ing 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 hackney-
coach: and as soon as we got there, dinner was served. Although
I should not have thought of making, in that place, the most dis-
tant reference by so much as a look to Wemmick's Walworth senti-
ments, 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, Wem-
mick?' 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.

'When do you think of going down?'

'I have an impending engagement,' said I, glancing at Wem-
mick, who was putting fish into the post-office, 'that renders me
rather uncertain of my time. At once, I think.'

'If Mr. Pip has the intention of going at once,' said Wemmick
to Mr. Jaggers, 'he needn't write an answer, you know.'

Receiving this as an intimation that it was best not to delay, I
settled that I would go to-morrow, and said so. Wemmick drank
a glass of wine and looked with a grimly satisfied air at Mr. Jag-
gers, but not at me.

'So, Pip! Our friend the Spider,' said Mr. Jaggers, 'has played
his cards. He has won the pool.'

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