Great Expectations / Большие надежды. Книга для чтения на английском языке

As he looked at the fire, I thought I saw a cunning expression, followed by a half-laugh, come into his face.

“I am not acquainted with this country, gentlemen, but it seems a solitary country towards the river.”

“Most marshes is solitary,” said Joe.

“No doubt, no doubt. Do you find any gypsies, now, or tramps, or vagrants of any sort, out there?”

“No,” said Joe; “none but a runaway convict now and then. And we don’t find them, easy. Eh, Mr. Wopsle?”

Mr. Wopsle, with a majestic remembrance of old discomfiture, assented; but not warmly.

“Seems you have been out after such?” asked the stranger.

“Once,” returned Joe. “Not that we wanted to take them, you understand; we went out as lookers on; me, and Mr. Wopsle, and Pip. Didn’t us, Pip?”

“Yes, Joe.”

The stranger looked at me again, – still cocking his eye, as if he were expressly taking aim at me with his invisible gun, – and said, “He’s a likely young parcel of bones that. What is it you call him?”

“Pip,” said Joe.

“Christened Pip?”

“No, not christened Pip.”

“Surname Pip?”

“No,” said Joe, “it’s a kind of family name what he gave himself when a infant, and is called by.”

“Son of yours?”

“Well,” said Joe, meditatively, not, of course, that it could be in anywise necessary to consider about it, but because it was the way at the Jolly Bargemen to seem to consider deeply about everything that was discussed over pipes, – ”well – no.

No, he ain’t.”

“Nevvy[13 - nevvy – племянник]?” said the strange man.

“Well,” said Joe, with the same appearance of profound cogitation, “he is not – no, not to deceive you, he is not – my nevvy.”

“What the Blue Blazes is he?” asked the stranger. Which appeared to me to be an inquiry of unnecessary strength.

Mr. Wopsle struck in upon that; as one who knew all about relationships, having professional occasion to bear in mind what female relations a man might not marry[14 - might not marry – церковный список из тридцати родственников, вступать в брак с которыми запрещалось]; and expounded the ties between me and Joe.

Having his hand in, Mr. Wopsle finished off with a most terrifically snarling passage from “Richard the Third”, and seemed to think he had done quite enough to account for it when he added, “ – as the poet says.