On a certain occasion when the Finches were assembled in force, and when good feeling was being promoted in the usual manner by nobody’s agreeing with anybody else, the presiding Finch called the Grove to order, forasmuch as Mr. Drummle had not yet toasted a lady; which, according to the solemn constitution of the society, it was the brute’s turn to do that day.  I thought I saw him leer in an ugly way at me while the decanters were going round, but as there was no love lost between us, that might easily be.  What was my indignant surprise when he called upon the company to pledge him to “Estella!”

“Estella who?” said I.

“Never you mind,” retorted Drummle.

“Estella of where?” said I.  “You are bound to say of where.”  Which he was, as a Finch.

“Of Richmond, gentlemen,” said Drummle, putting me out of the question, “and a peerless beauty.”

Much he knew about peerless beauties, a mean miserable idiot!  I whispered Herbert.

“I know that lady,” said Herbert, across the table, when the toast had been honoured.

“Do you?” said Drummle.

“And so do I,” I added, with a scarlet face.

“Do you?” said Drummle.  “Oh, Lord!”

This was the only retort — except glass or crockery — that the heavy creature was capable of making; but, I became as highly incensed by it as if it had been barbed with wit, and I immediately rose in my place and said that I could not but regard it as being like the honourable Finch’s impudence to come down to that Grove — we always talked about coming down to that Grove, as a neat Parliamentary turn of expression — down to that Grove, proposing a lady of whom he knew nothing.  Mr. Drummle upon this, starting up, demanded what I meant by that?  Whereupon, I made him the extreme reply that I believed he knew where I was to be found.

Whether it was possible in a Christian country to get on without blood, after this, was a question on which the Finches were divided.  The debate upon it grew so lively, indeed, that at least six more honourable members told six more, during the discussion, that they believed they knew where they were to be found.  However, it was decided at last (the Grove being a Court of Honour) that if Mr. Drummle would bring never so slight a certificate from the lady, importing that he had the honour of her acquaintance, Mr. Pip must express his regret, as a gentleman and a Finch, for “having been betrayed into a warmth which.”  Next day was appointed for the production (lest our honour should take cold from delay), and next day Drummle appeared with a polite little avowal in Estella’s hand, that she had had the honour of dancing with him several times.  This left me no course but to regret that I had been “betrayed into a warmth which,” and on the whole to repudiate, as untenable, the idea that I was to be found anywhere.  Drummle and I then sat snorting at one another for an hour, while the Grove engaged in indiscriminate contradiction, and finally the promotion of good feeling was declared to have gone ahead at an amazing rate.