farther—farther from
him yet—until it lighted on the neck of Florence.  "This is why," it
seemed to say, and then the steady look was broken up and gone, the
working lip was loosened and the tears came streaming forth.

"Never mind," said the doctor, blandly nodding his head.  "Ne-ver mind;
we shall substitute new cares and new impressions, Mr. Dombey, very
shortly.  You would wish my little friend to acquire—"

"Everything, if you please, doctor," returned Mr. Dombey, firmly.

"Yes," said the doctor, who, with his half-shut eyes, and his usual
smile, seemed to survey Paul with the sort of interest that might attach
to some choice little animal he was going to stuff.  "Yes, exactly.  Ha!
We shall impart a great variety of information to our little friend, and
bring him quickly forward, I dare say.  I dare say."

As soon as Mr. Dombey and Florence were gone, Dr. Blimber gave into the
charge of his learned daughter Cornelia the little new pupil, saying,
"Bring him on, Cornelia, bring him on."

Miss Blimber received her young ward from the doctor’s hands; and Paul,
feeling that the spectacles were surveying him, cast down his eyes.

"How old are you, Dombey?" said Miss Blimber.

"Six," answered Paul, wondering, as he stole a glance at the young lady,
why her hair didn’t grow long like Florence’s, and why she was like a
boy.

"How much do you know of your Latin Grammar, Dombey?" said Miss Blimber.

"None of it," answered Paul.  Feeling that the answer was a shock to
Miss Blimber’s sensibility, he looked up and added timidly,—

"I haven’t been well.  I have been a weak child.  I couldn’t learn a
Latin Grammar when I was out, every day, with old Glubb.  I wish you’d
tell old Glubb to come and see me, if you please."

"What a dreadfully low name!" said Miss Blimber.  "Unclassical to a
degree!  Who is the monster, child?"

"What monster?" inquired Paul.

"Glubb."

"He’s no more a monster than you are," returned Paul.

"What!" cried the doctor, in a terrible voice. "What’s that?"

Paul was dreadfully frightened; but still he made a stand for the absent
Glubb, though he did it trembling.

"He’s a very nice old man, ma’am," he said. "He used to pull my carriage
for me, down along the beach.  I wish you’d let him come to see me.  He
knows lots of things."

"Ha!" said the doctor, shaking his head; "this is bad, but study will do
much."

Mrs. Blimber opined, with something like a shiver, that he was an
unaccountable child; and, allowing for the difference of visage, looked
at him pretty much as Mrs. Pipchin had been used to do.

As for Miss Blimber, she told him to come down to her room that evening
at tea-time. When he did so he noticed a little pile of new books, which
she was glancing over.

"These are yours, Dombey," she said.

"All of ’em, ma’am?" said Paul.

"Yes," returned Miss Blimber; "and Mr. Feeder will look you out some
more very soon, if you are as studious as I expect you will be, Dombey."

"Thank you, ma’am," said Paul.

"I am going out for a constitutional," resumed Miss Blimber; "and while
I am gone, that is to say, in the interval between this and breakfast,
Dombey, I wish you to read over what I have marked in these books, and
to tell me if you quite understand what you have got to learn.  Don’t
lose time, Dombey, for you have none to spare, but take them downstairs,
and begin directly."

"Yes, ma’am," answered Paul.

There were so many of them that although Paul put one hand under the
bottom book and his other hand and his chin on the top book, and hugged
them all closely, the middle book slipped out before he reached the
door, and then they all tumbled down on the floor.  Miss Blimber said,
"Oh, Dombey, Dombey, this is really very careless!" and piled them up
afresh for him; and this time, by dint of balancing them with great
nicety, Paul got out of the room.

But if the poor child found them heavy to carry downstairs, how much
harder was it to cram their contents into his head.  Oh, how tired he
grew!  But always there was a never-ending round of lessons waiting for
him during these long days and nights that Dr. Blimber and Cornelia
tried to make a man of him. And all week long his aching head held but
one longing desire—for Saturday to come.

Oh, Saturdays!  Oh, happy Saturdays! when Florence always came at noon,
and never would, in any weather, stay away.

And when Florence found how hard Paul’s studies were for him, she
quietly bought books just like his and studied them during the week, so
that she might keep along with him and help him when they were together.

Not a word of this was breathed to Mrs. Pipchin; but many a night when
she was in bed and the candles were spluttering and burning low,
Florence tried so hard to be a substitute for one small Dombey, that her
fortitude and perseverance might have almost won her a free right to
bear the name herself.

And high was her reward, when, one Saturday evening, as little Paul was
sitting down as usual to "resume his studies," she sat down by his side,
and showed him all that was so rough made smooth, and all that was so
dark made clear and plain before him.  It was nothing but a startled
look in Paul’s wan face—a flush—a smile—and then a close embrace—but God
knows how her heart leaped up at this rich payment for her trouble.

"Oh, Floy!" cried her brother, "how I love you!  How I love you, Floy!"

"And I you, dear!"

"Oh!  I am sure of that, Floy."

And so little Paul struggled on bravely under his heavy load, never
complaining, but growing more old-fashioned day by day—and growing
frailer, too.

[Illustration: MRS. PIPCHIN AND PAUL DOMBEY.]

Then came the holidays, and a grand party at the school, to which
Florence came, looking so beautiful in her simple ball dress that Paul
could hardly make up his mind to let her go again.

"But what is the matter, Floy?" he asked, almost sure he saw a tear on
her face.

"Nothing, dear.  We will go home together, and I’ll nurse you till you
are strong again."

"Nurse me!" echoed Paul.

Paul couldn’t understand what that had to do with it, nor why the other
guests looked on so seriously, nor why Florence turned away her face for
a moment, and then turned it back, lighted up again with smiles.

"Floy," said Paul, holding a ringlet of her dark hair in his hand.
"Tell me, dear.  Do _you_ think I have grown old-fashioned?"

His sister laughed and fondled him, and told him "No."

"Because I know they say so," returned Paul, "and I want to know what
they mean, Floy."

Florence would have sat by him all night, and would not have danced at
all of her own accord, but Paul made her, by telling her how much it
pleased him.  And he told her the truth, too; for his small heart
swelled, and his face glowed, when he saw how much they all admired her,
and how she was the beautiful little rosebud of the room.

Then after the party came the leave-takings, for Paul was going home.
And every one was good to him—even the pompous doctor, and Cornelia—and
bade him good-bye with many regrets; for they were afraid, as they
looked upon his pinched, wan face, that he would not be able to come
back and take up that load of heavy books ever again.

There was a great deal, the next day and afterwards, which Paul could
not quite get clear in his mind.  As, why they stopped at Mrs. Pipchin’s
for a while instead of going straight home; why he lay in bed, with
Florence sitting by him; whether that had been his father in the room,
or only a tall shadow on the wall.

He could not even remember whether he had often said to Florence, "Oh,
Floy, take me home and never leave me!" but he thought he had.  He
fancied sometimes he had heard himself repeating, "Take me home, Floy!
take me home!"

But he could remember, when he got home, and was carried up the
well-remembered stairs, that there had been the rumbling of a coach for
many hours together, while he lay upon the seat, with Florence still
beside him, and Mrs. Pipchin sitting opposite.  He remembered his old
bed too, when they laid him down in it; but there was something else,
and recent, too, that still perplexed him.

"I want to speak to Florence, if you please," he said.  "To Florence by
herself, for a moment!"

She bent down over him, and the others stood away.

"Floy, my pet, wasn’t that papa in the hall, when they brought me from
the coach?"

"Yes, dear."

"He didn’t cry, and go into his room, Floy, did he, when he saw me
coming in?"

Florence shook her head, and pressed her lips against his cheek.

"I’m very glad he didn’t cry," said little Paul.  "I thought he did.
Don’t tell them that I asked."

Paul never rose from his little bed.  He lay there, listening to the
noises in the street quite tranquilly; not caring much how time went,
but watching everything about him with observing eyes.  And when
visitors or servants came softly to the door to inquire how he was, he
always answered for himself, "I am better; I am a great deal better,
thank you!  Tell papa so!"

And sometimes when he awoke out of a feverish dream, in which he thought
a river was bearing him away, he would see a figure seated motionless,
with bowed head, at the foot of his couch.  Then he would stretch out
his hands and cry, "Don’t be so sorry for me, dear papa!  Indeed, I am
quite happy!"

His father coming, and bending down to him—which he did quickly, and
without first pausing by the bedside—Paul held him round the neck, and
repeated those words to him several times, and very earnestly; and Paul
never saw him in his room at any time, whether it were day or night, but
he called out "Don’t be so sorry for me!  Indeed, I am quite happy!"
This was the beginning of his always saying in the morning that he was a
great deal better, and that they were to tell his father so.

Then one day he asked to see all his friends, and shook hands with each
one quietly, and bade them good-bye.  His father he clung to as though
he felt more deeply for that proud man’s sorrow and disappointment, than
any unhappiness on his own account.  For he was going to his
mother—about whom he had often talked with Florence in these closing
days.

"Now lay me down," he said, "and Floy, come close to me, and let me see
you!"

Sister and brother wound their arms around each other, and the golden
light came streaming in, and fell upon them, locked together.

"How fast the river runs, between its green banks and the rushes, Floy!
But it’s very near the sea.  I hear the waves!  They always said so!"

