Now, I too had so often thought it a pity, that, in the singular kind of
quarrel with myself which I was always carrying on, I was half inclined
to shed tears of vexation and distress when Biddy gave utterance to her
sentiment and my own. I told her she was right, and I knew it was much
to be regretted, but still it was not to be helped.
"If I could have settled down," I said to Biddy, plucking up the short
grass within reach, much as I had once upon a time pulled my feelings
out of my hair and kicked them into the brewery wall,--"if I could have
settled down and been but half as fond of the forge as I was when I was
little, I know it would have been much better for me. You and I and Joe
would have wanted nothing then, and Joe and I would perhaps have gone
partners when I was out of my time, and I might even have grown up to
keep company with you, and we might have sat on this very bank on a fine
Sunday, quite different people. I should have been good enough for you;
shouldn't I, Biddy?"
Biddy sighed as she looked at the ships sailing on, and returned for
answer, "Yes; I am not over-particular." It scarcely sounded flattering,
but I knew she meant well.
"Instead of that," said I, plucking up more grass and chewing a blade or
two, "see how I am going on. Dissatisfied, and uncomfortable, and--what
would it signify to me, being coarse and common, if nobody had told me
so!"
Biddy turned her face suddenly towards mine, and looked far more
attentively at me than she had looked at the sailing ships.
"It was neither a very true nor a very polite thing to say," she
remarked, directing her eyes to the ships again. "Who said it?"
I was disconcerted, for I had broken away without quite seeing where
I was going to. It was not to be shuffled off now, however, and I
answered, "The beautiful young lady at Miss Havisham's, and she's more
beautiful than anybody ever was, and I admire her dreadfully, and I want
to be a gentleman on her account." Having made this lunatic confession,
I began to throw my torn-up grass into the river, as if I had some
thoughts of following it.
"Do you want to be a gentleman, to spite her or to gain her over?" Biddy
quietly asked me, after a pause.