ot to say."

We looked at one another until I withdrew my eyes, and looked
thoughtfully at the floor. From this last speech I derived the notion
that Miss Havisham, for some reason or no reason, had not taken him
into her confidence as to her designing me for Estella; that he resented
this, and felt a jealousy about it; or that he really did object to
that scheme, and would have nothing to do with it. When I raised my eyes
again, I found that he had been shrewdly looking at me all the time, and
was doing so still.

"If that is all you have to say, sir," I remarked, "there can be nothing
left for me to say."

He nodded assent, and pulled out his thief-dreaded watch, and asked me
where I was going to dine? I replied at my own chambers, with Herbert.
As a necessary sequence, I asked him if he would favor us with his
company, and he promptly accepted the invitation. But he insisted on
walking home with me, in order that I might make no extra preparation
for him, and first he had a letter or two to write, and (of course) had
his hands to wash. So I said I would go into the outer office and talk
to Wemmick.

The fact was, that when the five hundred pounds had come into my pocket,
a thought had come into my head which had been often there before;
and it appeared to me that Wemmick was a good person to advise with
concerning such thought.

He had already locked up his safe, and made preparations for going home.
He had left his desk, brought out his two greasy office candlesticks and
stood them in line with the snuffers on a slab near the door, ready to
be extinguished; he had raked his fire low, put his hat and great-coat
ready, and was beating himself all over the chest with his safe-key, as
an athletic exercise after business.

"Mr. Wemmick," said I, "I want to ask your opinion. I am very desirous
to serve a friend."

Wemmick tightened his post-office and shook his head, as if his opinion
were dead against any fatal weakness of that sort.

"This friend," I pursued, "is trying to get on in commercial life,
but has no money, and finds it difficult and disheartening to make a
beginning. Now I want somehow to help him to a beginning."

"With money down?" said Wemmick, in a tone drier than any sawdust.

"With some money down," I replied, for an uneasy remembrance shot across
me of that symmetrical bundle of papers at home--"with some money down,
and perhaps some anticipation of my expectations."

"Mr. Pip," said Wemm