'll put a case to you. Mind! I admit nothing.«
    He waited for me to declare that I quite understood that he expressly said
that he admitted nothing.
    »Now, Pip,« said Mr. Jaggers, »put this case. Put the case that a woman,
under such circumstances as you have mentioned, held her child concealed, and
was obliged to communicate the fact to her legal adviser, on his representing to
her that he must know, with an eye to the latitude of his defence, how the fact
stood about that child. Put the case that at the same time he held a trust to
find a child for an eccentric rich lady to adopt and bring up.«
    »I follow you, sir.«
    »Put the case that he lived in an atmosphere of evil, and that all he saw of
children was, their being generated in great numbers for certain destruction.
Put the case that he often saw children solemnly tried at a criminal bar, where
they were held up to be seen; put the case that he habitually knew of their
being imprisoned, whipped, transported, neglected, cast out, qualified in all
ways for the hangman, and growing up to be hanged. Put the case that pretty nigh
all the children he saw in his daily business life, he had reason to look upon
as so much spawn, to develop into the fish that were to come to his net - to be
prosecuted, defended, forsworn, made orphans, bedevilled somehow.«
    »I follow you, sir.«
    »Put the case, Pip, that here was one pretty little child out of the heap
who could be saved; whom the father believed dead, and dared make no stir about;
as to whom, over the mother, the legal adviser had this power: I know what you
did, and how you did it. You came so and so, you did such and such things to
divert suspicion. I have tracked you through it all, and I tell it you all. Part
with the child, unless it should be necessary to produce it to clear you, and
then it shall be produced. Give the child into my hands, and I will do my best
to bring you off. If you are saved, your child will be saved too; if you are
lost, your child is still saved. Put the case that this was done, and that the
women was cleared.«
    »I understand you perfectly.«
    »But that I make no admissions?«
    »That you make no admissions.
