“O no, no, no,” I returned. “Never, never!”
“Well, you see it wos me, and single-handed. Never a soul in it but my own self and Mr. Jaggers.”
“Was there no one else?” I asked.
“No,” said he, with a glance of surprise: “who else should there be? And, dear boy, how good looking you have growed! There’s bright eyes somewheres—eh? Isn’t there bright eyes somewheres, wot you love the thoughts on?”
O Estella, Estella!
“They shall be yourn, dear boy, if money can buy ’em. Not that a gentleman like you, so well set up as you, can’t win ’em off of his own game; but money shall back you! Let me finish wot I was a telling you, dear boy. From that there hut and that there hiring-out, I got money left me by my master (which died, and had been the same as me), and got my liberty and went for myself. In every single thing I went for, I went for you. ‘Lord strike a blight upon it,’ I says, wotever it was I went for, ‘if it ain’t for him!’ It all prospered wonderful. As I giv’ you to understand just now, I’m famous for it. It was the money left me, and the gains of the first few year wot I sent home to Mr. Jaggers—all for you—when he first come arter you, agreeable to my letter.”
O that he had never come! That he had left me at the forge—far from contented, yet, by comparison happy!
“And then, dear boy, it was a recompense to me, look’ee here, to know in secret that I was making a gentleman. The blood horses of them colonists