Evidently Biddy had taught Joe to write. As I lay in bed looking at him,
it made me, in my weak state, cry again with pleasure to see the
pride with which he set about his letter. My bedstead, divested of its
curtains, had been removed, with me upon it, into the sitting-room, as
the airiest and largest, and the carpet had been taken away, and
the room kept always fresh and wholesome night and day. At my own
writing-table, pushed into a corner and cumbered with little bottles,
Joe now sat down to his great work, first choosing a pen from the
pen-tray as if it were a chest of large tools, and tucking up his
sleeves as if he were going to wield a crow-bar or sledgehammer. It was
necessary for Joe to hold on heavily to the table with his left elbow,
and to get his right leg well out behind him, before he could begin; and
when he did begin he made every down-stroke so slowly that it might
have been six feet long, while at every up-stroke I could hear his pen
spluttering extensively. He had a curious idea that the inkstand was
on the side of him where it was not, and constantly dipped his pen into
space, and seemed quite satisfied with the result. Occasionally, he was
tripped up by some orthographical stumbling-block; but on the whole
he got on very well indeed; and when he had signed his name, and had
removed a finishing blot from the paper to the crown of his head with
his two forefingers, he got up and hovered about the table, trying the
effect of his performance from various points of view, as it lay there,
with unbounded satisfaction.
Not to make Joe uneasy by talking too much, even if I had been able to
talk much, I deferred asking him about Miss Havisham until next day. He
shook his head when I then asked him if she had recovered.
"Is she dead, Joe?"
"Why you see, old chap," said Joe, in a tone of remonstrance, and by way
of getting at it by degrees, "I wouldn't go so far as to say that, for
that's a deal to say; but she ain't--"
"Living, Joe?"
"That's nigher where it is," said Joe; "she ain't living."
"Did she linger long, Joe?"
"Arter you was took ill, pretty much about what you might call (if you
was put to it) a week," said Joe; still determined, on my account, to
come at everything by degrees.