Not so very uncommon,
you'll tell me. I reply, that depends on the original wildness of the beast, and
the amount of taming. It won't lower your opinion of Mr. Jaggers's powers. Keep
your eye on it.«
    I told him I would do so, with all the interest and curiosity that his
preparation awakened. As I was taking my departure, he asked me if I would like
to devote five minutes to seeing Mr. Jaggers »at it?«
    For several reasons, and not least because I didn't clearly know what Mr.
Jaggers would be found to be at, I replied in the affirmative. We dived into the
City, and came up in a crowded police-court, where a blood-relation (in the
murderous sense) of the deceased with the fanciful taste in brooches, was
standing at the bar, uncomfortably chewing something; while my guardian had a
woman under examination or cross-examination - I don't know which - and was
striking her, and the bench, and everybody with awe. If anybody, of whatsoever
degree, said a word that he didn't approve of, he instantly required to have it
taken down. If anybody wouldn't make an admission, he said, »I'll have it out of
you!« and if anybody made an admission, he said, »Now I have got you!« The
magistrates shivered under a single bite of his finger. Thieves and thief-takers
hung in dread rapture on his words, and shrank when a hair of his eyebrows
turned in their direction. Which side he was on, I couldn't make out, for he
seemed to me to be grinding the whole place in a mill; I only know that when I
stole out on tiptoe, he was not on the side of the bench; for, he was making the
legs of the old gentleman who presided, quite convulsive under the table, by his
denunciations of his conduct as the representative of British law and justice in
that chair that day.
 

                                  Chapter XXV

Bentley Drummle, who was so sulky a fellow that he even took up a book as if its
writer had done him an injury, did not take up an acquaintance in a more
agreeable spirit. Heavy in figure, movement, and comprehension - in the sluggish
complexion of his face, and in the large awkward tongue that seemed to loll
about in his mouth as he himself lolled about in a room - he was idle, proud,
niggardly, reserved, and suspicious. He came