 of, for my fear was altogether
undefined and vague, but there was great fear upon me. As I walked on to the
hotel, I felt that a dread, much exceeding the mere apprehension of a painful or
disagreeable recognition, made me tremble. I am confident that it took no
distinctness of shape, and that it was the revival for a few minutes of the
terror of childhood.
    The coffee-room at the Blue Boar was empty, and I had not only ordered my
dinner there, but had sat down to it, before the waiter knew me. As soon as he
had apologised for the remissness of his memory, he asked me if he should send
Boots for Mr. Pumblechook?
    »No,« said I, »certainly not.«
    The waiter (it was he who had brought up the Great Remonstrance from the
Commercials on the day when I was bound) appeared surprised, and took the
earliest opportunity of putting a dirty old copy of a local newspaper so
directly in my way, that I took it up and read this paragraph:
 
        »Our readers will learn, not altogether without interest, in reference
        to the recent romantic rise in fortune of a young artificer in iron of
        this neighbourhood (what a theme, by the way, for the magic pen of our
        as yet not universally acknowledged townsman TOOBY, the poet of our
        columns!) that the youth's earliest patron, companion, and friend, was a
        highly-respected individual not entirely unconnected with the corn and
        seed trade, and whose eminently convenient and commodious business
        premises are situate within a hundred miles of the High-street. It is
        not wholly irrespective of our personal feelings that we record HIM as
        the Mentor of our young Telemachus, for it is good to know that our town
        produced the founder of the latter's fortunes. Does the
        thought-contracted brow of the local Sage or the lustrous eye of local
        Beauty inquire whose fortunes? We believe that Quintin Matsys was the
        BLACKSMITH of Antwerp. VERB. SAP.«
 
I entertain a conviction, based upon large experience, that if in the days of my
prosperity I had gone to the North Pole, I should have met somebody there,
wandering Esquimaux or civilised man, who would have told me that Pumblechook
was my earliest patron and the founder of my fortunes.
 

                                  Chapter XXIX

Betimes in the morning I was up and out. It was too early yet to go to Miss
Havisham's, so I loitered into the country on Miss Havisham's side of town -
which was not Joe's side; I could go there
