happier and better if I had never seen Miss Havisham's face, and
had risen to manhood content to be partners with Joe in the honest
old forge. Many a time of an evening, when I sat alone looking
at the fire, I thought, after all, there was no fire like the forge fire
and the kitchen fire at home.

Yet Estella was so inseparable from all my restlessness and dis-
quiet of mind, that I really fell into confusion as to the limits of
my own part in its production. That is to say, supposing I had
had no expectations, and yet had had Estella to think of, I could
not make out to my satisfaction that I should have done much
better. Now, concerning the influence of my position on others,
I was in no such difficulty, and so I perceived--though dimly
enough perhaps--that it was not beneficial to anybody, and, above
all, that it was not beneficial to Herbert. My lavish habits led his
easy nature into expenses that he could not afford, corrupted the
simplicity of his life, and disturbed his peace with anxieties and
regrets. I was not at all remorseful for having unwittingly set
those other branches of the Pocket family to the poor arts they
practised: because such littlenesses were their natural bent, and
would have been evoked by anybody else, if I had left them slum-
bering. But Herbert's was a very different case, and it often caused
me a twinge to think that I had done him evil service in crowding
his sparely-furnished chambers with incongruous upholstery work,
and placing the canary-breasted Avenger at his disposal.

So now, as an infallible way of making little ease great ease, I
began to contract a quantity of debt. I could hardly begin but
Herbert must begin too, so he soon followed. At Startop's sugges-
tion, we put ourselves down for election into a club called the
Finches of the Grove: the object of which institution I have never
divined, if it were not that the members should dine expensively
once a fortnight, to quarrel among themselves as much as possible
after dinner, and to cause six waiters to get drunk on the stairs. I
know that these gratifying social ends were so invariably accom-
plished, that Herbert and I understood nothing else to be referred
to in the first standing toast of the society: which ran, 'Gentlemen,
may the present promotion of good feeling ever reign predominant
among the Finches of the Grove.'

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