Great Expectations | Page 7

kind of pair we
practically should make, under the grievous circumstances foreshadowed. After that, he
sat feeling his right-side flaxen curls and whisker, and following Mrs. Joe about with his
blue eyes, as his manner always was at squally times.
My sister had a trenchant way of cutting our bread and butter for us, that never varied.
First, with her left hand she jammed the loaf hard and fast against her bib,--where it
sometimes got a pin into it, and sometimes a needle, which we afterwards got into our
mouths. Then she took some butter (not too much) on a knife and spread it on the loaf, in
an apothecary kind of way, as if she were making a plaster,--using both sides of the knife
with a slapping dexterity, and trimming and moulding the butter off round the crust. Then,
she gave the knife a final smart wipe on the edge of the plaster, and then sawed a very
thick round off the loaf: which she finally, before separating from the loaf, hewed into
two halves, of which Joe got one, and I the other.
On the present occasion, though I was hungry, I dared not eat my slice. I felt that I must
have something in reserve for my dreadful acquaintance, and his ally the still more
dreadful young man. I knew Mrs. Joe's housekeeping to be of the strictest kind, and that
my larcenous researches might find nothing available in the safe. Therefore I resolved to
put my hunk of bread and butter down the leg of my trousers.
The effort of resolution necessary to the achievement of this purpose I found to be quite
awful. It was as if I had to make up my mind to leap from the top of a high house, or
plunge into a great depth of water. And it was made the more difficult by the unconscious
Joe. In our already-mentioned freemasonry as fellow-sufferers, and in his good-natured
companionship with me, it was our evening habit to compare the way we bit through our
slices, by silently holding them up to each other's admiration now and then, --which

stimulated us to new exertions. To-night, Joe several times invited me, by the display of
his fast diminishing slice, to enter upon our usual friendly competition; but he found me,
each time, with my yellow mug of tea on one knee, and my untouched bread and butter
on the other. At last, I desperately considered that the thing I contemplated must be done,
and that it had best be done in the least improbable manner consistent with the
circumstances. I took advantage of a moment when Joe had just looked at me, and got my
bread and butter down my leg.
Joe was evidently made uncomfortable by what he supposed to be my loss of appetite,
and took a thoughtful bite out of his slice, which he didn't seem to enjoy. He turned it
about in his mouth much longer than usual, pondering over it a good deal, and after all
gulped it down like a pill. He was about to take another bite, and had just got his head on
one side for a good purchase on it, when his eye fell on me, and he saw that my bread and
butter was gone.
The wonder and consternation with which Joe stopped on the threshold of his bite and
stared at me, were too evident to escape my sister's observation.
"What's the matter now?" said she, smartly, as she put down her cup.
"I say, you know!" muttered Joe, shaking his head at me in very serious remonstrance.
"Pip, old chap! You'll do yourself a mischief. It'll stick somewhere. You can't have
chawed it, Pip."
"What's the matter now?" repeated my sister, more sharply than before.
"If you can cough any trifle on it up, Pip, I'd recommend you to do it," said Joe, all aghast.
"Manners is manners, but still your elth's your elth."
By this time, my sister was quite desperate, so she pounced on Joe, and, taking him by
the two whiskers, knocked his head for a little while against the wall behind him, while I
sat in the corner, looking guiltily on.
"Now, perhaps you'll mention what's the matter," said my sister, out of breath, "you
staring great stuck pig."
Joe looked at her in a helpless way, then took a helpless bite, and looked at me again.
"You know, Pip," said Joe, solemnly, with his last bite in his cheek, and speaking in a
confidential voice, as if we two were quite alone, "you and me is always friends, and I'd
be the last to tell upon you, any time. But such a--" he moved his chair and looked about
the floor between us, and then again at