GREAT EXPECTATIONS.

BY CHARLES DICKENS.

CHAPTER XXX.

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 recognised 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.

This was a hard thing to bear, but this was
nothing. I had not advanced another two
hundred yards, when, to my inexpressible terror,
amazement, and indignation, I again beheld
Trabb's boy approaching. He was coming
round a narrow corner. His blue bag was
slung over his shoulder, honest industry beamed
in his eyes, a determination to proceed to
Trabb's with cheerful briskness was indicated
in his gait. With a shock he became aware of
me, and was severely visited as before; but this
time his motion was rotatory, and he staggered
round and round me with knees more afflicted,
and with uplifted hands as if beseeching for
mercy. His sufferings were hailed with the
greatest joy by a knot of spectators, and I felt
utterly confounded.

I had not got as much further down the street
as the post-office, when I again beheld Trabb's
boy shooting round by a back way. This time
he was entirely changed. He wore the blue
bag in the manner ot my great-coat, and was
strutting along the pavement towards me on
the opposite side of the street, attended by a
company of delighted young friends to whom
he from time to time exclaimed, with a wave
of his hand, "Don't know yah!"  Words
cannot state the amount of aggravation and
injury wreaked upon me by Trabb's boy, when,
passing abreast of me, he pulled up his shirt-collar,