“I do indeed, Joe.”

“Lookee here, old chap,” said Joe.  “I done what I could to keep you and Tickler in sunders, but my power were not always fully equal to my inclinations.  For when your poor sister had a mind to drop into you, it were not so much,” said Joe, in his favourite argumentative way, “that she dropped into me too, if I put myself in opposition to her but that she dropped into you always heavier for it.  I noticed that.  It ain’t a grab at a man’s whisker, not yet a shake or two of a man (to which your sister was quite welcome), that ’ud put a man off from getting a little child out of punishment.  But when that little child is dropped into, heavier, for that grab of whisker or shaking, then that man naterally up and says to himself, ’Where is the good as you are a-doing?  I grant you I see the ‘arm,’ says the man, ’but I don’t see the good.  I call upon you, sir, therefore, to pint out the good.’”

“The man says?” I observed, as Joe waited for me to speak.

“The man says,” Joe assented.  “Is he right, that man?”

“Dear Joe, he is always right.”

“Well, old chap,” said Joe, “then abide by your words.  If he’s always right (which in general he’s more likely wrong), he’s right when he says this:  — Supposing ever you kep any little matter to yourself, when you was a little child, you kep it mostly because you know’d as J. Gargery’s power to part you and Tickler in sunders, were not fully equal to his inclinations.  Therefore, think no more of it as betwixt two sech, and do not let us pass remarks upon onnecessary subjects.  Biddy giv’ herself a deal o’ trouble with me afore I left (for I am almost awful dull), as I should view it in this light, and, viewing it in this light, as I should so put it.  Both of which,” said Joe, quite charmed with his logical arrangement, “being done, now this to you a true friend, say.  Namely.  You mustn’t go a-over-doing on it, but you must have your supper and your wine-and-water, and you must be put betwixt the sheets.”

The delicacy with which Joe dismissed this theme, and the sweet tact and kindness with which Biddy — who with her woman’s wit had found me out so soon — had prepared him for it, made a deep impression on my mind.  But whether Joe knew how poor I was, and how my great expectations had all dissolved, like our own marsh mists before the sun, I could not understand.

Another thing in Joe that I could not understand when it first began to develop itself, but which I soon arrived at a sorrowful comprehension of, was this:  As I became stronger and better, Joe became a little less easy with me.  In my weakness and entire dependence on him, the dear fellow had fallen into the old tone, and called me by the old names, the dear “old Pip, old chap,” that now were music in my ears.  I too had fallen into the old ways, only happy and thankful that he let me.  But, imperceptibly, though I held by them fast, Joe’s hold upon them began to slacken; and whereas I wondered at this, at first, I soon began to understand that the cause of it was in me, and that the fault of it was all mine.