Great Expectations Chapter 14: Ashamed of Home

Pip's apprehensions hold true--he's unhappy with blacksmithing, and moreover, unhappy and ashamed about living the common life with Joe and Mrs. Joe. It's only Joe's enthusiasm that keeps him working, though he does so with the constant fear that Estella will look through the windows and see him covered with black soot and dust, the commonest of boys. It's a dark period, Pip says:

"There have been occasions in my later life (I suppose as in most lives) when I have felt for a time as if a thick curtain had fallen on all its interest and romance, to shut me out from anything save dull endurance any more. Never has that curtain dropped so heavy and blank, as when my way in life lay stretched out straight before me through the newly-entered road of apprenticeship to Joe." Chapter 14, pg. 124.