GREAT EXPECTATIONS
PART 2
Chapter III
It was a
rimy morning, and very damp. I had seen the damp lying on the outside of my
little window, as if some goblin had been crying there all night, and using the
window for a pocket-handkerchief. Now, I saw the damp lying on the bare hedges
and spare grass, like a coarser sort of spiders' webs; hanging itself from twig
to twig and blade to blade. On every rail and gate, wet lay clammy, and the
marsh mist was so thick, that the wooden finger on the post directing people to
our village—a direction which they never accepted, for they never came
there—was invisible to me until I was quite close under it. Then, as I looked
up at it, while it dripped, it seemed to my oppressed conscience like a phantom
devoting me to the Hulks.
The mist
was heavier yet when I got out upon the marshes, so that instead of my running
at everything, everything seemed to run at me. This was very disagreeable to a
guilty mind. The gates and dikes and banks came bursting at me through the
mist, as if they cried as plainly as could be, "A boy with Somebody's
else's pork pie! Stop him!" The cattle came upon me with like suddenness,
staring out of their eyes, and steaming out of their nostrils, "Halloa,
young thief!" One black ox, with a white cravat on,—who even had to my
awakened conscience something of a clerical air,—fixed me so obstinately with
his eyes, and moved his blunt head round in such an accusatory manner as I
moved round, that I blubbered out to him, "I couldn't help it, sir! It
wasn't for myself I took it!" Upon which he put down his head, blew a
cloud of smoke out of his nose, and vanished with a kick-up of his hind-legs
and a flourish of his tail.
All this
time, I was getting on towards the river; but however fast I went, I couldn't
warm my feet, to which the damp cold seemed riveted, as the iron was riveted to
the leg of the man I was running to meet. I knew my way to the Battery, pretty
straight, for I had been down there on a Sunday with Joe, and Joe, sitting on
an old gun, had told me that when I was 'prentice to him, regularly bound, we
would have such Larks there! However, in the confusion of the mist, I found
myself at last too far to the right, and consequently had to try back along the
river-side, on the bank of loose stones above the mud and the stakes that staked
the tide out. Making my way along here with all despatch, I had just crossed a
ditch which I knew to be very near the Battery, and had just scrambled up the
mound beyond the ditch, when I saw the man sitting before me. His back was
towards me, and he had his arms folded, and was nodding forward, heavy with
sleep.
I thought
he would be more glad if I came upon him with his breakfast, in that unexpected
manner, so I went forward softly and touched him on the shoulder. He instantly
jumped up, and it was not the same man, but another man!
And yet
this man was dressed in coarse gray, too, and had a great iron on his leg, and
was lame, and hoarse, and cold, and was everything that the other man was;
except that he had not the same face, and had a flat broad-brimmed low-crowned
felt hat on. All this I saw in a moment, for I had only a moment to see it in:
he swore an oath at me, made a hit at me,—it was a round weak blow that missed
me and almost knocked himself down, for it made him stumble,—and then he ran
into the mist, stumbling twice as he went, and I lost him.
"It's
the young man!" I thought, feeling my heart shoot as I identified him. I
dare say I should have felt a pain in my liver, too, if I had known where it
was.
I was
soon at the Battery after that, and there was the right Man,—hugging himself
and limping to and fro, as if he had never all night left off hugging and
limping,—waiting for me. He was awfully cold, to be sure. I half expected to
see him drop down before my face and die of deadly cold. His eyes looked so
awfully hungry too, that when I handed him the file and he laid it down on the
grass, it occurred to me he would have tried to eat it, if he had not seen my
bundle. He did not turn me upside down this time to get at what I had, but left
me right side upwards while I opened the bundle and emptied my pockets.
"What's
in the bottle, boy?" said he.
"Brandy,"
said I.
He was
already handing mincemeat down his throat in the most curious manner,—more like
a man who was putting it away somewhere in a violent hurry, than a man who was
eating it,—but he left off to take some of the liquor. He shivered all the
while so violently, that it was quite as much as he could do to keep the neck
of the bottle between his teeth, without biting it off.
"I
think you have got the ague," said I.
"I'm
much of your opinion, boy," said he.
"It's
bad about here," I told him. "You've been lying out on the meshes,
and they're dreadful aguish. Rheumatic too."
