I now fell into a regular routine of apprenticeship life, which was
varied beyond the limits of the village and the marshes, by no more
remarkable circumstance than the arrival of my birthday and my paying
another visit to Miss Havisham. I found Miss Sarah Pocket still on duty
at the gate; I found Miss Havisham just as I had left her, and she spoke
of Estella in the very same way, if not in the very same words. The
interview lasted but a few minutes, and she gave me a guinea when I was
going, and told me to come again on my next birthday. I may mention at
once that this became an annual custom. I tried to decline taking the
guinea on the first occasion, but with no better effect than causing her
to ask me very angrily, if I expected more? Then, and after that, I took
it.

So unchanging was the dull old house, the yellow light in the darkened
room, the faded spectre in the chair by the dressing-table glass, that
I felt as if the stopping of the clocks had stopped Time in that
mysterious place, and, while I and everything else outside it grew
older, it stood still. Daylight never entered the house as to my
thoughts and remembrances of it, any more than as to the actual fact. It
bewildered me, and under its influence I continued at heart to hate my
trade and to be ashamed of home.