"Not at cards again?" she demanded with a searching look.
"Yes, ma'am; I could do that, if I was wanted."
"Since this house strikes you old and grave, boy," said Miss Havisham,
impatiently, "and you are unwilling to play, are you willing to work?"
I could answer this inquiry with a better heart than I had been able to
find for the other question, and I said I was quite willing.
"Then go into that opposite room," said she, pointing at the door behind
me with her withered hand, "and wait there till I come."
I did so, and after hearing mice scamper about the faintly lighted room
for a few minutes, Miss Havisham entered and laid a hand upon my
shoulder. In her other hand she had a crutch-headed stick on which she
leaned, and she looked like the Witch of the place.
"This," said she, pointing to the long table with her stick, "is where I
will be laid when I am dead. They shall come and look at me here."
With some vague misgiving that she might get upon the table then and
there and die at once, the complete realization of the ghastly wax-work
at the Fair, I shrank under her touch.
"What do you think that is?" she asked me, again pointing with her
stick; "that, where those cobwebs are?"
"I can't guess what it is, ma'am."
"It's a great cake. A bride-cake. Mine!"
She looked all around the room in a glaring manner, and then said,
leaning on me while her hand twitched my shoulder, "Come, come, come!
Walk me, walk me!"
From this I made out that the work I had to do was to walk Miss Havisham
round and round the room. So I started at once, she following at a
fitful speed, twitching the hand upon my shoulder. After a while she
said, "Call Estella," and I did so. Then the company I had noticed
before filed in and paid their respects, which Miss Havisham hardly
seemed to hear.
While Estella was away lighting them down, Miss Havisham still walked
with her hand on my shoulder, but more and more slowly. At last she
stopped before the fire, and said, after muttering and looking at it
some seconds,
"This is my birthday, Pip."