Гордость и предубеждение / Pride and Prejudice. Большие надежды / Great Expectations

Pocket they showed the complacent forbearance.

These were the surroundings among which I settled down, and applied myself to my education. I soon began to spend an amount of money that within a few short months I should have thought almost fabulous; but I stuck to my books. There was no other merit in this, than my having sense enough to feel my deficiencies.

I had not seen Mr. Wemmick for some weeks, when I thought I would write him a note and propose to go home with him on a certain evening. He replied that it would give him much pleasure, and that he would expect me at the office at six o’clock.

“Did you think of walking down to Walworth?” said he.

“Certainly,” said I, “if you approve.”

Wemmick’s house was a little wooden cottage in the midst of plots of garden, and the top of it was cut out and painted.

“My own doing,” said Wemmick. “Looks pretty; doesn’t it?”

I highly commended it, I think it was the smallest house I ever saw; with the queerest gothic windows,[126 - gothic windows – готические окна] and a gothic door almost too small to get in at.

“That’s a real flagstaff, you see,” said Wemmick, “and on Sundays I run up a real flag. Then look here. After I have crossed this bridge, I hoist it.”

The bridge was a plank, and it crossed a chasm about four feet wide and two deep. But it was very pleasant to see the pride with which he hoisted it up; smiling as he did so, and not merely mechanically.

“At nine o’clock every night, Greenwich time,[127 - Greenwich time – по гринвичскому времени]” said Wemmick, “the gun fires. There it is, you see! Then, at the back, out of sight, there’s a pig, and there are fowls and rabbits.”

Then, he conducted me to a bower; and in this retreat our glasses were already set forth. Our punch was cooling in an ornamental lake, on whose margin the bower was raised.

“I am my own engineer, and my own carpenter, and my own plumber, and my own gardener, and my own Jack of all Trades,[128 - Jack of all Trades – мастер на все руки]” said Wemmick, in acknowledging my compliments. “Well; it’s a good thing, you know. It pleases the Aged. You wouldn’t mind being at once introduced to the Aged, would you?”

I expressed the readiness I felt, and we went into the castle.