He put a foot up to the bars, to dry and warm it, and the wet boot began to steam; but, he neither looked at it, nor at the fire, but steadily looked at me. It was only now that I began to tremble.
When my lips had parted, and had shaped some words that were without sound, I forced myself to tell him (though I could not do it distinctly), that I had been chosen to succeed some property.
‘Might a mere warmint* ask what property?’ said he. I faltered, ‘I don’t know.’
‘Might a mere warmint ask whose property?’ said he. I faltered again, ‘I don’t know.’
‘Could I make a guess, I wonder,’ said the Convict ‘at your income since you come of age! As to the first figure, now. Five?’* With my heart beating like a heavy hammer of disordered action, I rose out of my chair, and stood with my hand upon the back of it, looking wildly at him.
‘Concerning a guardian,’ he went on. ‘There ought to have been some guardian or such-like, while you was a minor. Some lawyer, maybe. As to the first letter of that lawyer’s name, now. Would it be J?’*
From ‘Great Expectations’ (1861), by Charles Dickens (1812-1870).
* Varmint, a rascal or urchin; it is a dialect form of vermin, dating back to the sixteenth century. Magwitch, when he cares to do so, still pronounces an initial V as W in the fashion of a common Londoner of those days, as he did back on the marshes when he demanded wittles rather than vittles (food). He has detected Pip’s maddeningly superior manner, and with a touch of sarcasm is now playing up to the role in which Pip has cast him.
* Pip was in receipt of £500 annually. According to the Measuring Worth calculators, as an income this would be equivalent to about £45,560 annually in 2022, quite enough to mean that Pip did not need to work for a living, and (given the modest average wages of the time) conferring on him the kind of social standing that today would go with a yearly income of more than ten times that.
* Pip’s affairs were in the capable hands of his lawyer, Mr Jaggers. By this time, Pip could hardly doubt that his visitor knew details that only his mysterious benefactor could know.