Presently he told her that the motion of the boat upon the stream was
lulling him to rest. How green the banks were now, how bright the
flowers growing on them, and how tall the rushes!  Now the boat was out
at sea, but gliding smoothly on.  And now there was a shore before him.
Who stood on the bank!—

He put his hands together, as he had been used to do at his prayers.  He
did not remove his arms to do it; but they saw him fold them so, behind
her neck.

"Mamma is like you, Floy.  I know her by the face.  But tell them that
the print upon the stairs at school is not divine enough.  The light
about the head is shining on me as I go!"

The golden ripple on the wall came back again, and nothing else stirred
in the room. The old, old fashion!  The fashion that came in with our
first garments, and will last unchanged until our race has run its
course, and the wide firmament is rolled up like a scroll. The old, old
fashion—Death!

Oh, thank God, all who see it, for that older fashion yet, of
Immortality!  And look upon us, angels of young children, with regards
not quite estranged, when the swift river bears us to the ocean!

     II.                *HOW FLORENCE CAME INTO HER OWN*

The death of Paul, far from softening Mr. Dombey’s heart toward his
daughter, only served to widen the gap between them.  He had been
secretly hurt by Paul’s preference for Florence, and now was more cold
and distant with her than ever.

She, poor child, had this deep sorrow to bear in addition to the loss of
Paul.  Many and many a night when no one in the house was stirring, and
the lights were all extinguished, she would softly leave her own room,
and with noiseless feet descend the staircase, and approach her father’s
door.  Against it, scarcely breathing, she would rest her face and head,
and press her lips, in the yearning of her love. She crouched upon the
cold stone floor outside it, every night, to listen even for his breath;
and in her one absorbing wish to be allowed to show him some affection,
to be a consolation to him, to win him over to some tenderness for her,
his solitary child, she would have knelt down at his feet, if she had
dared, in humble supplication.

No one knew it.  No one thought of it.  The door was ever closed, and he
shut up within. He went out once or twice, and it was said in the house
that he was very soon going on a journey; but he lived in those rooms,
and lived alone, and never saw her or inquired for her. Perhaps he did
not even know that she was in the house.

But one night Florence found the door slightly ajar.  She paused a
moment tremblingly, and then pushed it open and entered.

Her father sat at his old table in the middle room.  He had been
arranging some papers and destroying others, and the latter lay in
fragile ruins before him.  The rain dripped heavily upon the glass panes
in the outer room, where he had so often watched poor Paul, a baby; and
the low complainings of the wind were heard without.

He sat with his eyes fixed on the table, so immersed in thought that a
far heavier tread than the light foot of his child could make, might
have failed to rouse him.  His face was turned towards her.  By the
waning lamp, and at that haggard hour, it looked worn and dejected; and
in the utter loneliness surrounding him there was an appeal to Florence
that struck home.

"Papa! papa!  Speak to me, dear papa!"

He started at her voice.

"What is the matter?" he said sternly. "Why do you come here?  What has
frightened you?"

If anything had frightened her, it was the face he turned upon her.  The
glowing love within the breast of his young daughter froze before it,
and she stood and looked at him as if stricken into stone.  There was
not one touch of tenderness or pity in it.

Did he see before him the successful rival of his son, in health and
life?  Did he look upon his own successful rival in that son’s
affection? Did a mad jealousy and withered pride poison sweet
remembrances that should have endeared and made her precious to him?
Could it be possible that it was gall to him to look upon her in her
beauty and her promise: thinking of his infant boy!

Florence had no such thoughts.  But love is quick to know when it is
spurned and hopeless; and hope died out of hers, as she stood looking in
her father’s face.

"I ask you, Florence, are you frightened? Is there anything the matter,
that you come here?"

"I came, papa—"

"Against my wishes.  Why?"

She saw he knew why—it was written broadly on his face—and dropped her
head upon her hands with one prolonged low cry.

He took her by the arm.  His hand was cold and loose, and scarcely
closed upon her.

"You are tired, I dare say," he said, taking up the light and leading
her towards the door, "and want rest.  We all want rest.  Go, Florence.
You have been dreaming."

The dream she had had was over then, God help her!  and she felt that it
could never more come back.

"I will remain here to light you up the stairs.  The whole house is
yours, above there," said her father, slowly.  "You are its mistress
now.  Good-night!"

Still covering her face, she sobbed, and answered "Good-night, dear
papa," and silently ascended.  Once she looked back as if she would have
returned to him, but for fear.  It was a momentary thought, too hopeless
to encourage; and her father stood therewith the light—hard,
unresponsive, motionless—until her fluttering dress was lost in the
darkness.

The days that followed were lonely and sad indeed for the child.  Her
father went away upon a journey, and she was left entirely alone in the
great house, but for the companionship of a faithful maid, Susan Nipper,
and of her dog Diogenes.

Then some kind friends in the country took pity upon her loneliness and
invited her to visit them.

When she came home she was amazed to find huge scaffolds built all
around the house. It was being remodelled.  Only her own little room had
not been changed.  The explanation for all this work came a few days
later when her father came home accompanied by two ladies.  One was old
and greatly overdressed. The other—her daughter—was very beautiful, but
with a cold, hard face.

"Mrs. Skewton," said her father, turning to the first, and holding out
his hand, "this is my daughter Florence."

"Charming, I am sure," observed the lady, putting up her glass.  "So
natural!  My darling Florence, you must kiss me, if you please."

Florence having done so, turned towards the other lady by whom her
father stood waiting.

"Edith," said Mr. Dombey, "this is my daughter Florence.  Florence, this
lady will soon be your mamma."

Florence started, and looked up at the beautiful face in a conflict of
emotions, among which the tears that name awakened struggled for a
moment with surprise, interest, admiration, and an indefinable sort of
fear.  Then she cried out, "Oh, papa, may you be happy! may you be very,
very happy all your life!" and then fell weeping on the lady’s bosom.

There was a short silence.  The beautiful lady, who at first had seemed
to hesitate whether or not she should advance to Florence, held her to
her breast, and pressed the hand with which she clasped her close about
her waist, as if to reassure and comfort her.  Not one word passed the
lady’s lips.  She bent her head down over Florence, and she kissed her
on the cheek, but said no word.

"Shall we go on through the rooms," said Mr. Dombey, "and see how our
workmen are doing?  Pray allow me, my dear madam."

He said this in offering his arm to Mrs. Skewton, and they turned and
went up the staircase.  The beautiful lady lingered a moment to whisper
to the little girl.

"Florence," said the lady hurriedly, and looking into her face with
great earnestness, "You will not begin by hating me?"

"By hating you, mamma!" cried Florence, winding her arm round her neck,
and returning the look.

"Hush!  Begin by thinking well of me," said the beautiful lady.  "Begin
by believing that I will try to make you happy and that I am prepared to
love you, Florence."

Again she pressed her to her breast—she had spoken in a rapid manner,
but firmly—and Florence saw her rejoin them in the other room.

And now Florence began to hope that she would learn from her new and
beautiful mamma how to gain her father’s love; and in her sleep that
night, in her lost old home, her own mamma smiled radiantly upon the
hope, and blessed it.  Dreaming Florence!

Very soon after this her new mamma came to live with them; and the
gloomy house took on some semblance of life.  But the marriage was not a
happy one.  Even Florence could see that.  Mrs. Dombey’s face did not
belie her character.  She was haughty and reserved—a fitting match for
Mr. Dombey.  He had married her out of a desire to have a suitable
ornament for his home and position in society.  She—it was whispered—had
been lured into a "fine" marriage by her matchmaking mother.  It was no
wonder, then, that the marriage should be unhappy.

Only toward Florence did the proud lady unbend.  The child’s impulsive
greeting had stirred her heart in a sudden and surprising way; and when
Mrs. Dombey saw how lonely she was and how her life had been starved,
she tried to make good her promise to the child to love her and be good
to her always.

But once again poor Florence was misunderstood by her father.  He saw
that his cold wife cared only for the child, and he thought that just as
Florence had cheated him out of some of Paul’s love she was now
estranging his wife from him.  It was cruelly unjust, but Mr. Dombey was
so arrogant that he could see things only in his own narrow way.

Thus matters went along in this unhappy house for several months.  Mr.
and Mrs. Dombey met rarely, except at the table or in some social
gathering, when the words which passed between them were of the coldest.

Then Mr. Dombey hit upon the meanest trick of his weak nature.  When he
found that he could not "humble" his wife by ordinary means, he called
in his business manager, Carker, a smooth, deceitful man, whose hair was
plastered down close to his white forehead and whose teeth shone in a
continual sly smile. To Carker Mr. Dombey would entrust various messages
for Mrs. Dombey, as to the running of the house, the hiring of servants,
and the like.  Mr. Dombey knew that she would resent such petty
interference, especially through an outsider; but he did not know that
she submitted quietly to these indignities simply for the sake of
Florence, whom she wished to protect.  And even her love for the girl
was given in secret, for the same reason.

Florence, long since awakened from her dream, mournfully observed the
estrangement between her father and new mother; and saw it widen more
and more, and knew that there was greater bitterness between them every
day. It had been very hard to have all her love repulsed, but it now
seemed harder to be compelled to doubt her father, or choose between him
and this mother, so affectionate and dear to her, yet whose other moods
she could only witness with distrust or fear.

