st callous of nephews, "then mention this boy, standing
Prancing here"--which I solemnly declare I was not doing--"that I have
for ever been a willing slave to?"

"Good again!" cried Uncle Pumblechook. "Well put! Prettily pointed! Good
indeed! Now Joseph, you know the case."

"No, Joseph," said my sister, still in a reproachful manner, while Joe
apologetically drew the back of his hand across and across his nose,
"you do not yet--though you may not think it--know the case. You may
consider that you do, but you do not, Joseph. For you do not know that
Uncle Pumblechook, being sensible that for anything we can tell, this
boy's fortune may be made by his going to Miss Havisham's, has offered
to take him into town to-night in his own chaise-cart, and to keep
him to-night, and to take him with his own hands to Miss Havisham's
to-morrow morning. And Lor-a-mussy me!" cried my sister, casting off her
bonnet in sudden desperation, "here I stand talking to mere Mooncalfs,
with Uncle Pumblechook waiting, and the mare catching cold at the door,
and the boy grimed with crock and dirt from the hair of his head to the
sole of his foot!"

With that, she pounced upon me, like an eagle on a lamb, and my face was
squeezed into wooden bowls in sinks, and my head was put under taps of
water-butts, and I was soaped, and kneaded, and towelled, and thumped,
and harrowed, and rasped, until I really was quite beside myself. (I
may here remark that I suppose myself to be better acquainted than
any living authority, with the ridgy effect of a wedding-ring, passing
unsympathetically over the human countenance.)

When my ablutions were completed, I was put into clean linen of the
stiffest character, like a young penitent into sackcloth, and was
trussed up in my tightest and fearfullest suit. I was then delivered
over to Mr. Pumblechook, who formally received me as if he were the
Sheriff, and who let off upon me the speech that I knew he had been
dying to make all along: "Boy, be forever grateful to all friends, but
especially unto them which brought you up by hand!"

"Good-bye, Joe!"

"God bless you, Pip, old chap!"

I had never parted from him before, and what with my feelings and what
with soapsuds, I could at first see no stars from the chaise-cart.
But they twinkled out one by one, without throwing any light on the
questions why on earth I was going to play at Miss Havisham's, and what
on earth I was expected to play at.

Chapter