However, I came into town on the Monday night to be ready for Joe, and I got up early in the morning, and caused the sittingroom and breakfast-table to assume their most splendid appearance.  Unfortunately the morning was drizzly, and an angel could not have concealed the fact that Barnard was shedding sooty tears outside the window, like some weak giant of a Sweep.

As the time approached I should have liked to run away, but the Avenger pursuant to orders was in the hall, and presently I heard Joe on the staircase.  I knew it was Joe, by his clumsy manner of coming up-stairs — his state boots being always too big for him — and by the time it took him to read the names on the other floors in the course of his ascent.  When at last he stopped outside our door, I could hear his finger tracing over the painted letters of my name, and I afterwards distinctly heard him breathing in at the keyhole.  Finally he gave a faint single rap, and Pepper — such was the compromising name of the avenging boy — announced “Mr. Gargery!” I thought he never would have done wiping his feet, and that I must have gone out to lift him off the mat, but at last he came in.

“Joe, how are you, Joe?”

“Pip, how air you, Pip?”

With his good honest face all glowing and shining, and his hat put down on the floor between us, he caught both my hands and worked them straight up and down, as if I had been the lastpatented Pump.

“I am glad to see you, Joe.  Give me your hat.”

But Joe, taking it up carefully with both hands, like a bird’s-nest with eggs in it, wouldn’t hear of parting with that piece of property, and persisted in standing talking over it in a most uncomfortable way.

“Which you have that growed,” said Joe, “and that swelled, and that gentle-folked;” Joe considered a little before he discovered this word; “as to be sure you are a honour to your king and country.”

“And you, Joe, look wonderfully well.”

“Thank God,” said Joe, “I’m ekerval to most.  And your sister, she’s no worse than she were.  And Biddy, she’s ever right and ready.  And all friends is no backerder, if not no forarder.  ’Ceptin Wopsle; he’s had a drop.”

All this time (still with both hands taking great care of the bird’s-nest), Joe was rolling his eyes round and round the room, and round and round the flowered pattern of my dressing-gown.

“Had a drop, Joe?”

“Why yes,” said Joe, lowering his voice, “he’s left the Church, and went into the playacting.  Which the playacting have likeways brought him to London along with me.  And his wish were,” said Joe, getting the bird’s-nest under his left arm for the moment and groping in it for an egg with his right; “if no offence, as I would ’and you that.”

I took what Joe gave me, and found it to be the crumpled playbill of a small metropolitan theatre, announcing the first appearance, in that very week, of “the celebrated Provincial Amateur of Roscian renown, whose unique performance in the highest tragic walk of our National Bard has lately occasioned so great a sensation in local dramatic circles.”