"I'll
eat my breakfast afore they're the death of me," said he. "I'd do
that, if I was going to be strung up to that there gallows as there is over
there, directly afterwards. I'll beat the shivers so far, I'll bet you."
He was
gobbling mincemeat, meatbone, bread, cheese, and pork pie, all at once: staring
distrustfully while he did so at the mist all round us, and often stopping—even
stopping his jaws—to listen. Some real or fancied sound, some clink upon the
river or breathing of beast upon the marsh, now gave him a start, and he said,
suddenly,—
"You're
not a deceiving imp? You brought no one with you?"
"No,
sir! No!"
"Nor
giv' no one the office to follow you?"
"No!"
"Well,"
said he, "I believe you. You'd be but a fierce young hound indeed, if at
your time of life you could help to hunt a wretched warmint hunted as near
death and dunghill as this poor wretched warmint is!"
Something
clicked in his throat as if he had works in him like a clock, and was going to
strike. And he smeared his ragged rough sleeve over his eyes.
Pitying
his desolation, and watching him as he gradually settled down upon the pie, I
made bold to say, "I am glad you enjoy it."
"Did
you speak?"
"I
said I was glad you enjoyed it."
"Thankee,
my boy. I do."
I had
often watched a large dog of ours eating his food; and I now noticed a decided
similarity between the dog's way of eating, and the man's. The man took strong
sharp sudden bites, just like the dog. He swallowed, or rather snapped up,
every mouthful, too soon and too fast; and he looked sideways here and there
while he ate, as if he thought there was danger in every direction of
somebody's coming to take the pie away. He was altogether too unsettled in his
mind over it, to appreciate it comfortably I thought, or to have anybody to
dine with him, without making a chop with his jaws at the visitor. In all of
which particulars he was very like the dog.
"I
am afraid you won't leave any of it for him," said I, timidly; after a
silence during which I had hesitated as to the politeness of making the remark.
"There's no more to be got where that came from." It was the
certainty of this fact that impelled me to offer the hint.
"Leave
any for him? Who's him?" said my friend, stopping in his crunching of
pie-crust.
"The
young man. That you spoke of. That was hid with you."
"Oh
ah!" he returned, with something like a gruff laugh. "Him? Yes, yes!
He don't want no wittles."
"I
thought he looked as if he did," said I.
The man
stopped eating, and regarded me with the keenest scrutiny and the greatest
surprise.
"Looked?
When?"
"Just
now."
"Where?"
"Yonder,"
said I, pointing; "over there, where I found him nodding asleep, and
thought it was you."
He held
me by the collar and stared at me so, that I began to think his first idea
about cutting my throat had revived.
"Dressed
like you, you know, only with a hat," I explained, trembling;
"and—and"—I was very anxious to put this delicately—"and
with—the same reason for wanting to borrow a file. Didn't you hear the cannon
last night?"
"Then
there was firing!" he said to himself.
"I
wonder you shouldn't have been sure of that," I returned, "for we
heard it up at home, and that's farther away, and we were shut in
besides."
"Why,
see now!" said he. "When a man's alone on these flats, with a light
head and a light stomach, perishing of cold and want, he hears nothin' all
night, but guns firing, and voices calling. Hears? He sees the soldiers, with
their red coats lighted up by the torches carried afore, closing in round him.
Hears his number called, hears himself challenged, hears the rattle of the
muskets, hears the orders 'Make ready! Present! Cover him steady, men!' and is
laid hands on—and there's nothin'! Why, if I see one pursuing party last
night—coming up in order, Damn 'em, with their tramp, tramp—I see a hundred.
And as to firing! Why, I see the mist shake with the cannon, arter it was broad
day,—But this man"; he had said all the rest, as if he had forgotten my
being there; "did you notice anything in him?"
"He
had a badly bruised face," said I, recalling what I hardly knew I knew.
"Not
here?" exclaimed the man, striking his left cheek mercilessly, with the
flat of his hand.
"Yes,
there!"
"Where
is he?" He crammed what little food was left, into the breast of his gray
jacket. "Show me the way he went. I'll pull him down, like a bloodhound.
Curse this iron on my sore leg! Give us hold of the file, boy."