One great sorrow, however, was spared her. She never had the least
suspicion that Mrs. Dombey, by her tenderness for her, widened the
separation from her father, or gave him new cause of dislike.  If she
had thought it, for a single moment, what grief she would have felt,
what sacrifice she would have tried to make, poor loving girl!

No word was ever spoken between Florence and her mother now, on these
subjects. Mrs. Dombey had said there ought to be between them, in that
wise, a silence like the grave itself; and Florence felt that she was
right.

In this state of affairs her father was brought home suffering and ill,
and gloomily retired to his own rooms, where he was tended by servants,
not approached by his wife, and had no friend or companion but Mr.
Carker, who always withdrew near midnight.

Every night Florence would listen out in the hall for news of him, after
leaving her mother. But, late one evening, she was surprised to see a
bright light burning in her room, and her mother sitting before the
dying fire looking so fiercely at it that it terrified her.

"Mamma!" she cried, "what is the matter?"

Mrs. Dombey started; looking at her with such a strange dread in her
face that Florence was more frightened than before.

"Mamma!" said Florence, hurriedly advancing. "Dear mamma! what is the
matter?"

"I have not been well," said Mrs. Dombey, shaking, and still looking at
her in the same strange way.  "I have had bad dreams, my love."

"And have not yet been to bed, mamma?"

"No," she returned.  "Half-waking dreams."

Her features gradually softened; and suffering Florence to come close to
her, within her embrace, she said in a tender manner, "But what does my
bird do here!  What does my bird do here!"

"I have been uneasy, mamma, in not seeing you to-night, and in not
knowing how papa was; and I—"

Florence stopped there, and said no more.

"Is it late?" her mother asked, fondly putting back the curls that
mingled with her own dark hair, and strayed upon her face.

"Very late.  Near day."

"Near day!" she repeated in surprise.

"Mamma!" said Florence.  "Oh, mamma, what can I do, what should I do, to
make us happier?  Is there anything?"

"Nothing," she replied.

"Are you sure of that?  Can it never be? If I speak now of what is in my
thoughts, in spite of what we have agreed," said Florence, "you will not
blame me, will you?"

"It is useless," she replied, "useless.  I have told you, dear, that I
have had bad dreams.  Nothing can change them, or prevent their coming
back."

"I do not understand," said Florence, gazing on her agitated face, which
seemed to darken as she looked.

Her mother’s clenched hand tightened on the trembling arm she had in
hers, and as she looked down on the alarmed and wondering face, her own
feelings subsided.  "Oh, Florence!" she said, "I think I have been
nearly mad to-night!" and humbled her proud head upon the girl’s neck,
and burst into tears.

"Don’t leave me! be near me!  I have no hope but in you!"  These words
she said a score of times.

Florence was greatly puzzled and distressed, and could only repeat her
promise of love and trust.

Through six months that followed upon Mr. Dombey’s illness and recovery,
no outward change was shown between him and his wife. Both were cold and
proud; and still Mr. Carker—a man whom she detested——bore his petty
commands to her.

As for Florence, the little hope she had ever held for happiness in
their new home was quite gone now.  That home was nearly two years old,
and even the patient trust that was in her could not survive the daily
blight of such an experience.

Florence loved her father still, but by degrees had come to love him
rather as some dear one who had been, or who might have been, than as
the hard reality before her eyes. Something of the softened sadness with
which she loved the memory of little Paul or her mother, seemed to enter
now into her thoughts of him, and to make them, as it were, a dear
remembrance.  Whether it was that he was dead to her, and that partly
for this reason, partly for his share in those old objects of her
affection, and partly for the long association of him with hopes that
were withered and tendernesses he had frozen, she could not have told;
but the father whom she loved began to be a vague and dreamy idea to
her; hardly more substantially connected with her real life than the
image she would sometimes conjure up of her dear brother yet alive, and
growing to be a man, who would protect and cherish her.

The change, if it may be called one, had stolen on her like the change
from childhood to womanhood, and had come with it.  Florence was almost
seventeen, when, in her lonely musings, she was conscious of these
thoughts.

She was often alone now, for the old association between her and her
mamma was greatly changed.  At the time of her father’s illness, and
when he was lying in his room downstairs, Florence had first observed
that Edith avoided her.  Wounded and shocked, and yet unable to
reconcile this with her affection when they did meet, she sought her in
her own room at night, once more.

"Mamma," said Florence, stealing softly to her side, "have I offended
you?"

She answered "No."

"I must have done something," said Florence. "Tell me what it is.  You
have changed your manner to me, dear mamma.  I cannot say how instantly
I feel the least change; for I love you with my whole heart."

"As I do you," said Mrs. Dombey.  "Ah, Florence, believe me never more
than now!"

"Why do you go away from me so often, and keep away?" asked Florence.
"And why do you sometimes look so strangely on me, dear mamma?  You do
so, do you not?"

"Dear Florence, it is for your good.  Why, I cannot tell you now.  But
you will believe I have always tried to make you happy, dear, will you
not?"

"Mamma," said Florence, anxiously, "there is a change in you, in more
than what you say to me, which alarms me.  Let me stay with you a
little."

"No, dearest.  I am best left alone now, and I do best to keep apart
from you, of all else.  Ask me no questions, but believe that what I am,
I am not of my own will, or for myself.  Forgive me for having ever
darkened your dark home—I am a shadow on it, I know well—and let us
never speak of this again."

"Mamma," sobbed Florence, "we are not to part?"

"We do this that we may not part," said her mother.  "Ask no more.  Go,
Florence!  My love and my remorse go with you!"

Thus did Mrs. Dombey hide from Florence one dark secret—that her husband
was displeased with their love for each other.  It was for Florence’s
welfare that she felt compelled to hide her affections.

From that hour Florence and she were as they had been no more.  For days
together they would seldom meet, except at table, and when Mr. Dombey
was present.  Then Mrs. Dombey, imperious, inflexible, and silent, never
looked at her.  Whenever Mr. Carker was of the party, as he often was
during the progress of Mr. Dombey’s recovery, she was more distant
towards her than at other times. Yet she and Florence never encountered,
when there was no one by, but she would embrace her as affectionately as
of old, though not with the same relenting of her proud aspect; and
often when she had been out late she would steal up to Florence’s room
as she had been used to do in the dark, and whisper "Good-night."

Then came a dreadful day not long afterwards when it was found that Mrs.
Dombey had fled from her home.  The day was the second anniversary of
this ill-starred marriage; and the poor, misguided woman left a note for
her husband telling him that she had gone away with the man whom he had
trusted most (and whom she hated most) Mr. Carker.  It was a foolish way
to be revenged for the harsh treatment she had received, but it served
her purpose. Mr. Dombey was wounded in his most vulnerable spot—his
pride.

As for Florence, she was overcome with grief; yet in the midst of her
own emotion she could realize her father’s bitterness.  Yielding at once
to the impulse of her affection and forgetful of his past coldness,
Florence hurried to him with her arms stretched out and crying, "Oh
dear, dear papa!" tried to clasp him round the neck.

But in his wild despair he shook her off so roughly that she almost fell
to the floor; telling her she could join her mother, for all he cared,
as they had always been in league against him.

She did not sink down at his feet; she did not shut out the sight of him
with her trembling hands; she did not weep nor speak one word of
reproach.  She only uttered a single low cry of pain and then fled from
the house like a hunted animal.

Without a roof over her head—without father or mother, she was indeed an
orphan.

While the days went by, after Florence’s flight, what was the proud man
doing?  Did he ever think of his daughter or wonder where she had gone?
Did he suppose she had come home again and was leading her old life in
the weary house?  He did not utter her name or make any search for her.
He might have thought of her constantly, or not at all.  It was all one
for any sign he made.

But this was sure.  He did not think that he had lost her.  He had no
suspicion of the truth that she had fled away from him.  He had lived
too long shut up in his pride, seeing her a patient, gentle creature in
his path, to have any fear of that.  And so he waited, day by day, until
she should make her appearance on the stairs or at the table as before.

But the days dragged slowly by and she did not come.

The sea had ebbed and flowed through a whole year.  Through a whole year
the winds and clouds had come and gone; the ceaseless work of Time had
been performed, in storm and sunshine.  Through a whole year the famous
House of Dombey and Son had fought a fight for life, against doubtful
rumors, unsuccessful ventures, and most of all, against the bad judgment
of its head, who would not contract its enterprises by a hair’s breadth,
and would not listen to a word of warning that the ship he strained so
hard against the storm was weak, and could not bear it.

For Mr. Dombey had grown strangely indifferent and reckless, and plunged
blindly into speculation.

The year was out, and the great House was down.

One summer afternoon there was a buzz and whisper, about the streets of
London, of a great failure.  A certain cold, proud man, well known
there, was not there, nor was he represented there.  Next day it was
noised abroad that Dombey and Son had stopped, and next night there was
a list of bankrupts published, headed by that name.

Nobody’s opinion stayed the misfortune, lightened it, or made it
heavier.  It was understood that the affairs of the House were to be
wound up as they best could be; that Mr. Dombey freely resigned
everything he had, and asked for no favor from any one.  That any
resumption of the business was out of the question, as he would listen
to no friendly negotiation having that compromise in view; that he had
relinquished every post of trust or distinction he had held as a man
respected among merchants; and that he was a broken man.

