I adapted them for my own repetition, and said

to my pillow, "I love her, I love her, I love her!" hundreds of

times. Then, a burst of gratitude came upon me, that she should be

destined for me, once the blacksmith's boy. Then, I thought if she

were, as I feared, by no means rapturously grateful for that

destiny yet, when would she begin to be interested in me? When

should I awaken the heart within her, that was mute and sleeping

now?

Ah me! I thought those were high and great emotions. But I never

thought there was anything low and small in my keeping away from

Joe, because I knew she would be contemptuous of him. It was but a

day gone, and Joe had brought the tears into my eyes; they had soon

dried, God forgive me! soon dried.

Chapter 30

After well considering the matter while I was dressing at the Blue

Boar in the morning, I resolved to tell my guardian that I doubted

Orlick's being the right sort of man to fill a post of trust at

Miss Havisham's. "Why, of course he is not the right sort of man,

Pip," said my guardian, comfortably satisfied beforehand on the

general head, "because the man who fills the post of trust never is

the right sort of man." It seemed quite to put him into spirits, to

find that this particular post was not exceptionally held by the

right sort of man, and he listened in a satisfied manner while I

told him what knowledge I had of Orlick. "Very good, Pip," he

observed, when I had concluded, "I'll go round presently, and pay

our friend off." Rather alarmed by this summary action, I was for a

little delay, and even hinted that our friend himself might be

difficult to deal with. "Oh no he won't," said my guardian, making

his pocket-handkerchief-point, with perfect confidence; "I should

like to see him argue the question with me."

As we were going back together to London by the mid-day coach, and

as I breakfasted under such terrors of Pumblechook that I could

scarcely hold my cup, this gave me an opportunity of saying that I

wanted a walk, and that I would go on along the London-road while

Mr. Jaggers was occupied, if he would let the coachman know that I

would get into my place when overtaken. I was thus enabled to fly

from the Blue Boar immediately after breakfast. By then making a

loop of about a couple of miles into the open country at the back

of Pumblechook's premises, I got round into the High-street again,

a little beyond that pitfall, and felt myself in comparative

security.

It was interesting to be in the quiet old town once more, and it

was not disagreeable to be here and there suddenly recognized and

stared after. One or two of the tradespeople even darted out of

their shops and went a little way down the street before me, that

they might turn, as if they had forgotten something, and pass me

face to face - on which occasions I don't know whether they or I

made the worse pretence; they of not doing it, or I of not seeing

it. Still my position was a distinguished one, and I was not at all

dissatisfied with it, until Fate threw me in the way of that

unlimited miscreant, Trabb's boy.

Casting my eyes along the street at a certain point of my progress,

I beheld Trabb's boy approaching, lashing himself with an empty

blue bag. Deeming that a serene and unconscious contemplation of

him would best beseem me, and would be most likely to quell his

evil mind, I advanced with that expression of countenance, and was

rather congratulating myself on my success, when suddenly the knees

of Trabb's boy smote together, his hair uprose, his cap fell off,

he trembled violently in every limb, staggered out into the road,

and crying to the populace, "Hold me! I'm so frightened!" feigned to

be in a paroxysm of terror and contrition, occasioned by the

dignity of my appearance. As I passed him, his teeth loudly

chattered in his head, and with every mark of extreme humiliation,

he prostrated himself in the dust.