"How are you to be guarded from the danger you have incurred?"
"Well, dear boy, the danger ain't so great. Without I was informed
agen, the danger ain't so much to signify. There's Jaggers, and there's
Wemmick, and there's you. Who else is there to inform?"
"Is there no chance person who might identify you in the street?" said
I.
"Well," he returned, "there ain't many. Nor yet I don't intend to
advertise myself in the newspapers by the name of A.M. come back from
Botany Bay; and years have rolled away, and who's to gain by it? Still,
look'ee here, Pip. If the danger had been fifty times as great, I should
ha' come to see you, mind you, just the same."
"And how long do you remain?"
"How long?" said he, taking his black pipe from his mouth, and dropping
his jaw as he stared at me. "I'm not a going back. I've come for good."
"Where are you to live?" said I. "What is to be done with you? Where
will you be safe?"
"Dear boy," he returned, "there's disguising wigs can be bought
for money, and there's hair powder, and spectacles, and black
clothes,--shorts and what not. Others has done it safe afore, and what
others has done afore, others can do agen. As to the where and how of
living, dear boy, give me your own opinions on it."
"You take it smoothly now," said I, "but you were very serious last
night, when you swore it was Death."
"And so I swear it is Death," said he, putting his pipe back in his
mouth, "and Death by the rope, in the open street not fur from this, and
it's serious that you should fully understand it to be so. What then,
when that's once done? Here I am. To go back now 'ud be as bad as to
stand ground--worse. Besides, Pip, I'm here, because I've meant it by
you, years and years. As to what I dare, I'm a old bird now, as has
dared all manner of traps since first he was fledged, and I'm not afeerd
to perch upon a scarecrow. If there's Death hid inside of it, there is,
and let him come out, and I'll face him, and then I'll believe in him
and not afore. And now let me have a look at my gentleman agen."
Once more, he took me by both hands and surveyed me with an air of
admiring proprietorship: smoking with great complacency all the while.