The old home where Paul had died and whence Florence had fled away was
now empty and deserted—a wreck of what it had been. All the furniture
and hangings had been sold to satisfy Mr. Dombey’s creditors; and he now
lived there alone in one cheerless room—a man without friends, without
hope.

But at last he began to come to his senses; to see what a treasure he
had cast away in Florence; to recall his own injustice and cruelty
toward her.

In the miserable night he thought of it; in the dreary day, the wretched
dawn, the ghostly, memory-haunted twilight, he remembered.  In agony, in
sorrow, in remorse, in despair!

"Papa! papa!"  He heard the words again, and saw the face.  He saw it
fall upon the trembling hands, and heard the one prolonged, low cry go
upward.

Oh!  He did remember it!  The rain that fell upon the roof, the wind
that mourned outside the door, had foreknowledge in their melancholy
sound.  He knew now what he had done.  He knew now that he had called
down that upon his head, which bowed it lower than the heaviest stroke
of fortune.  He knew now what it was to be rejected and deserted; now,
when every loving blossom he had withered in his innocent daughter’s
heart was snowing down in ashes on him.

He thought of her as she had been that night when he and his bride came
home.  He thought of her as she had been in all the home events of the
abandoned house.  He thought now that of all around him, she alone had
never changed.  His boy had faded into dust, his proud wife had deserted
him, his flatterer and friend had been transformed into the worst of
villains, his riches had melted away, the very walls that sheltered him
looked on him as a stranger; she alone had turned the same mild, gentle
look upon him always.  Yes, to the latest and the last.  She had never
changed to him—nor had he ever changed to her—and she was lost.

As, one by one, they fell away before his mind—his baby hope, his wife,
his friend, his fortune—oh, how the mist through which he had seen her
cleared, and showed him her true self!  How much better than this that
he had loved her as he had his boy, and lost her as he had his boy, and
laid them in their early grave together!

As the days dragged by, it seemed to him that he should go mad with
remorse and longing.  He haunted Paul’s room and Florence’s room—so
empty now—as though they were his only dwelling-place.  He had meant to
go away, but clung to this tie in the house as the last and only thing
left to him.  He would go to-morrow.  To-morrow came.  He would go
to-morrow.  Every night, within the knowledge of no human creature, he
came forth, and wandered through the despoiled house like a ghost. Many
a morning when the day broke, with altered face drooping behind the
closed blind in his window, he pondered on the loss of his two children.
It was one child no more.  He reunited them in his thoughts, and they
were never asunder.

Then, one day, when strange fancies oppressed him more than usual, he
paused at Florence’s door and gazed wildly down as though suddenly
awakened from a dream.

He heard a cry—a loving, pleading voice—and there at his knees knelt
Florence herself.

"Papa!  Dearest papa!  I have come back to ask forgiveness.  I never can
be happy more, without it!"

Unchanged still.  Of all the world, unchanged.  Raising the same face to
his as on that miserable night.  Asking _his_ forgiveness!

"Dear papa, oh, don’t look strangely on me! I never meant to leave you.
I never thought of it, before or afterwards.  I was frightened when I
went away and could not think.  Papa, dear, I am changed.  I am
penitent.  I know my fault.  I know my duty better now.  Papa, don’t
cast me off or I shall die!"

He tottered to his chair.  He felt her draw his arms about her neck: he
felt her put her own round his; he felt her kisses on his face; he felt
her wet cheek laid against his own; he felt—oh, how deeply!—all that he
had done.

Upon the breast that he had bruised, against the heart that he had
almost broken, she laid his face, now covered with his hands, and said,
sobbing,—

"I have been far away, dear papa, and could not come back before this.
I have been across the seas, and I have a home of my own over there now.
Oh, I want you to see it!  I want to take you there; for my home is
_your_ home—always, always!  Say you will pardon me, will come to me!"

He would have said it if he could.  He would have raised his hands and
besought _her_ for pardon, but she caught them in her own and put them
down hurriedly.

"You will come, I know, dear papa!  And I will know by that that you
forgive me.  And we will never talk about what is past and forgotten;
never again!"

As she clung closer to him, in another burst of tears, he kissed her on
the lips, and, lifting up his eyes, said, "Oh, my God, forgive me, for I
need it very much!"

With that he dropped his head again, lamenting over and caressing her,
and there was not a sound in all the house for a long, long time; they
remaining clasped in one another’s arms, in the glorious sunshine that
had crept in with Florence.

                 *THE STORY OF PIP AS TOLD BY HIMSELF*

                    *I.  HOW PIP HELPED THE CONVICT*

My father’s family name being Pirrip, and my Christian name Philip, my
infant tongue could make of both names nothing longer than Pip.  So I
called myself Pip, and came to be called Pip.

I give Pirrip as my father’s family name, on the authority of his
tombstone and my sister—Mrs. Joe Gargery, who married the blacksmith.
As I never saw my father or my mother, my first fancies regarding what
they were like were unreasonably derived from their tombstones.

Ours was the marsh country down by the river, within twenty miles of the
sea.  My most vivid memory of these early days was of a raw evening
about dusk.  At such a time I found out for certain that this bleak spot
where I chanced to be wandering all alone was the churchyard; that the
low, leaden line beyond was the river; and that the small bundle of
shivers growing afraid of it all and beginning to cry was myself—Pip.

"Hold your noise!" cried a terrible voice, as a man started up from
among the graves at the side of the church porch.

He was a fearful looking man, clad in coarse gray, covered with mud and
brambles, and with a great clanking chain upon his leg.

"Tell us your name!" said the man.

"Quick!"

"Pip, sir."

"Show us where you live," said the man. "P’int out the place!"

I pointed to where our village lay, on the flat in-shore among the trees
a mile or more from the church.

The man, after looking at me for a moment, turned me upside-down and
emptied my pockets. There was nothing in them but a piece of bread. When
the church came to itself—for he was so sudden and strong that he made
it go head-over-heels before me, and I saw the steeple under my
feet—when the church came to itself, I say, I was seated on a high
tombstone, trembling, while he ate the bread ravenously.

"You young dog," said the man, licking his lips, "what fat cheeks you
ha’ got."

I believe they were fat, though I was at that time undersized for my
years, and not strong.

"Darn _me_ if I couldn’t eat ’em," said the man, with a threatening
shake of his head, "and if I ha’nt half a mind to’t!"

I earnestly expressed my hope that he wouldn’t, and held tighter to the
tombstone on which he had put me; partly to keep myself upon it; partly
to keep myself from crying.

"Now lookee here!" said the man.  "Where’s your mother?"

"There, sir!" said I.

He started, made a short run, and stopped and looked over his shoulder.

"There, sir!" I timidly explained, pointing to an inscription on a
stone; "that’s my mother."

"Oh!" said he, coming back.  "And is that your father alonger your
mother?"

"Yes, sir," said I; "him too; ’late of this parish.’"

"Ha!" he muttered then, considering.  "Who d’ ye live with—supposin’
you’re kindly let to live, which I ha’nt made up my mind about?"

"My sister, sir—Mrs. Joe Gargery—wife of Joe Gargery, the blacksmith,
sir."

"Blacksmith, eh?" said he, and looked down at his leg.

After darkly looking at his leg and at me several times, he came closer
to my tombstone, took me by both arms, and tilted me back as far as he
could hold me, so that his eyes looked most powerfully down into mine,
and mine looked most helplessly up into his.

"Now lookee here," he said, "the question being whether you’re to be let
to live.  You know what a file is?"

"Yes, sir."

"And you know what wittles is?"

"Yes, sir."

After each question he tilted me over a little more, so as to give me a
greater sense of helplessness and danger.

"You get me a file."  He tilted me again. "And you get me some wittles.
If you don’t—!"

He tilted me again and shook me till my teeth chattered.

"In—indeed—I will, sir," said I, "if you will only let me go.  I’ll run
all the way home."

"Well, see that you come back.  But to-morrow morning will
do—early—before day. I’ll wait for you here."

As he released me, I needed no second bidding, but scurried away as fast
as I could, and soon reached the blacksmith shop.

My sister, Mrs. Joe Gargery, was more than twenty years older than I,
and had established a great reputation with herself and the neighbors
because she had brought me up "by hand."  Having at that time to find
out for myself what the expression meant, and knowing her to have a hard
and heavy hand, and to be much in the habit of laying it upon her
husband as well as upon me, I supposed that Joe Gargery and I were both
brought up by hand.

She was not a good-looking woman, my sister; and I had a general
impression that she must have made Joe Gargery marry her by hand.  Joe
was a fair man, with curls of flaxen hair on each side of his smooth
face, and with eyes of such a very undecided blue that they seemed to
have somehow got mixed with their own whites.  He was a mild,
good-natured, sweet-tempered, easy-going, foolish, dear fellow—a sort of
Hercules in strength, and also in weakness.

My sister, Mrs. Joe, with black hair and eyes, had such a prevailing
redness of skin that I sometimes used to wonder whether it was possible
she washed herself with a nutmeg-grater instead of soap.  She was tall
and bony, and almost always wore a coarse apron, fastened behind with
two loops, and having a bib in front that was stuck full of pins and
needles.

