I could think of nothing better to say than “I am glad you think so, Joe.”

“So am I,” returned Joe, catching me up.  “I am glad I think so, Pip.  A little redness or a little matter of Bone, here or there, what does it signify to Me?”

I sagaciously observed, if it didn’t signify to him, to whom did it signify?

“Certainly!” assented Joe.  “That’s it.  You’re right, old chap!  When I got acquainted with your sister, it were the talk how she was bringing you up by hand.  Very kind of her too, all the folks said, and I said, along with all the folks.  As to you,” Joe pursued with a countenance expressive of seeing something very nasty indeed:  “if you could have been aware how small and flabby and mean you was, dear me, you’d have formed the most contemptible opinion of yourself!”

Not exactly relishing this, I said, “Never mind me, Joe.”

“But I did mind you, Pip,” he returned with tender simplicity.  “When I offered to your sister to keep company, and to be asked in church at such times as she was willing and ready to come to the forge, I said to her, ’And bring the poor little child.  God bless the poor little child,’ I said to your sister, ’there’s room for him at the forge!’”

I broke out crying and begging pardon, and hugged Joe round the neck:  who dropped the poker to hug me, and to say, “Ever the best of friends; an’t us, Pip?  Don’t cry, old chap!”

When this little interruption was over, Joe resumed: 

“Well, you see, Pip, and here we are!  That’s about where it lights; here we are!  Now, when you take me in hand in my learning, Pip (and I tell you beforehand I am awful dull, most awful dull), Mrs. Joe mustn’t see too much of what we’re up to.  It must be done, as I may say, on the sly.  And why on the sly?  I’ll tell you why, Pip.”

He had taken up the poker again; without which, I doubt if he could have proceeded in his demonstration.

“Your sister is given to government.”

“Given to government, Joe?” I was startled, for I had some shadowy idea (and I am afraid I must add, hope) that Joe had divorced her in a favour of the Lords of the Admiralty, or Treasury.

“Given to government,” said Joe.  “Which I meantersay the government of you and myself.”

“Oh!”

“And she an’t over partial to having scholars on the premises,” Joe continued, “and in partickler would not be over partial to my being a scholar, for fear as I might rise.  Like a sort or rebel, don’t you see?”

I was going to retort with an inquiry, and had got as far as “Why—­” when Joe stopped me.

“Stay a bit.  I know what you’re a-going to say, Pip; stay a bit!  I don’t deny that your sister comes the Mo-gul over us, now and again.  I don’t deny that she do throw us back-falls, and that she do drop down upon us heavy.  At such times as when your sister is on the Ram-page, Pip,” Joe sank his voice to a whisper and glanced at the door, “candour compels fur to admit that she is a Buster.”