m me,"
said I.

"Patience, my dear Handel: time enough, time enough. But you have
something more to say?"

"I am ashamed to say it," I returned, "and yet it's no worse to say it
than to think it. You call me a lucky fellow. Of course, I am. I was a
blacksmith's boy but yesterday; I am--what shall I say I am--to-day?"

"Say a good fellow, if you want a phrase," returned Herbert, smiling,
and clapping his hand on the back of mine--"a good fellow, with
impetuosity and hesitation, boldness and diffidence, action and
dreaming, curiously mixed in him."

I stopped for a moment to consider whether there really was this mixture
in my character. On the whole, I by no means recognized the analysis,
but thought it not worth disputing.

"When I ask what I am to call myself to-day, Herbert," I went on, "I
suggest what I have in my thoughts. You say I am lucky. I know I have
done nothing to raise myself in life, and that Fortune alone has raised
me; that is being very lucky. And yet, when I think of Estella--"

("And when don't you, you know?" Herbert threw in, with his eyes on the
fire; which I thought kind and sympathetic of him.)

"--Then, my dear Herbert, I cannot tell you how dependent and uncertain
I feel, and how exposed to hundreds of chances. Avoiding forbidden
ground, as you did just now, I may still say that on the constancy of
one person (naming no person) all my expectations depend. And at the
best, how indefinite and unsatisfactory, only to know so vaguely what
they are!" In saying this, I relieved my mind of what had always been
there, more or less, though no doubt most since yesterday.

"Now, Handel," Herbert replied, in his gay, hopeful way, "it seems to me
that in the despondency of the tender passion, we are looking into our
gift-horse's mouth with a magnifying-glass. Likewise, it seems to me
that, concentrating our attention on the examination, we altogether
overlook one of the best points of the animal. Didn't you tell me that
your guardian, Mr. Jaggers, told you in the beginning, that you were
not endowed with expectations only? And even if he had not told you
so,--though that is a very large If, I grant,--could you believe that of
all men in London, Mr. Jaggers is the man to hold his present relations
towards you unless he were sure of his ground?"

I said I could not deny that this was a strong point. I said it (people
often do so, in such cases) like a rather reluctant concession to truth
and justic