Joe’s forge adjoined our house, which was a wooden house, as many of the
dwellings in our country were—most of them, at that time. When I ran
home from the churchyard the forge was shut up, and Joe was sitting
alone in the kitchen.  Joe and I being fellow-sufferers, and having
confidences as such, Joe imparted a confidence to me the moment I raised
the latch of the door and peeped in at him opposite to it, sitting in
the chimney corner.

"Mrs. Joe has been out a dozen times looking for you, Pip.  And she’s
out now, making it a baker’s dozen."

"Is she?"

"Yes, Pip," said Joe; "and what’s worse, she’s got Tickler with her."

At this dismal intelligence, I twisted the only button on my waistcoat
round and round, and looked in great depression at the fire.  Tickler
was a wax-ended piece of cane, worn smooth by collision with my tickled
frame.

"She sot down," said Joe, "and she got up, and she made a grab at
Tickler, and she Rampaged out.  That’s what she did," said Joe, slowly
clearing the fire between the lower bars with the poker, and looking at
it; "she Rampaged out, Pip."

"Has she been gone long, Joe?"  I always treated him as no more than my
equal.

"Well," said Joe, glancing up at the Dutch clock, "she’s been on the
Rampage, this last spell, about five minutes, Pip.  She’s a coming! Get
behind the door, old chap, and have the jack-towel betwixt you."

I took the advice.  My sister, Mrs. Joe, throwing the door wide open,
and finding an obstruction behind it, immediately divined the cause, and
applied Tickler to its farther investigation.

"Where have you been?" she demanded, between tickles.

"I have only been to the churchyard," said I, crying and rubbing myself.

"Churchyard!" repeated my sister.  "If it warn’t for me you’d been to
the churchyard long ago, and stayed there!  Who brought you up by hand?"

My thoughts strayed from that question as I looked disconsolately at the
fire.  For the fugitive out on the marshes with the ironed leg, the
file, the food, and the dreadful pledge I was under to steal, from under
my sister’s very roof, rose before me in the avenging coals.

"Ha!" said Mrs. Joe, restoring Tickler to his station.  "Churchyard,
indeed!  You may well say churchyard, you two."  (One of us, by the by,
had not said it at all.)  "You’ll drive _me_ to the churchyard betwixt
you, one of these days, and oh, a pr-r-recious pair you’d be without
me!"

As she applied herself to set the tea-things, Joe peeped down at me over
his leg, as if he were mentally calculating what kind of pair we should
make, under such circumstances.  After that, he sat feeling his
right-side flaxen curls and whisker, and following Mrs. Joe about with
his blue eyes, as his manner always was at squally times.

My sister had a sudden, severe way of cutting and buttering bread, which
never varied.  Now she ripped me off a section of loaf, bidding me eat
and be thankful.  Though I was hungry, I dared not eat; for she was a
strict housekeeper who would miss any further slices, and I must not let
that dreadful man out in the churchyard go hungry.  So I resolved to put
my hunk of bread and butter down the leg of my trousers—a plan which I
presently found the chance to carry out.

It was Christmas Eve, and I had to stir the pudding for next day with a
copper-stick.  I tried it with the load upon my leg (and that made me
think afresh of the man with the load on _his_ leg), and found the
tendency of exercise to bring the bread-and-butter out at my ankle quite
unmanageable.  Happily, I slipped away and deposited that part of my
conscience in my garret bedroom.

"Hark!" said I, when I had done my stirring, and was taking a final warm
in the chimney corner before being sent up to bed; "was that great guns,
Joe?"

"Ah!" said Joe.  "There’s another conwict off."

"What does that mean, Joe?" said I.

Mrs. Joe, who always took explanations upon herself, said snappishly,
"Escaped.  Escaped."

"There was a conwict off last night," added Joe, "after sunset-gun.  And
they fired warning of him.  And now it appears they’re firing warning of
another."

"Who’s firing?" said I.

"Drat that boy," interposed my sister, frowning at me over her work,
"what a questioner he is.  Ask no questions, and you’ll be told no
lies."

It was not very polite to herself, I thought, as she always answered.
But she never was polite, unless there was company.

Presently Joe said to me in a quiet kind of whisper.  "Hulks, Pip;
prison ships.  They’re firing because one of the thieves on the hulks is
got away."

Thieves!  Prison ships!  And here I was planning to rob my sister of the
bread and butter; and honest Joe of a file!  Truly conscience is a
fearful thing, yet there was no turning back for me.

That night the rest of the dreadful deed was done.  Just before daybreak
I crept out, carrying the file which I had found among Joe’s tools, the
slice of bread, and a pie which was too convenient in the pantry, and
which I took in the hope it was not intended for early use and would not
be missed for some time.

I found the man with the iron waiting for me, crouched behind a
tombstone.

"Are you alone?" he asked hoarsely.

"Yes, sir."

"No one following you?"

"No, sir."

"Well," said he, "I believe you.  Give me them wittles, quick."

I had often watched a large dog of ours eating his food; and I now
noticed a decided similarity between the dog’s way of eating and the
man’s. The man took strong, sharp, sudden bites, just like the dog.  He
swallowed, or rather snapped up, every mouthful, too soon and too fast;
and he looked sideways here and there while he ate, as if he thought
there was danger in every direction of somebody’s coming to take the pie
away.

"Now give us hold of the file, boy," he said, when he had finished
swallowing.

I did so, and he bent to the iron like a madman, and began filing it
away in quick, fierce rasps.  I judged this a good time to slip away,
and he paid no further attention to me.  The last I heard of him, the
file was still going.

"And where the mischief ha’ you been?" was Mrs. Joe’s Christmas
salutation, when I and my conscience showed ourselves.

I said I had been down to hear the chimes.

"Ah, well!" observed Mrs. Joe.  "You might ha’ done worse."

Not a doubt of that, I thought.

We were to have a superb dinner—so Joe slyly told me—consisting of a leg
of pork and greens, a pair of roast stuffed fowls, and a handsome pie
which had been baked the day before.

I started when he spoke about the pie, but his blue eyes beamed upon me
kindly.

My sister having so much to do, was going to church vicariously; that is
to say, Joe and I were going.  In his working clothes, Joe was a
well-knit characteristic-looking blacksmith; in his holiday clothes, he
was more like a scarecrow in good circumstances, than anything else.
Nothing that he wore then fitted him or seemed to belong to him.  On the
present festive occasion he emerged from his room, when the blithe bells
were ringing, the picture of misery, in a full suit of Sunday
penitentials.  As to me, I think my sister must have had some general
idea that I was a young offender who must be punished each holy-day by
being put into clothes so tight that I could on no account move my arms
and legs without danger of something bursting.

Joe and I going to church, therefore, must have been a moving spectacle
for compassionate minds.  Yet, what I suffered outside was nothing to
what I underwent within.  The terrors that had assailed me whenever Mrs.
Joe had gone near the pantry, or out of the room, were only to be
equalled by the remorse with which my mind dwelt on what my hands had
done. Under the weight of my wicked secret, I pondered whether even the
Church would be powerful enough to shield me from the wrath to come.

Mr. Wopsle, the clerk at church, was to dine with us; and Mr. Hubble,
the wheelwright, and Mrs. Hubble; and Uncle Pumblechook (Joe’s uncle,
but Mrs. Joe appropriated him), who was a well-to-do cornchandler in the
nearest town, and drove his own chaise-cart.  The dinner hour was
half-past one.

When Joe and I got home, we found the table laid, and Mrs. Joe dressed,
and the dinner dressing, and the front door unlocked (it never was at
any other time) for the company to enter by, and everything most
splendid.  And still, not a word of the robbery.

Oh, the agony of that festive dinner!  During each helping of my plate I
ate mechanically, hardly daring to lift my eyes, and clutching
frantically at the leg of the table for support. With each mouthful we
drew nearer to that pie—and discovery!  But as they chattered away, I
felt a faint hope that they might perhaps forget the pie.

They did not, for presently my sister said to Joe, "Clean plates—cold."

I got a fresh hold on the table leg.  I foresaw I was doomed.

"You must taste," said my sister, addressing the guests with her best
grace, "you must finish with a pie, in honor of Uncle Pumblechook."

The company murmured their compliments. Uncle Pumblechook, sensible of
having deserved well of his fellow-creatures, said,—quite vivaciously,
all things considered,—"Well, Mrs. Joe, we’ll do our best endeavors; let
us have a cut at this same pie."

My sister went out to get it.  I heard her steps proceed to the pantry.
I saw Mr. Pumblechook balance his knife.  I saw reawakening appetite in
the Roman nostrils of Mr. Wopsle.  I heard Mr. Hubble remark that "a bit
of savory pie would lay atop of anything you could mention, and do no
harm," and I heard Joe say "you shall have some, Pip."  I have never
been absolutely certain whether I uttered a shrill yell of terror,
merely in spirit, or in the bodily hearing of the company.  I felt that
I could bear no more, and that I must run away.  I released the leg of
the table, and ran for my life.

But I ran no farther than the house door, for there I ran headforemost
into a party of soldiers with their muskets, one of whom held out a pair
of handcuffs to me, saying, "Here you are, look sharp, come on!"

