We drank all the wine, and Mr. Pumblechook pledged himself over and over again to keep Joseph up to the mark (I don’t know what mark), and to render me efficient and constant service (I don’t know what service).  He also made known to me for the first time in my life, and certainly after having kept his secret wonderfully well, that he had always said of me, “That boy is no common boy, and mark me, his fortun’ will be no common fortun’.”  He said with a tearful smile that it was a singular thing to think of now, and I said so too.  Finally, I went out into the air, with a dim perception that there was something unwonted in the conduct of the sunshine, and found that I had slumberously got to the turn-pike without having taken any account of the road.

There, I was roused by Mr. Pumblechook’s hailing me.  He was a long way down the sunny street, and was making expressive gestures for me to stop.  I stopped, and he came up breathless.

“No, my dear friend,” said he, when he had recovered wind for speech.  “Not if I can help it.  This occasion shall not entirely pass without that affability on your part. — May I, as an old friend and well-wisher?  May I?”

We shook hands for the hundredth time at least, and he ordered a young carter out of my way with the greatest indignation.  Then, he blessed me and stood waving his hand to me until I had passed the crook in the road; and then I turned into a field and had a long nap under a hedge before I pursued my way home.

I had scant luggage to take with me to London, for little of the little I possessed was adapted to my new station.  But, I began packing that same afternoon, and wildly packed up things that I knew I should want next morning, in a fiction that there was not a moment to be lost.

So, Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday, passed; and on Friday morning I went to Mr. Pumblechook’s, to put on my new clothes and pay my visit to Miss Havisham.  Mr. Pumblechook’s own room was given up to me to dress in, and was decorated with clean towels expressly for the event.  My clothes were rather a disappointment, of course.  Probably every new and eagerly expected garment ever put on since clothes came in, fell a trifle short of the wearer’s expectation.  But after I had had my new suit on, some half an hour, and had gone through an immensity of posturing with Mr. Pumblechook’s very limited dressing-glass, in the futile endeavour to see my legs, it seemed to fit me better.  It being market morning at a neighbouring town some ten miles off, Mr. Pumblechook was not at home.  I had not told him exactly when I meant to leave, and was not likely to shake hands with him again before departing.  This was all as it should be, and I went out in my new array:  fearfully ashamed of having to pass the shopman, and suspicious after all that I was at a personal disadvantage, something like Joe’s in his Sunday suit.

I went circuitously to Miss Havisham’s by all the back ways, and rang at the bell constrainedly, on account of the stiff long fingers of my gloves.  Sarah Pocket came to the gate, and positively reeled back when she saw me so changed; her walnut-shell countenance likewise, turned from brown to green and yellow.