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1Mr. Pocket said he was glad to see me, and he hoped I was not sorry to see him. "For, I really am not," he added, with
2his son's smile, "an alarming personage." He was a young-looking man, in spite of his perplexities and his very grey
3hair, and his manner seemed quite natural. I use the word natural, in the sense of its being unaffected; there was
4something comic in his distraught way, as though it would have been downright ludicrous but for his own perception that
5it was very near being so. When he had talked with me a little, he said to Mrs. Pocket, with a rather anxious
6contraction of his eyebrows, which were black and handsome, "Belinda, I hope you have welcomed Mr. Pip?" And she looked
7up from her book, and said, "Yes." She then smiled upon me in an absent state of mind, and asked me if I liked the taste
8of orange-flower water? As the question had no bearing, near or remote, on any foregone or subsequent transaction, I
9consider it to have been thrown out, like her previous approaches, in general conversational condescension. I found out
10within a few hours, and may mention at once, that Mrs. Pocket was the only daughter of a certain quite accidental
11deceased Knight, who had invented for himself a conviction that his deceased father would have been made a Baronet but
12for somebody's determined opposition arising out of entirely personal motives,--I forget whose, if I ever knew,--the
13Sovereign's, the Prime Minister's, the Lord Chancellor's, the Archbishop of Canterbury's, anybody's,--and had tacked
14himself on to the nobles of the earth in right of this quite supposititious fact. I believe he had been knighted himself
15for storming the English grammar at the point of the pen, in a desperate address engrossed on vellum, on the occasion of
16the laying of the first stone of some building or other, and for handing some Royal Personage either the trowel or the
17mortar. Be that as it may, he had directed Mrs. Pocket to be brought up from her cradle as one who in the nature of
18things must marry a title, and who was to be guarded from the acquisition of plebeian domestic knowledge. So successful
19a watch and ward had been established over the young lady by this judicious parent, that she had grown up highly
20ornamental, but perfectly helpless and useless. With her character thus happily formed, in the first bloom of her youth
21she had encountered Mr. Pocket: who was also in the first bloom of youth, and not quite decided whether to mount to the
22Woolsack, or to roof himself in with a mitre. As his doing the one or the other was a mere question of time, he and Mrs.
23Pocket had taken Time by the forelock (when, to judge from its length, it would seem to have wanted cutting), and had
24married without the knowledge of the judicious parent. The judicious parent, having nothing to bestow or withhold but
25his blessing, had handsomely settled that dower upon them after a short struggle, and had informed Mr. Pocket that his
26wife was "a treasure for a Prince." Mr. Pocket had invested the Prince's treasure in the ways of the world ever since,
27and it was supposed to have brought him in but indifferent interest. Still, Mrs. Pocket was in general the object of a
28queer sort of respectful pity, because she had not married a title; while Mr. Pocket was the object of a queer sort of
29forgiving reproach, because he had never got one. Mr. Pocket took me into the house and showed me my room: which was a
30pleasant one, and so furnished as that I could use it with comfort for my own private sitting-room. He then knocked at
31the doors of two other similar rooms, and introduced me to their occupants, by name Drummle and Startop. Drummle, an
32old-looking young man of a heavy order of architecture, was whistling. Startop, younger in years and appearance, was
33reading and holding his head, as if he thought himself in danger of exploding it with too strong a charge of knowledge.
34Both Mr. and Mrs. Pocket had such a noticeable air of being in somebody else's hands, that I wondered who really was in
35possession of the house and let them live there, until I found this unknown power to be the servants. It was a smooth
36way of going on, perhaps, in respect of saving trouble; but it had the appearance of being expensive, for the servants
37felt it a duty they owed to themselves to be nice in their eating and drinking, and to keep a deal of company
38downstairs. They allowed a very liberal table to Mr. and Mrs. Pocket, yet it always appeared to me that by far the best
39part of the house to have boarded in would have been the kitchen,--always supposing the boarder capable of self-defence,
40for, before I had been there a week, a neighbouring lady with whom the family were personally unacquainted, wrote in to
41say that she had seen Millers slapping the baby. This greatly distressed Mrs. Pocket, who burst into tears on receiving
42the note, and said that it was an extraordinary thing that the neighbours couldn't mind their own business. By degrees I
43learnt, and chiefly from Herbert, that Mr. Pocket had been educated at Harrow and at Cambridge, where he had
44distinguished himself; but that when he had had the happiness of marrying Mrs. Pocket very early in life, he had
45impaired his prospects and taken up the calling of a Grinder. After grinding a number of dull blades,--of whom it was
46remarkable that their fathers, when influential, were always going to help him to preferment, but always forgot to do it
47when the blades had left the Grindstone,--he had wearied of that poor work and had come to London. Here, after gradually
48failing in loftier hopes, he had "read" with divers who had lacked opportunities or neglected them, and had refurbished
49divers others for special occasions, and had turned his acquirements to the account of literary compilation and
50correction, and on such means, added to some very moderate private resources, still maintained the house I saw. Mr. and
51Mrs. Pocket had a toady neighbour; a widow lady of that highly sympathetic nature that she agreed with everybody,
52blessed everybody, and shed smiles and tears on everybody, according to circumstances. This lady's name was Mrs. Coiler,
53and I had the honour of taking her down to dinner on the day of my installation. She gave me to understand on the
54stairs, that it was a blow to dear Mrs. Pocket that dear Mr. Pocket should be under the necessity of receiving gentlemen
55to read with him. That did not extend to me, she told me in a gush of love and confidence (at that time, I had known her
56something less than five minutes); if they were all like Me, it would be quite another thing. "But dear Mrs. Pocket,"
57said Mrs. Coiler, "after her early disappointment (not that dear Mr. Pocket was to blame in that), requires so much
58luxury and elegance--" "Yes, ma'am," I said, to stop her, for I was afraid she was going to cry. "And she is of so
59aristocratic a disposition--" "Yes, ma'am," I said again, with the same object as before. "--That it is hard," said Mrs.
60Coiler, "to have dear Mr. Pocket's time and attention diverted from dear Mrs. Pocket." I could not help thinking that it
61might be harder if the butcher's time and attention were diverted from dear Mrs. Pocket; but I said nothing, and indeed
62had enough to do in keeping a bashful watch upon my company manners.
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