I
indicated in what direction the mist had shrouded the other man, and he looked
up at it for an instant. But he was down on the rank wet grass, filing at his
iron like a madman, and not minding me or minding his own leg, which had an old
chafe upon it and was bloody, but which he handled as roughly as if it had no
more feeling in it than the file. I was very much afraid of him again, now that
he had worked himself into this fierce hurry, and I was likewise very much
afraid of keeping away from home any longer. I told him I must go, but he took
no notice, so I thought the best thing I could do was to slip off. The last I
saw of him, his head was bent over his knee and he was working hard at his
fetter, muttering impatient imprecations at it and at his leg. The last I heard
of him, I stopped in the mist to listen, and the file was still going.
Chapter IV
I fully
expected to find a Constable in the kitchen, waiting to take me up. But not
only was there no Constable there, but no discovery had yet been made of the
robbery. Mrs. Joe was prodigiously busy in getting the house ready for the
festivities of the day, and Joe had been put upon the kitchen doorstep to keep
him out of the dust-pan,—an article into which his destiny always led him,
sooner or later, when my sister was vigorously reaping the floors of her
establishment.
"And
where the deuce ha' you been?" was Mrs. Joe's Christmas salutation, when I
and my conscience showed ourselves.
I said I
had been down to hear the Carols. "Ah! well!" observed Mrs. Joe.
"You might ha' done worse." Not a doubt of that I thought.
"Perhaps
if I warn't a blacksmith's wife, and (what's the same thing) a slave with her
apron never off, I should have been to hear the Carols," said Mrs. Joe.
"I'm rather partial to Carols, myself, and that's the best of reasons for
my never hearing any."
Joe, who
had ventured into the kitchen after me as the dustpan had retired before us,
drew the back of his hand across his nose with a conciliatory air, when Mrs.
Joe darted a look at him, and, when her eyes were withdrawn, secretly crossed
his two forefingers, and exhibited them to me, as our token that Mrs. Joe was
in a cross temper. This was so much her normal state, that Joe and I would
often, for weeks together, be, as to our fingers, like monumental Crusaders as
to their legs.
We were
to have a superb dinner, consisting of a leg of pickled pork and greens, and a
pair of roast stuffed fowls. A handsome mince-pie had been made yesterday
morning (which accounted for the mincemeat not being missed), and the pudding
was already on the boil. These extensive arrangements occasioned us to be cut
off unceremoniously in respect of breakfast; "for I ain't," said Mrs.
Joe,—"I ain't a going to have no formal cramming and busting and washing
up now, with what I've got before me, I promise you!"
So, we
had our slices served out, as if we were two thousand troops on a forced march
instead of a man and boy at home; and we took gulps of milk and water, with
apologetic countenances, from a jug on the dresser. In the meantime, Mrs. Joe
put clean white curtains up, and tacked a new flowered flounce across the wide
chimney to replace the old one, and uncovered the little state parlor across
the passage, which was never uncovered at any other time, but passed the rest
of the year in a cool haze of silver paper, which even extended to the four
little white crockery poodles on the mantel-shelf, each with a black nose and a
basket of flowers in his mouth, and each the counterpart of the other. Mrs. Joe
was a very clean housekeeper, but had an exquisite art of making her
cleanliness more uncomfortable and unacceptable than dirt itself. Cleanliness
is next to Godliness, and some people do the same by their religion.
My
sister, having so much to do, was going to church vicariously, that is to say,
Joe and I were going. In his working-clothes, Joe was a well-knit characteristic-looking
blacksmith; in his holiday clothes, he was more like a scarecrow in good
circumstances, than anything else. Nothing that he wore then fitted him or
seemed to belong to him; and everything that he wore then grazed him. On the
present festive occasion he emerged from his room, when the blithe bells were
going, the picture of misery, in a full suit of Sunday penitentials. As to me,
I think my sister must have had some general idea that I was a young offender
whom an Accoucheur Policeman had taken up (on my birthday) and delivered over
to her, to be dealt with according to the outraged majesty of the law. I was
always treated as if I had insisted on being born in opposition to the dictates
of reason, religion, and morality, and against the dissuading arguments of my
best friends. Even when I was taken to have a new suit of clothes, the tailor
had orders to make them like a kind of Reformatory, and on no account to let me
have the free use of my limbs.
