Chapter 48
THE second of the two meetings referred to in the last chapter, occurred about a week after the first. I had again left my boat at the wharf below Bridge; the time was an hour earlier in the afternoon; and, undecided where to dine, I had strolled up into Cheapside, and was strolling along it, surely the most unsettled person in all the busy concourse, when a large hand was laid upon my shoulder, by some one overtaking me. It was Mr Jaggers's hand, and he passed it through my arm.`As we are going in the same direction, Pip, we may walk together. Where are you bound for?'
`For the Temple, I think,' said I.
`Don't you know?' said Mr Jaggers.
`Well,' I returned, glad for once to get the better of him in cross-examination, `I do not know, for I have not made up mn mind.'
`You are going to dine?' said Mr Jaggers. `You don't mind admitting that, I suppose?'
`No,' I returned, `I don't mind admitting that.'
`And are not engaged?'
`I don't mind admitting also, that I am not engaged.'
`Then,' said Mr Jaggers, `come and dine with me.'
I was going to excuse myself, when he added, `Wemmick's coming.' So, I changed my excuse into an acceptance - the few words I had uttered, serving for the beginning of either - and we went along Cheapside and slanted off to Little Britain, while the lights were springing up brilliantly in the shop windows, and the street lamp-lighters, scarcely finding ground enough to plant their ladders on in the midst of the afternoon's bustle, were skipping up and down and running in and out, opening more red eyes in the gathering fog than my rushlight tower at the Hummums had opened white eyes in the ghostly wall.
At the office in Little Britain there was the usual letter-writing, hand-washing, candle-snuffing, and safe- locking, that closed the business of the day. As I stood idle by Mr Jagger's fire, its rising and falling flame made the two casts on the shelf look as if they were playing a diabolical game at bo-peep with me; while the pair of coarse fat office candles that dimly lighted Mr Jaggers as he wrote in a corner, were decorated with dirty winding-sheets, as if in remembrance of a host of hanged clients.
We went to Gerrard-street, all three together, in a hackneycoach: and as soon as we got there, dinner was served. Although I should not have thought of making, in that place, the most distant reference by so much as a look to Wemmick's Walworth sentiments, yet I should have had no objection to catching his eye now and then in a friendly way. But it was not to be done. He turned his eyes on Mr Jaggers whenever he raised them from the table, and was as dry and distant to me as if there were twin Wemmicks and this was the wrong one.
`Did you send that note of Miss Havisham's to Mr Pip, Wemmick?' Mr Jaggers asked, soon after we began dinner.
`No, sir,' returned Wemmick; `it was going by post, when you brought Mr Pip into the office. Here it is.' He handed it to his principal, instead of to me.
`It's a note of two lines, Pip,' said Mr Jaggers, handing it on, `sent up to me by Miss Havisham, on account of her not being sure of your address. She tells me that she wants to see you on a little matter of business you mentioned to her. You'll go down?'
`Yes,' said I, casting my eyes over the note, which was exactly in those terms.
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