young friend, you must be hungry, you must be exhausted. Be seated. Here
is a chicken had round from the Boar, here is a tongue had round from
the Boar, here's one or two little things had round from the Boar that I
hope you may not despise. 'But do I,' said Mr. Pumblechook, getting up
again the moment after he had sat down, 'see afore me him as I ever
sported with in his times of happy infancy? And may I--_may_ I--?' This
'May I?' meant might he shake hands? I consented, and he was fervent,
and then sat down again."

Returning to the coffee-room, we discover it was the identical apartment
in which the unexpected and very peculiar meeting took place between Pip
and "the spider," Bentley Drummle, "the sulky and red-looking young man,
of a heavy order of architecture," both "Finches of the Grove," and
rivals for the hand of Estella. Each stands shoulder to shoulder against
the fire-place, and, but for Pip's forbearance, an explosion must have
taken place.

Through the same coffee-room windows, poor Pip looks under the reverses
of his great expectations in consequence of the discovery and subsequent
death of his patron. The "servile Pumblechook," who appears here
uninvited, again changes his manner and conduct, becoming ostentatiously
compassionate and forgiving, as he had been meanly servile in the time
of Pip's new prosperity, thus:--"'Young man, I am sorry to see you
brought low, but what else could be expected! what else could be
expected! . . . This is him . . . as I have rode in my shay-cart; this
is him as I have seen brought up by hand; this is him untoe the sister
of which I was uncle by marriage, as her name was Georgiana M'ria from
her own mother, let him deny it if he can.' . . ."

Dickens takes leave of the Blue Boar, in the last chapter of the work,
in these words:--

"The tidings of my high fortunes having had a
heavy fall, had got down to my native place and
its neighbourhood, before I got there. I found the
Blue Boar in possession of the intelligence, and I
found that it made a great change in the Boar's
demeanour. Whereas the Boar had cultivated my good
opinion with warm assiduity when I was coming into
property, the Boar was exceedingly cool on the
subject now that I was going out of property.

"It was evening when I arrived, much fatigued by
the journey I had so often made so easily. The