“Four dogs,” said I.

“Large or small?”

“Immense,” said I.  “And they fought for veal cutlets out of a silver basket.”

Mr. Pumblechook and Mrs. Joe stared at one another again, in utter amazement.  I was perfectly frantic — a reckless witness under the torture — and would have told them anything.

“Where was this coach, in the name of gracious?” asked my sister.

“In Miss Havisham’s room.”  They stared again.  “But there weren’t any horses to it.”  I added this saving clause, in the moment of rejecting four richly caparisoned coursers which I had had wild thoughts of harnessing.

“Can this be possible, uncle?” asked Mrs. Joe.  “What can the boy mean?”

“I’ll tell you, Mum,” said Mr. Pumblechook.  “My opinion is, it’s a sedan-chair.  She’s flighty, you know — very flighty — quite flighty enough to pass her days in a sedan-chair.”

“Did you ever see her in it, uncle?” asked Mrs. Joe.

“How could I,” he returned, forced to the admission, “when I never see her in my life?  Never clapped eyes upon her!”

“Goodness, uncle!  And yet you have spoken to her?”

“Why, don’t you know,” said Mr. Pumblechook, testily, “that when I have been there, I have been took up to the outside of her door, and the door has stood ajar, and she has spoke to me that way.  Don’t say you don’t know that, Mum.  Howsever, the boy went there to play.  What did you play at, boy?”

“We played with flags,” I said. (I beg to observe that I think of myself with amazement, when I recall the lies I told on this occasion.)

“Flags!” echoed my sister.

“Yes,” said I.  “Estella waved a blue flag, and I waved a red one, and Miss Havisham waved one sprinkled all over with little gold stars, out at the coach-window.  And then we all waved our swords and hurrahed.”

“Swords!” repeated my sister.  “Where did you get swords from?”

“Out of a cupboard,” said I.  “And I saw pistols in it — and jam — and pills.  And there was no daylight in the room, but it was all lighted up with candles.”

“That’s true, Mum,” said Mr. Pumblechook, with a grave nod.  “That’s the state of the case, for that much I’ve seen myself.”  And then they both stared at me, and I, with an obtrusive show of artlessness on my countenance, stared at them, and plaited the right leg of my trousers with my right hand.

If they had asked me any more questions I should undoubtedly have betrayed myself, for I was even then on the point of mentioning that there was a balloon in the yard, and should have hazarded the statement but for my invention being divided between that phenomenon and a bear in the brewery.  They were so much occupied, however, in discussing the marvels I had already presented for their consideration, that I escaped.  The subject still held them when Joe came in from his work to have a cup of tea.  To whom my sister, more for the relief of her own mind than for the gratification of his, related my pretended experiences.