more than readily undertook the care of her on
that Sunday afternoon, and Biddy and I went
out together. It was summer time and lovely
weather. When we had passed the village and
the church and the churchyard, and were out on
the marshes and began to see the sails of the
ships as they sailed on, I began to combine Miss
Havisham and Estella with the prospect, in my
usual way. When we came to the river-side
and sat down on the bank, with the water
rippling at our feet, making it all more quiet
than it would have been without that sound, I
resolved that it was a good time and place for
the admission of Biddy into my inner
confidence.

"Biddy," said I, after binding her to secrecy,
"I want to be a gentleman."

"Oh, I wouldn't, if I was you!" she returned.
"I don't think it would answer."

"Biddy," said I, with some severity, "I have
particular reasons for wanting to be a gentleman."

"You know best, Pip; but don't you think
you are happier as you are?"

"Biddy," I exclaimed, impatiently, "I am
not at all happy as I am. I am disgusted with
my calling and with my life. I have never
taken to either, since I was bound. Don't be
absurd."

"Was I absurd?" said Biddy, quietly raising
her eyebrows; "I am sorry for that; I didn't
mean to be. I only want you to do well, and
to be comfortable."

"Well then, understand once for all that I
never shall or can be comfortable—or anything
but miserable—there, Biddy!—unless I can
lead a very different sort of life from the life I
lead now."

"That's a pity!" said Biddy, shaking her
head with a sorrowful air.

Now, I too had so often thought it a pity,
that, in the singular kind of quarrel with myself
which I was always carrying on, I was half
inclined to shed tears of vexation and distress
when Biddy gave utterance to her sentiment
and my own. I told her she was right, and I
knew it was much to be regretted, but still it
was not to be helped.

"If I could have settled down," I said to
Biddy, plucking up the short grass within reach,
much as I had once upon a time pulled my feelings
out of my hair and kicked them into the
brewery wall: "if I could have settled down
and been but half as fond of the forge as I was
when I was little, I know it would have been
much better for me. You and I and Joe would
have wanted nothing then, and Joe and I would
perhaps have gone partners when I was out of
my time, and I might even have grown up to
keep company with you, and we might have sat
on this very bank on a fine Sunday, quite
different people. I should have been good enough
tor you; shouldn't I, Biddy?"

Biddy sighed as she looked at the ships sailing
on, and returned for answer, "Yes; I am
not over particular." It scarcely sounded
flattering, but I knew she meant well.

"Instead of that," said I, plucking up more
grass and chewing a blade or two, "see how I
am going on. Dissatisfied, and uncomfortable,
and—what would it signify to me, being coarse
and common, if nobody had told me so!"

Biddy turned her face suddenly towards mine,
and looked far more attentively at me than she
had looked at the sailing ships.

"It was neither a very true nor a very polite
thing to say," she remarked, directing her eyes
to the ships again. "Who said it?"

I was disconcerted, for I had broken away
without quite seeing where I was going. It was
not to be shuffled off now, however, and I
answered, "The beautiful young lady at Miss
Havisham's, and she's more beautiful than
anybody ever was, and I admire her dreadfully, and
I want to be a gentleman on her account."
Having made this lunatic confession, I began
to throw my torn-up grass into the river, as if I
had some thoughts of following it.

"Do you want to be a gentleman, to spite her
or to gain her over?" Biddy quietly asked me,
after a pause.

"I don't know," I moodily answered.

"Because, if it is to spite her," Biddy
pursued, "I should think—but you know best—
that might be better and more independently
done by caring nothing for her words. And if
it is to gain her over, I should think—but you
know best—she was not worth gaining over."

Exactly what I myself had thought, many
times. Exactly what was perfectly manifest to
me at the moment. But how could I, a poor
dazed village lad, avoid that wonderful
inconsistency into which the best and wisest of men
fall every day?

"It may be all quite true," said I to Biddy,
"but I admire her dreadfully."

In short, I turned over on my face when I
came to that, and got a good grasp on the hair
on each side of my head, and wrenched it well.
All the while knowing the madness of my heart
to be so very mad and misplaced, that I was
quite conscious it would have served my face
right, if I had lifted it up by my hair, and
knocked it against the pebbles as a punishment
for belonging to such an idiot.

Biddy was the wisest of girls, and she tried
to reason no more with me. She put her hand,
which was a comfortable hand though roughened
by work, upon my hands, one after another, and
gently took them out of my hair. Then she
softly patted my shoulder in a soothing way,
while with my face upon my sleeve I cried a
little—exactly as I had done in the brewery
yard—and felt vaguely convinced that I was
very much ill used by somebody, or by
everybody; I can't say which.

"I am glad of one thing," said Biddy, "and
that is, that you have felt you could give me
your confidence, Pip. And I am glad of another
thing, and that is, that of course you know you
may depend upon my keeping it and always so
far deserving it. If your first teacher (dear!
such a poor one, and so much in need of being
taught herself!) had been your teacher at