Joe and I
going to church, therefore, must have been a moving spectacle for compassionate
minds. Yet, what I suffered outside was nothing to what I underwent within. The
terrors that had assailed me whenever Mrs. Joe had gone near the pantry, or out
of the room, were only to be equalled by the remorse with which my mind dwelt
on what my hands had done. Under the weight of my wicked secret, I pondered
whether the Church would be powerful enough to shield me from the vengeance of
the terrible young man, if I divulged to that establishment. I conceived the
idea that the time when the banns were read and when the clergyman said,
"Ye are now to declare it!" would be the time for me to rise and
propose a private conference in the vestry. I am far from being sure that I
might not have astonished our small congregation by resorting to this extreme
measure, but for its being Christmas Day and no Sunday.
Mr.
Wopsle, the clerk at church, was to dine with us; and Mr. Hubble the
wheelwright and Mrs. Hubble; and Uncle Pumblechook (Joe's uncle, but Mrs. Joe
appropriated him), who was a well-to-do cornchandler in the nearest town, and
drove his own chaise-cart. The dinner hour was half-past one. When Joe and I
got home, we found the table laid, and Mrs. Joe dressed, and the dinner
dressing, and the front door unlocked (it never was at any other time) for the
company to enter by, and everything most splendid. And still, not a word of the
robbery.
The time
came, without bringing with it any relief to my feelings, and the company came.
Mr. Wopsle, united to a Roman nose and a large shining bald forehead, had a
deep voice which he was uncommonly proud of; indeed it was understood among his
acquaintance that if you could only give him his head, he would read the
clergyman into fits; he himself confessed that if the Church was "thrown
open," meaning to competition, he would not despair of making his mark in
it. The Church not being "thrown open," he was, as I have said, our
clerk. But he punished the Amens tremendously; and when he gave out the
psalm,—always giving the whole verse,—he looked all round the congregation
first, as much as to say, "You have heard my friend overhead; oblige me
with your opinion of this style!"
I opened
the door to the company,—making believe that it was a habit of ours to open
that door,—and I opened it first to Mr. Wopsle, next to Mr. and Mrs. Hubble,
and last of all to Uncle Pumblechook. N.B. I was not allowed to call him uncle,
under the severest penalties.
"Mrs.
Joe," said Uncle Pumblechook, a large hard-breathing middle-aged slow man,
with a mouth like a fish, dull staring eyes, and sandy hair standing upright on
his head, so that he looked as if he had just been all but choked, and had that
moment come to, "I have brought you as the compliments of the season—I
have brought you, Mum, a bottle of sherry wine—and I have brought you, Mum, a
bottle of port wine."
Every
Christmas Day he presented himself, as a profound novelty, with exactly the
same words, and carrying the two bottles like dumb-bells. Every Christmas Day,
Mrs. Joe replied, as she now replied, "O, Un—cle Pum-ble—chook! This is
kind!" Every Christmas Day, he retorted, as he now retorted, "It's no
more than your merits. And now are you all bobbish, and how's Sixpennorth of
halfpence?" meaning me.
We dined
on these occasions in the kitchen, and adjourned, for the nuts and oranges and
apples to the parlor; which was a change very like Joe's change from his
working-clothes to his Sunday dress. My sister was uncommonly lively on the
present occasion, and indeed was generally more gracious in the society of Mrs.
Hubble than in other company. I remember Mrs. Hubble as a little curly
sharp-edged person in sky-blue, who held a conventionally juvenile position,
because she had married Mr. Hubble,—I don't know at what remote period,—when
she was much younger than he. I remember Mr Hubble as a tough, high-shouldered,
stooping old man, of a sawdusty fragrance, with his legs extraordinarily wide
apart: so that in my short days I always saw some miles of open country between
them when I met him coming up the lane.
Among
this good company I should have felt myself, even if I hadn't robbed the
pantry, in a false position. Not because I was squeezed in at an acute angle of
the tablecloth, with the table in my chest, and the Pumblechookian elbow in my
eye, nor because I was not allowed to speak (I didn't want to speak), nor
because I was regaled with the scaly tips of the drumsticks of the fowls, and
with those obscure corners of pork of which the pig, when living, had had the
least reason to be vain. No; I should not have minded that, if they would only
have left me alone. But they wouldn't leave me alone. They seemed to think the
opportunity lost, if they failed to point the conversation at me, every now and
then, and stick the point into me. I might have been an unfortunate little bull
in a Spanish arena, I got so smartingly touched up by these moral goads.
