"I heerd," returned Joe, "as it were not Miss Havisham, old chap."

"Did you hear who it was, Joe?"

"Well! I heerd as it were a person what sent the person what giv' you
the bank-notes at the Jolly Bargemen, Pip."

"So it was."

"Astonishing!" said Joe, in the placidest way.

"Did you hear that he was dead, Joe?" I presently asked, with increasing
diffidence.

"Which? Him as sent the bank-notes, Pip?"

"Yes."

"I think," said Joe, after meditating a long time, and looking rather
evasively at the window-seat, "as I did hear tell that how he were
something or another in a general way in that direction."

"Did you hear anything of his circumstances, Joe?"

"Not partickler, Pip."

"If you would like to hear, Joe--" I was beginning, when Joe got up and
came to my sofa.

"Lookee here, old chap," said Joe, bending over me. "Ever the best of
friends; ain't us, Pip?"

I was ashamed to answer him.

"Wery good, then," said Joe, as if I had answered; "that's all right;
that's agreed upon. Then why go into subjects, old chap, which as
betwixt two sech must be for ever onnecessary? There's subjects enough
as betwixt two sech, without onnecessary ones. Lord! To think of your
poor sister and her Rampages! And don't you remember Tickler?"

"I do indeed, Joe."

"Lookee here, old chap," said Joe. "I done what I could to keep you
and Tickler in sunders, but my power were not always fully equal to my
inclinations. For when your poor sister had a mind to drop into you, it
were not so much," said Joe, in his favorite argumentative way, "that
she dropped into me too, if I put myself in opposition to her, but that
she dropped into you always heavier for it. I noticed that. It ain't a
grab at a man's whisker, not yet a shake or two of a man (to which your
sister was quite welcome), that 'ud put a man off from getting a little
child out of punishment. But when that little child is dropped into
heavier for that grab of whisker or shaking, then that man naterally up
and says to himself, 'Where is the good as you are a doing? I grant you
I see the 'arm,' says the man, 'but I don't see the good. I call upon
you, sir, therefore, to pint out the good.'"

"The man says?" I observed, as Joe waited for me to speak.

"The man says," Joe assented. "Is he right, that man?"

"Dear Joe, he is always right."

"Well, old chap," said Joe, "then abide by your words. If he's always
right (which in general he's more likely wrong), he's