The vision of a file of soldiers caused the dinner party to rise from
the table in confusion, and caused Mrs. Joe, re-entering the kitchen
empty-handed, to stop short and stare, in her wondering lament of
"Gracious goodness, gracious me, what’s gone—with the—pie!"

"Excuse me, ladies and gentlemen," said the sergeant, "but as I have
mentioned at the door to this smart young shaver" (which he hadn’t), "I
am on a chase in the name of the king, and I want the blacksmith."

"And pray, what might you want with him?" retorted my sister, quick to
resent his being wanted at all.

"Missis," returned the gallant sergeant, "speaking for myself, I should
reply, the honor and pleasure of his fine wife’s acquaintance; speaking
for the king, I answer, a little job done."

This was received as rather neat in the sergeant; insomuch that Mr.
Pumblechook cried audibly, "Good again!"

"You see, blacksmith," said the sergeant, who had by this time picked
out Joe with his eye, "we have had an accident with these, and I find
the lock of one of ’em goes wrong, and the coupling don’t act pretty.
As they are wanted for immediate service, will you throw your eye over
them?"

Joe threw his eye over them, and pronounced that the job would
necessitate the lighting of his forge fire, and would take nearer two
hours than one.

"Will it?  Then will you set about it at once, blacksmith," said the
off-hand sergeant, "as it’s on his Majesty’s service.  And if my men can
bear a hand anywhere, they’ll make themselves useful."  With that, he
called to his men, who came trooping into the kitchen one after another,
and piled their arms in a corner.

All these things I saw without then knowing that I saw them, for I was
in an agony of apprehension.  But, beginning to perceive that the
handcuffs were not for me, and that the military had so far got the
better of the pie as to put it in the background, I collected a little
more of my scattered wits.

[Illustration: PIP BRINGS THE CONVICT SOME FOOD.]

The soldiers were out hunting for the convicts that had escaped.  And as
soon as Joe had mended the handcuffs, they fell in line and started
again for the marshes.  Joe caught an appealing look from me, and
timidly asked if he and I might go along with them.  The consent was
given and away we went.

After a rough journey over bogs and through briars, a loud shout from
the soldiers in front announced that one of the fugitives had been
caught.  We ran hastily up and peered into a ditch.  It was my convict.

He was hustled into the handcuffs and hustled up a hill where stood a
rough hut or sentry-box, and here we halted to rest.

My convict never looked at me, except once. While we were in the hut, he
stood before the fire looking thoughtfully at it, or putting up his feet
by turns upon the hob.  Suddenly he turned to the sergeant and remarked:

"I wish to say something respecting this escape.  It may prevent some
persons laying under suspicion alonger me."

"You can say what you like," returned the sergeant, standing coolly
looking at him with his arms folded, "but you have no call to say it
here.  You’ll have opportunity enough to say about it, and hear about
it, before it’s done with, you know."

"I know, but this is another p’int, a separate matter.  A man can’t
starve; at least _I_ can’t. I took some wittles, up at the village over
yonder—where the church stands a’most out on the marshes."

"You mean stole," said the sergeant.

"And I’ll tell you where from.  From the blacksmith’s."

"Hallo!" said the sergeant, staring at Joe.

"Hallo, Pip!" said Joe, staring at me.

"It was some broken wittle—that’s what it was—and a dram of liquor, and
a pie."

"Have you happened to miss such an article as a pie, blacksmith?" asked
the sergeant, confidentially.

"My wife did, at the very moment when you came in.  Don’t you know,
Pip?"

"So," said my convict, turning his eyes on Joe in a moody manner, and
without the least glance at me; "so you’re the blacksmith, are you?
Then I’m sorry to say I’ve eat your pie."

"God knows you’re welcome to it—so far as it was ever mine," returned
Joe, with a saving remembrance of Mrs. Joe.  "We don’t know what you
have done, but we wouldn’t have you starve to death for it, poor
miserable fellow-creatur.  Would us, Pip?"

Something that I had noticed before clicked in the man’s throat again,
and he turned his back.  The boat had returned, and his guard were
ready, so we followed him to the landing-place made of rough stakes and
stones, and saw him put into the boat, which was rowed by a crew of
convicts like himself.  No one seemed surprised to see him, but they
looked at him stolidly and rowed him back to the hulks as a matter of
course.

My state of mind regarding the pie was curious.  I do not recall that I
felt any tenderness of conscience in reference to Mrs. Joe, when the
fear of being found out was lifted off me.  But I loved Joe—perhaps for
no better reason in those early days than because the dear fellow let me
love him—and, as to him, my inner self was not so easily composed.  It
was much upon my mind (particularly when I first saw him looking about
for his file) that I ought to tell Joe the whole truth.  Yet I did not,
and for the reason that I mistrusted that if I did he would think me
worse than I was. The fear of losing Joe’s confidence and of thenceforth
sitting in the chimney corner at night staring drearily at my forever
lost companion and friend, tied up my tongue.  And so the whole truth
never came out.

                         *II.  PIP AND ESTELLA*

At this time I was only an errand boy around the forge, and my education
was limited to spelling out the names on the tombstones.  So in the
evenings they sent me to school to Mr. Wopsle’s aunt, a worthy woman who
used to go to sleep regularly from six to seven while her small class
was supposed to study.

But I was lucky enough to find a friend in her granddaughter, Biddy.
She was about my own age, and, while her shoes were generally untied and
her hands sometimes dirty, her heart was in the right place and she had
a good head. So with her help I struggled through my letters as if they
had been a bramble-bush, getting considerably worried and scratched by
each letter in turn.  Then came the dreaded nine figures to add to my
troubles.  But at last I learned to read and cipher.

I do not know which was the prouder, Joe or I, when I wrote him my first
letter (which was hardly needed, as he sat beside me while I wrote it).

"I say, Pip, old chap!" he cried, opening his eyes very wide, "what a
scholar you are!  Ain’t you?"

"I should like to be," I answered, looking at the slate with
satisfaction.

Mrs. Joe made occasional trips with Uncle Pumblechook on market-days, to
assist him in buying such household stuffs and goods as required a
woman’s judgment; Uncle Pumblechook being a bachelor and reposing no
confidences in his domestic servant.  On this particular evening she
came home from such a trip, bringing Uncle Pumblechook with her.

"Now," said she, unwrapping herself with haste and excitement, and
throwing her bonnet back on her shoulders where it hung by the strings,
"if this boy ain’t grateful this night, he never will be!"

I looked as grateful as any boy possibly could, who was wholly
uninformed why he ought to assume that expression.

"You have heard of Miss Havisham up town, haven’t you?" continued my
sister, addressing Joe.  "She wants this boy to go and play there.  And
of course he’s going.  And he had _better_ play there," said my sister,
shaking her head at me as an encouragement to be extremely light and
sportive, "or I’ll work him!"

I had heard of Miss Havisham up town—everybody for miles round had heard
of Miss Havisham up town—as an immensely rich and grim lady who lived in
a large and dismal house barricaded against robbers, and who led a life
of seclusion.

"Well to be sure!" said Joe, astounded.  "I wonder how she come to know
Pip!"

"Noodle!" cried my sister.  "Who said she knew him?  Couldn’t she ask
Uncle Pumblechook if he knew of a boy to go and play there? And couldn’t
Uncle Pumblechook, being always considerate and thoughtful of us,
mention this boy that I have been a willing slave to?  And couldn’t
Uncle Pumblechook, being sensible that for anything we can tell, this
boy’s fortune may be made by his going to Miss Havisham’s, offer to take
him into town to-night in his own chaise-cart, and to keep him to-night,
and to take him with his own hands to Miss Havisham’s to-morrow morning?
And Lor-a-mussy me!" cried my sister, casting off her bonnet in sudden
desperation, "here I stand talking to mere Mooncalfs, with Uncle
Pumblechook waiting, and the mare catching cold at the door, and the boy
grimed with dirt from the hair of his head to the sole of his foot!"

With that, she pounced on me, like an eagle on a lamb, and my face was
squeezed into wooden bowls in sinks, and my head was put under taps of
water-butts, and I was soaped and kneaded, and towelled, and thumped,
and harrowed, and rasped, until I really was quite beside myself.

When my ablutions were completed, I was put into clean linen of the
stiffest character, like a young penitent into sackcloth, and was
trussed up in my tightest and fearfullest suit.  I was then delivered
over to Mr. Pumblechook, who formally received me as if he were the
Sheriff, saying pompously, "Boy, be forever grateful to all friends, but
especially unto them which brought you up by hand!"

"Good-bye, Joe!"

"God bless you, Pip, old chap!"

I had never parted from him before, and what with my feelings and what
with soap-suds, I could at first see no stars from the chaise-cart. But
they twinkled out one by one, without throwing any light on the
questions as to why on earth I was going to play at Miss Havisham’s, and
what on earth I was expected to play at.

I spent the night at Uncle Pumblechook’s, and the next morning after
breakfast we proceeded to Miss Havisham’s.  It was a dismal looking
house with a great many iron bars to it. Some of the windows had been
walled up, and the others were rustily barred.  There was a courtyard in
front, which was also barred; so we had to wait, after ringing the bell,
for some one to open it.

Presently a window was raised, and a clear voice demanded, "What name?"

"Pumblechook," was the reply.