It began
the moment we sat down to dinner. Mr. Wopsle said grace with theatrical
declamation,—as it now appears to me, something like a religious cross of the
Ghost in Hamlet with Richard the Third,—and ended with the very proper
aspiration that we might be truly grateful. Upon which my sister fixed me with
her eye, and said, in a low reproachful voice, "Do you hear that? Be
grateful."
"Especially,"
said Mr. Pumblechook, "be grateful, boy, to them which brought you up by
hand."
Mrs.
Hubble shook her head, and contemplating me with a mournful presentiment that I
should come to no good, asked, "Why is it that the young are never
grateful?" This moral mystery seemed too much for the company until Mr.
Hubble tersely solved it by saying, "Naterally wicious." Everybody
then murmured "True!" and looked at me in a particularly unpleasant
and personal manner.
Joe's
station and influence were something feebler (if possible) when there was
company than when there was none. But he always aided and comforted me when he
could, in some way of his own, and he always did so at dinner-time by giving me
gravy, if there were any. There being plenty of gravy to-day, Joe spooned into
my plate, at this point, about half a pint.
A little
later on in the dinner, Mr. Wopsle reviewed the sermon with some severity, and
intimated—in the usual hypothetical case of the Church being "thrown
open"—what kind of sermon he would have given them. After favoring them
with some heads of that discourse, he remarked that he considered the subject
of the day's homily, ill chosen; which was the less excusable, he added, when
there were so many subjects "going about."
"True
again," said Uncle Pumblechook. "You've hit it, sir! Plenty of
subjects going about, for them that know how to put salt upon their tails.
That's what's wanted. A man needn't go far to find a subject, if he's ready
with his salt-box." Mr. Pumblechook added, after a short interval of
reflection, "Look at Pork alone. There's a subject! If you want a subject,
look at Pork!"
"True,
sir. Many a moral for the young," returned Mr. Wopsle,—and I knew he was
going to lug me in, before he said it; "might be deduced from that
text."
("You
listen to this," said my sister to me, in a severe parenthesis.)
Joe gave
me some more gravy.
"Swine,"
pursued Mr. Wopsle, in his deepest voice, and pointing his fork at my blushes,
as if he were mentioning my Christian name,—"swine were the companions of
the prodigal. The gluttony of Swine is put before us, as an example to the
young." (I thought this pretty well in him who had been praising up the
pork for being so plump and juicy.) "What is detestable in a pig is more
detestable in a boy."
"Or
girl," suggested Mr. Hubble.
"Of
course, or girl, Mr. Hubble," assented Mr. Wopsle, rather irritably,
"but there is no girl present."
"Besides,"
said Mr. Pumblechook, turning sharp on me, "think what you've got to be
grateful for. If you'd been born a Squeaker—"
"He
was, if ever a child was," said my sister, most emphatically.
Joe gave
me some more gravy.
"Well,
but I mean a four-footed Squeaker," said Mr. Pumblechook. "If you had
been born such, would you have been here now? Not you—"
"Unless
in that form," said Mr. Wopsle, nodding towards the dish.
"But
I don't mean in that form, sir," returned Mr. Pumblechook, who had an objection
to being interrupted; "I mean, enjoying himself with his elders and
betters, and improving himself with their conversation, and rolling in the lap
of luxury. Would he have been doing that? No, he wouldn't. And what would have
been your destination?" turning on me again. "You would have been
disposed of for so many shillings according to the market price of the article,
and Dunstable the butcher would have come up to you as you lay in your straw,
and he would have whipped you under his left arm, and with his right he would
have tucked up his frock to get a penknife from out of his waistcoat-pocket,
and he would have shed your blood and had your life. No bringing up by hand
then. Not a bit of it!"
Joe
offered me more gravy, which I was afraid to take.
"He
was a world of trouble to you, ma'am," said Mrs. Hubble, commiserating my
sister.
"Trouble?"
echoed my sister; "trouble?" and then entered on a fearful catalogue
of all the illnesses I had been guilty of, and all the acts of sleeplessness I
had committed, and all the high places I had tumbled from, and all the low
places I had tumbled into, and all the injuries I had done myself, and all the
times she had wished me in my grave, and I had contumaciously refused to go
there.
I think
the Romans must have aggravated one another very much, with their noses.
Perhaps, they became the restless people they were, in consequence. Anyhow, Mr.
