how it had grown and changed, and how the little wildflowers had been forming, and the voices of the birds had been strengthening, by day and by night, under the sun and under the stars, while poor I lay burning and tossing on my bed, the mere remembrance of having burned and tossed there came like a check upon my peace. But when I heard the Sunday bells, and looked around a little more upon the outspread beauty, I felt that I was not nearly thankful enough—that I was too weak yet to be even that—and I laid my head on Joe’s shoulder, as I had laid it long ago when he had taken me to the Fair or where not, and it was too much for my young senses.
More composure came to me after a while, and we talked as we used to talk, lying on the grass at the old battery. There was no change whatever in Joe. Exactly what he had been in my eyes then, he was in my eyes still; just as simply faithful, and as simply right.
When we got back again, and he lifted me out, and carried me—so easily!—across the court and up the stairs, I thought of that eventful Christmas Day when he had carried me over the marshes. We had not yet made any allusion to my change of fortune, nor did I know how much of my late history he was acquainted with. I was so doubtful of myself now, and put so much trust in him, that I could not satisfy myself whether I ought to refer to it when he did not.
“Have you heard, Joe,” I asked him that evening, upon further consideration, as he smoked his pipe at the window, “who my patron was?”
“I heerd,” returned Joe, “as it were not Miss Havisham, old chap.”
“Did you hear who it was, Joe?”
“Well! I heerd as it were a person what sent the person what giv’ you the banknotes at the Jolly Bargemen, Pip.”