cumbered with little bottles, Joe now sat down to his great work, first choosing a pen from the pen-tray as if it were a chest of large tools, and tucking up his sleeves as if he were going to wield a crowbar or sledgehammer.  It was necessary for Joe to hold on heavily to the table with his left elbow, and to get his right leg well out behind him, before he could begin, and when he did begin, he made every down-stroke so slowly that it might have been six feet long, while at every up-stroke I could hear his pen spluttering extensively.  He had a curious idea that the inkstand was on the side of him where it was not, and constantly dipped his pen into space, and seemed quite satisfied with the result.  Occasionally, he was tripped up by some orthographical stumbling-block, but on the whole he got on very well indeed, and when he had signed his name, and had removed a finishing blot from the paper to the crown of his head with his two forefingers, he got up and hovered about the table, trying the effect of his performance from various points of view as it lay there, with unbounded satisfaction.

Not to make Joe uneasy by talking too much, even if I had been able to talk much, I deferred asking him about Miss Havisham until next day.  He shook his head when I then asked him if she had recovered.

“Is she dead, Joe?”

“Why you see, old chap,” said Joe, in a tone of remonstrance, and by way of getting at it by degrees, “I wouldn’t go so far as to say that, for that’s a deal to say; but she ain’t—­”

“Living, Joe?”

“That’s nigher where it is,” said Joe; “she ain’t living.”

“Did she linger long, Joe?”

“Arter you was took ill, pretty much about what you might call (if you was put to it) a week,” said Joe; still determined, on my account, to come at everything by degrees.

“Dear Joe, have you heard what becomes of her property?”

“Well, old chap,” said Joe, “it do appear that she had settled the most of it, which I meantersay tied it up, on Miss Estella.  But she had wrote out a little coddleshell in her own hand a day or two afore the accident, leaving a cool four thousand to Mr. Matthew Pocket.  And why, do you suppose, above all things, Pip, she left that cool four thousand unto him?  ’Because of Pip’s account of him the said Matthew.’  I am told by Biddy, that air the writing,” said Joe, repeating the legal turn as if it did him infinite good, “‘account of him the said Matthew.’  And a cool four thousand, Pip!”

I never discovered from whom Joe derived the conventional temperature of the four thousand pounds, but it appeared to make the sum of money more to him, and he had a manifest relish in insisting on its being cool.

This account gave me great joy, as it perfected the only good thing I had done.  I asked Joe whether he had heard if any of the other relations had any legacies?

“Miss Sarah,” said Joe, “she have twenty-five pound perannium fur to buy pills, on account of being bilious.  Miss Georgiana, she have twenty pound down.  Mrs. — what’s the name of them wild beasts with humps, old chap?”