“Look’ee here!” he went on, taking my watch out of my pocket, and turning towards him a ring on my finger, while I recoiled from his touch as if he had been a snake, “a gold ’un and a beauty:  that’s a gentleman’s, I hope!  A diamond all set round with rubies; that’s a gentleman’s, I hope!  Look at your linen; fine and beautiful!  Look at your clothes; better ain’t to be got!  And your books too,” turning his eyes round the room, “mounting up, on their shelves, by hundreds!  And you read ’em; don’t you?  I see you’d been a reading of ’em when I come in.  Ha, ha, ha!  You shall read ’em to me, dear boy!  And if they’re in foreign languages wot I don’t understand, I shall be just as proud as if I did.”

Again he took both my hands and put them to his lips, while my blood ran cold within me.

“Don’t you mind talking, Pip,” said he, after again drawing his sleeve over his eyes and forehead, as the click came in his throat which I well remembered — and he was all the more horrible to me that he was so much in earnest; “you can’t do better nor keep quiet, dear boy.  You ain’t looked slowly forward to this as I have; you wosn’t prepared for this, as I wos.  But didn’t you never think it might be me?”

“O no, no, no,” I returned, “Never, never!”

“Well, you see it wos me, and single-handed.  Never a soul in it but my own self and Mr. Jaggers.”

“Was there no one else?” I asked.

“No,” said he, with a glance of surprise:  “who else should there be?  And, dear boy, how good looking you have growed!  There’s bright eyes somewheres — eh?  Isn’t there bright eyes somewheres, wot you love the thoughts on?”

O Estella, Estella!

“They shall be yourn, dear boy, if money can buy ’em.  Not that a gentleman like you, so well set up as you, can’t win ’em off of his own game; but money shall back you!  Let me finish wot I was a-telling you, dear boy.  From that there hut and that there hiring-out, I got money left me by my master (which died, and had been the same as me), and got my liberty and went for myself.  In every single thing I went for, I went for you.  ’Lord strike a blight upon it,’ I says, wotever it was I went for, ’if it ain’t for him!’ It all prospered wonderful.  As I giv’ you to understand just now, I’m famous for it.  It was the money left me, and the gains of the first few year wot I sent home to Mr. Jaggers — all for you — when he first come arter you, agreeable to my letter.”

O, that he had never come!  That he had left me at the forge — far from contented, yet, by comparison happy!

“And then, dear boy, it was a recompense to me, look’ee here, to know in secret that I was making a gentleman.  The blood horses of them colonists might fling up the dust over me as I was walking; what do I say?  I says to myself, ’I’m making a better gentleman nor ever you’ll be!’ When one of ’em says to another, ’He was a convict, a few year ago, and is a ignorant common