Wopsle's Roman nose so aggravated me, during the recital of my misdemeanours,
that I should have liked to pull it until he howled. But, all I had endured up
to this time was nothing in comparison with the awful feelings that took
possession of me when the pause was broken which ensued upon my sister's
recital, and in which pause everybody had looked at me (as I felt painfully
conscious) with indignation and abhorrence.
"Yet,"
said Mr. Pumblechook, leading the company gently back to the theme from which
they had strayed, "Pork—regarded as biled—is rich, too; ain't it?"
"Have
a little brandy, uncle," said my sister.
O
Heavens, it had come at last! He would find it was weak, he would say it was
weak, and I was lost! I held tight to the leg of the table under the cloth,
with both hands, and awaited my fate.
My sister
went for the stone bottle, came back with the stone bottle, and poured his
brandy out: no one else taking any. The wretched man trifled with his
glass,—took it up, looked at it through the light, put it down,—prolonged my
misery. All this time Mrs. Joe and Joe were briskly clearing the table for the
pie and pudding.
I
couldn't keep my eyes off him. Always holding tight by the leg of the table
with my hands and feet, I saw the miserable creature finger his glass
playfully, take it up, smile, throw his head back, and drink the brandy off. Instantly
afterwards, the company were seized with unspeakable consternation, owing to
his springing to his feet, turning round several times in an appalling
spasmodic whooping-cough dance, and rushing out at the door; he then became
visible through the window, violently plunging and expectorating, making the
most hideous faces, and apparently out of his mind.
I held on
tight, while Mrs. Joe and Joe ran to him. I didn't know how I had done it, but
I had no doubt I had murdered him somehow. In my dreadful situation, it was a
relief when he was brought back, and surveying the company all round as if they
had disagreed with him, sank down into his chair with the one significant gasp,
"Tar!"
I had
filled up the bottle from the tar-water jug. I knew he would be worse by and
by. I moved the table, like a Medium of the present day, by the vigor of my
unseen hold upon it.
"Tar!"
cried my sister, in amazement. "Why, how ever could Tar come there?"
But,
Uncle Pumblechook, who was omnipotent in that kitchen, wouldn't hear the word,
wouldn't hear of the subject, imperiously waved it all away with his hand, and
asked for hot gin and water. My sister, who had begun to be alarmingly
meditative, had to employ herself actively in getting the gin the hot water,
the sugar, and the lemon-peel, and mixing them. For the time being at least, I
was saved. I still held on to the leg of the table, but clutched it now with
the fervor of gratitude.
By
degrees, I became calm enough to release my grasp and partake of pudding. Mr.
Pumblechook partook of pudding. All partook of pudding. The course terminated,
and Mr. Pumblechook had begun to beam under the genial influence of gin and
water. I began to think I should get over the day, when my sister said to Joe,
"Clean plates,—cold."
I clutched
the leg of the table again immediately, and pressed it to my bosom as if it had
been the companion of my youth and friend of my soul. I foresaw what was
coming, and I felt that this time I really was gone.
"You
must taste," said my sister, addressing the guests with her best
grace—"you must taste, to finish with, such a delightful and delicious
present of Uncle Pumblechook's!"
Must
they! Let them not hope to taste it!
"You
must know," said my sister, rising, "it's a pie; a savory pork
pie."
The company
murmured their compliments. Uncle Pumblechook, sensible of having deserved well
of his fellow-creatures, said,—quite vivaciously, all things
considered,—"Well, Mrs. Joe, we'll do our best endeavors; let us have a
cut at this same pie."
My sister
went out to get it. I heard her steps proceed to the pantry. I saw Mr.
Pumblechook balance his knife. I saw reawakening appetite in the Roman nostrils
of Mr. Wopsle. I heard Mr. Hubble remark that "a bit of savory pork pie
would lay atop of anything you could mention, and do no harm," and I heard
Joe say, "You shall have some, Pip." I have never been absolutely
certain whether I uttered a shrill yell of terror, merely in spirit, or in the
bodily hearing of the company. I felt that I could bear no more, and that I
must run away. I released the leg of the table, and ran for my life.
But I ran
no farther than the house door, for there I ran head-foremost into a party of
soldiers with their muskets, one of whom held out a pair of handcuffs to me,
saying, "Here you are, look sharp, come on!"