The voice returned, "Quite right," and the window was shut again, and a
young lady came across the courtyard, with keys in her hand.

"This," said Mr. Pumblechook, "is Pip."

"This is Pip, is it?" returned the young lady, who was very pretty and
seemed very proud; "come in, Pip."

Mr. Pumblechook was coming in also, when she stopped him with the gate.

"Oh!" she said.  "Did you wish to see Miss Havisham?"

"If Miss Havisham wished to see me," returned Mr. Pumblechook,
discomfited.

"Ah!" said the girl; "but you see she don’t."

She said it so finally, and in such an undiscussible way, that Mr.
Pumblechook, though in a condition of ruffled dignity, could not
protest.

We went into the house by a side door—the great front entrance had two
chains across it outside—and the first thing I noticed was that the
passages were all dark, and that she had left a candle burning there.
She took it up, and we went through more passages and up a staircase,
and still it was all dark, and only the candle lighted us.

At last we came to the door of a room and she said, "Go in."

I answered, more in shyness than politeness, "After you, miss."

To this she returned, "Don’t be ridiculous, boy; I am not going in."
And scornfully walked away, and—what was worse—took the candle with her.

This was very uncomfortable, and I was half afraid.  However, the only
thing to do being to knock at the door, I knocked, and was told from
within to enter.  I entered, therefore, and found myself in a pretty
large room, well lighted with wax candles.  No glimpse of daylight was
to be seen in it.  It was a dressing-room, as I supposed from the
furniture, though much of it was of forms and uses then quite unknown to
me.  But prominent in it was a draped table with a gilded looking-glass,
and that I made out at first sight to be a fine lady’s dressing-table.

In an arm-chair, with an elbow resting on the table and her head leaning
on that hand, sat the strangest lady I have ever seen, or shall ever
see.

She was dressed in rich materials,—satins and lace and silks,—all of
white.  Her shoes were white.  And she had a long white veil dependent
from her hair, and she had bridal flowers in her hair, but her hair was
white.  Some bright jewels sparkled on her neck and on her hands, and
some other jewels lay sparkling on the table. Dresses, less splendid
than the dress she wore, and half-packed trunks, were scattered about.
She had not quite finished dressing, for she had but one shoe on,—the
other was on the table near her hand,—her veil was but half arranged,
her watch and chain were not put on, and her handkerchief, gloves, some
flowers, and a prayer-book lay confusedly heaped about the
looking-glass.

"Who is it?" said the lady at the table.

"Pip, ma’am."

"Pip?"

"Mr. Pumblechook’s boy, ma’am.  Come—to play."

"Look at me," said Miss Havisham.  "You are not afraid of a woman who
has never seen the sun since you were born?"

I regret to state that I was not afraid of telling the enormous lie
comprehended in the answer "No."

"I am tired," said Miss Havisham.  "I want diversion, and I have done
with men and women. Play."

I looked foolish and bewildered, not knowing what to do.

"I sometimes have sick fancies," she went on, "and I have a sick fancy
that I want to see some play.  There, there!" with an impatient movement
of the fingers of her right hand; "play, play, play!"

For a moment, with the fear of my sister’s working me before my eyes, I
had a desperate idea of starting round the room in the assumed character
of Mr. Pumblechook’s chaise-cart. But I felt myself so unequal to the
performance that I gave it up, and stood looking at Miss Havisham in
what I suppose she took for a dogged manner, inasmuch as she said, when
we had taken a good look at each other,

"Are you sullen and obstinate?"

"No, ma’am, I am very sorry for you, and very sorry I can’t play just
now.  If you complain of me I shall get into trouble with my sister, so
I would do it if I could; but it’s so new here, and so strange, and so
fine, and melancholy—"  I stopped, fearing I might say too much.

"Call Estella," she commanded, looking at me.  "You can do that."

To stand in a strange house calling a scornful young lady by her first
name was almost as bad as playing to order.  But she answered at last.

"My dear," said Miss Havisham, "let me see you play cards with this
boy."

"What do you play, boy?" asked Estella, with the greatest disdain.

"Nothing but ’beggar my neighbor,’ Miss."

"Beggar him," said Miss Havisham to Estella. So we sat down to cards.

It was then I began to understand that everything in the room had
stopped, with the watch and the clock, a long time ago.  I noticed that
Miss Havisham put down the jewel exactly on the spot from which she had
taken it up.  As Estella dealt the cards, I glanced at the
dressing-table again, and saw that the shoe upon it, once white, now
yellow, had never been worn.

"He calls the knaves, Jacks, this boy!" said Estella with disdain,
before our first game was out.  "And what coarse hands he has!  And what
thick boots!"

I had never thought of being ashamed of my hands before; but now I began
to consider them.  Her contempt for me was so strong that I caught it.

She won the game, and I dealt.  I misdealt, as was only natural, when I
knew she was lying in wait for me to do wrong; and she denounced me for
a stupid, clumsy laboring-boy.

"You say nothing of her," remarked Miss Havisham to me, as she looked
on.  "She says many hard things of you, but you say nothing of her.
What do you think of her?"

"I don’t like to say," I stammered.

"Tell me in my ear," said Miss Havisham, bending down.

"I think she is very proud," I replied, in a whisper.

"Anything else?"

"I think she is very pretty."

"Anything else?"

"I think she is very insulting."  (She was looking at me then with a
look of supreme aversion.)

"Anything else?"

"I think I should like to go home."

"You shall go soon," said Miss Havisham aloud; "play the game out."

I played the game to an end with Estella, and she beggared me.  She
threw the cards down on the table when she had won them all, as if she
despised them for having been won of me.

"When shall I have you here again?" said Miss Havisham.  "Let me think.
I know nothing of days of the week, or of weeks of the year.  Come again
after six days.  You hear?"

"Yes, ma’am."

"Estella, take him down.  Let him have something to eat, and let him
roam and look about him while he eats.  Go, Pip."

I followed the candle down, as I had followed the candle up, and she
stood it in the place where we had found it.  Until she opened the side
entrance, I had fancied, without thinking about it, that it must
necessarily be night-time. The rush of the daylight quite confounded me,
and made me feel as if I had been in the candle-light of the strange
room many hours.

When I reached home, my sister was very curious to know all about Miss
Havisham and what I had seen and done at her house.  Uncle Pumblechook,
too, came hurrying over, armed with many questions.

I was naturally a truthful boy—as boys go—but I knew instinctively that
I could not make myself understood about that strange visit.  So I
didn’t try.  When he fired his first question, as to What was Miss
Havisham like?

"Very tall and dark," I told him.

"Is she, uncle?" asked my sister.

Mr. Pumblechook winked assent; from which I at once inferred that he had
never seen Miss Havisham, for she was nothing of the kind.

"Good!" said Mr. Pumblechook conceitedly. "Now, boy!  What was she a
doing of when you went in to-day?" he continued.

"She was sitting," I answered, "in a black velvet coach."

Mr. Pumblechook and Mrs. Joe stared at one another—as they well
might—and both repeated, "In a black velvet coach?"

"Yes," said I.  "And Miss Estella—that’s her niece, I think—handed her
in cake and wine at the coach-window, on a gold plate. And we all had
cake and wine on gold plates. And I got up behind the coach to eat mine,
because she told me to."

"Was anybody else there?" asked Mr. Pumblechook.

"Four dogs," said I.

"Large or small?"

"Immense," said I.  "And they fought for veal cutlets out of a silver
basket."

Mr. Pumblechook and Mrs. Joe stared at one another again in utter
amazement.  I was perfectly frantic—a reckless witness under the
torture—and would have told them anything.

"Where _was_ this coach, in the name of gracious?" asked my sister.

"In Miss Havisham’s room."  They stared again.  "But there weren’t any
horses to it."  I added this saving clause, in the moment of rejecting
four richly caparisoned coursers which I had had wild thoughts of
harnessing.

"Can this be possible, uncle?" asked Mrs. Joe. "What can the boy mean?"

"I’ll tell you, Mum," said Mr. Pumblechook. "My opinion is, it’s a
sedan-chair.  She’s flighty, you know—very flighty—quite flighty enough
to pass her days in a sedan-chair."

"Did you ever see her in it, uncle?" asked Mrs. Joe.

"How could I?" he returned, forced to the admission, "when I never see
her in my life. Never clapped eyes upon her!"

"Goodness, uncle!  And yet you have spoken to her!"

"Just through the door," he replied testily. "Now, boy, what did you
play?"

"We played with flags."

"Flags!" echoed my sister.

"Yes," said I.  "Estella waved a blue flag, and I waved a red one, and
Miss Havisham waved one sprinkled all over with little gold stars, out
at the coach-window.  And then we all waved our swords and hurrahed."

"Swords!" repeated my sister.  "Where did you get swords from?"

"Out of a cupboard," said I.  "And I saw pistols in it—and jam—and
pills.  And there was no daylight in the room, but it was all lighted up
with candles."

"That’s true, Mum," said Mr. Pumblechook, with a grave nod.  "That’s the
state of the case, for that much I’ve seen myself."  And then they both
stared at me, and I at them, and plaited the right leg of my trousers
with my right hand.

If they had asked me any more questions I should undoubtedly have
betrayed myself, for I was even then on the point of mentioning that
there was a balloon in the yard, and should have hazarded the statement
but for my invention being divided between that phenomenon and a bear.
They were so much occupied, however, in discussing the marvels I had
already presented for their consideration, that I escaped.  The subject
still held them when Joe came in from his work to have a cup of tea. To
whom my sister, more for the relief of her own mind than for the
gratification of his, related my pretended experiences.

Now, when I saw Joe open his blue eyes and roll them all round the
kitchen in helpless amazement, I was overtaken by penitence; but only as
regarded him—not in the least as regarded the other two.  Towards Joe,
and Joe only, I considered myself a young monster, while they sat
debating what results would come to me from Miss Havisham’s acquaintance
and favor.  They had no doubt that Miss Havisham would "do something"
for me; their doubts related to the form that something would take. My
sister stood out for "property."  Mr. Pumblechook was in favor of a
handsome premium for binding me apprentice to some genteel trade,—say,
the corn and seed trade, for instance.  Joe fell into the deepest
disgrace with both, for offering the bright suggestion that I might only
be presented with one of the dogs who had fought for the veal cutlets.
"If a fool’s head can’t express better opinions than that," said my
sister, "and you have got any work to do, you had better go and do it."
So he went.

After Mr. Pumblechook had driven off, and when my sister was washing up,
I stole into the forge to Joe, and remained by him until he had done for
the night.  Then I said, "Before the fire goes out, Joe, I should like
to tell you something."

"Should you, Pip?" said Joe, drawing his shoeing-stool near the forge.
"Then tell us. What is it, Pip?"

"Joe," said I, taking hold of his rolled-up shirt sleeve, and twisting
it between my finger and thumb, "you remember all that about Miss
Havisham’s?"

"Remember?" said Joe.  "I believe you!  Wonderful!"

"It’s a terrible thing, Joe; it ain’t true."

"What are you telling of, Pip?" cried Joe, falling back in the greatest
amazement.  "You don’t mean to say it’s—"

"Yes, I do; it’s lies, Joe."

"But not all of it?  Why sure you don’t mean to say, Pip, that there was
no black welwet co—ch?"  For, I stood shaking my head.  "But at least
there was dogs, Pip? Come, Pip," said Joe persuasively, "if there warn’t
no weal cutlets, at least there was dogs?"

"No, Joe."

"_A_ dog?" said Joe.  "A puppy?  Come?"

"No, Joe, there was nothing at all of the kind."

As I fixed my eyes hopelessly on Joe, Joe contemplated me in dismay.
"Pip, old chap! This won’t do, old fellow!  I say!  Where do you expect
to go to?"

"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, 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 much more to that effect.

"There’s one thing you maybe 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!"

There was some hope in this piece of wisdom, and it rather encouraged
me.

"You’re not angry with me, Joe?"

"No, old chap.  But you might bear in mind about them dog fights and
weal cutlets when you say your prayers to-night.  That’s all, old chap,
and don’t never do it no more."

            *III.  HOW PIP FELL HEIR TO GREAT EXPECTATIONS*

The happy idea occurred to me a morning or two later when I woke, that
the best step I could take towards making myself uncommon was to get out
of Biddy everything she knew.  In pursuance of this idea, I mentioned to
Biddy, when I went to Mr. Wopsle’s aunt’s at night, that I had a
particular reason for wishing to get on in life, and that I should feel
very much obliged to her if she would impart all her learning to me.
Biddy, who was the most obliging of girls, immediately said she would,
and indeed began to carry out her promise within five minutes.

The books at the school were few and ragged, but we attacked them all
valiantly during the course of the winter, and even refreshed our
budding minds with newspaper scraps.  And with every new piece of
knowledge I could fancy myself saying to Miss Estella, "Now am I
common?"

At the appointed time I returned to Miss Havisham’s, and my hesitating
ring at the gate brought out Estella.

"You are to come this way to-day," she said after admitting me, and took
me to quite another part of the house.

We went in at a door, which stood open, and into a gloomy room with a
low ceiling on the ground floor at the back.  There was some company in
the room, and Estella said to me as she joined it, "You are to go and
stand there, boy, till you are wanted."  "There," being the window, I
crossed to it, and stood "there," in a very uncomfortable state of mind,
looking out.

Presently she brought a candle and led the way down a dark passage to a
staircase.  As we went up the stairs we met a man coming down. He was
large and bald, with bushy black eyebrows and deep-set eyes which were
disagreeably keen.  He was nothing to me at the time, and yet I couldn’t
help observe him.

He stopped and looked at me.

"How do _you_ come here?" he asked.

"Miss Havisham sent for me, sir," I explained.

"Well!  Behave yourself.  I have a pretty large experience of boys, and
you’re a bad set of fellows.  Now mind!" said he, biting the side of his
great forefinger as he frowned at me, "you behave yourself!"

With those words he released me—which I was glad of, for his hand smelt
of scented soap—and went his way downstairs.  I wondered whether he
could be a doctor; but no, I thought; he couldn’t be a doctor, or he
would have a quieter manner.  There was not much time to consider the
subject, for we were soon in Miss Havisham’s room, where she and
everything else were just as I had left them.  Estella left me standing
near the door, and I stood there until Miss Havisham cast her eyes upon
me from the dressing-table.

"So!" she said, without being startled or surprised; "the days have worn
away, have they?"

"Yes, ma’am.  To-day is—"

"There, there, there!" with the impatient movement of her fingers.  "I
don’t want to know.  Are you ready to play?"

I was obliged to answer in some confusion, "I don’t think I am, ma’am."

"Not at cards again?" she demanded with a searching look.

"Yes, ma’am; I could do that, if I was wanted."

"Since this house strikes you old and grave, boy," said Miss Havisham,
impatiently, "and you are unwilling to play, are you willing to work?"

I could answer this inquiry with a better heart than I had been able to
find for the other question, and I said I was quite willing.

"Then go into that opposite room," said she, pointing at the door behind
me with her withered hand, "and wait there till I come."

I did so, and after hearing mice scamper about the faintly lighted room
for a few minutes, Miss Havisham entered and laid a hand upon my
shoulder.  In her other hand she had a crutch-headed stick on which she
leaned, and she looked like the Witch of the place.

"This," said she, pointing to the long table with her stick, "is where I
will be laid when I am dead.  They shall come and look at me here."

With some vague misgiving that she might get upon the table then and
there and die at once, the complete realization of the ghastly wax-work
at the Fair, I shrank under her touch.

"What do you think that is?" she asked me, again pointing with her
stick; "that, where those cobwebs are?"

"I can’t guess what it is, ma’am."

"It’s a great cake.  A bride-cake.  Mine!"

She looked all around the room in a glaring manner, and then said,
leaning on me while her hand twitched my shoulder, "Come, come, come!
Walk me, walk me!"

From this I made out that the work I had to do was to walk Miss Havisham
round and round the room.  So I started at once, she following at a
fitful speed, twitching the hand upon my shoulder.  After a while she
said, "Call Estella," and I did so.  Then the company I had noticed
before filed in and paid their respects, which Miss Havisham hardly
seemed to hear.

While Estella was away lighting them down, Miss Havisham still walked
with her hand on my shoulder, but more and more slowly.  At last she
stopped before the fire, and said, after muttering and looking at it
some seconds,

"This is my birthday, Pip."

I was going to wish her many happy returns, when she lifted her stick.

"I don’t suffer it to be spoken of.  I don’t suffer those who were here
just now or any one to speak of it.  They come here on the day, but they
dare not refer to it."

Of course _I_ made no further effort to refer to it.

"On this day of the year, long before you were born, this heap of
decay," stabbing with her crutched stick at the pile of cobwebs on the
table but not touching it, "was brought here. It and I have worn away
together.  The mice have gnawed at it, and sharper teeth than teeth of
mice have gnawed at me."

She held the head of her stick against her heart as she stood looking at
the table; she in her once white dress, all yellow and withered; the
once white cloth all yellow and withered; everything around, in a state
to crumble under a touch.

"When the ruin is complete," said she, with a ghastly look, "and when
they lay me dead, in my bride’s dress on the bride’s table—which shall
be done, and which will be the finished curse upon him—so much the
better if it is done on this day!"

She stood looking at the table as if she stood looking at her own figure
lying there.  I remained quiet.  Estella returned, and she too remained
quiet.  It seemed to me that we continued thus a long time.  In the
heavy air of the room, and the heavy darkness that brooded in its
remoter corners, I even had an alarming fancy that Estella and I might
presently crumble to dust.

And thus passed my second visit to Miss Havisham’s.

On my next visit, the following week, I saw a garden-chair—a light chair
on wheels, that you pushed from behind.  I entered, that same day, on a
regular occupation of pushing Miss Havisham in this chair (when she was
tired of walking with her hand upon my shoulder) round her own room, and
across the landing, and round the other room.  Over and over and over
again, we would make these journeys, and sometimes they would last as
long as three hours at a stretch.  I insensibly fall into a general
mention of these journeys as numerous, because it was at once settled
that I should return every alternate day at noon for these purposes, and
because I am now going to sum up a period of at least eight or ten
months.

As we began to be more used to one another, Miss Havisham talked more to
me, and asked me such questions as, what had I learned and what was I
going to be?  I told her I was going to be apprenticed to Joe, I
believed; and I enlarged upon my knowing nothing and wanting to know