Herbert was my intimate companion and friend. I presented him with a
half-share in my boat, which was the occasion of his often coming down
to Hammersmith; and my possession of a half-share in his chambers often
took me up to London. We used to walk between the two places at all
hours. I have an affection for the road yet (though it is not so
pleasant a road as it was then), formed in the impressibility of untried
youth and hope.

When I had been in Mr. Pocket's family a month or two, Mr. and Mrs.
Camilla turned up. Camilla was Mr. Pocket's sister. Georgiana, whom I
had seen at Miss Havisham's on the same occasion, also turned up. She
was a cousin,--an indigestive single woman, who called her rigidity
religion, and her liver love. These people hated me with the hatred of
cupidity and disappointment. As a matter of course, they fawned upon
me in my prosperity with the basest meanness. Towards Mr. Pocket, as
a grown-up infant with no notion of his own interests, they showed the
complacent forbearance I had heard them express. Mrs. Pocket they
held in contempt; but they allowed the poor soul to have been heavily
disappointed in life, because that shed a feeble reflected light upon
themselves.

These were the surroundings among which I settled down, and applied
myself to my education. I soon contracted expensive habits, and began
to spend an amount of money that within a few short months I should have
thought almost fabulous; but through good and evil I stuck to my books.
There was no other merit in this, than my having sense enough to feel
my deficiencies. Between Mr. Pocket and Herbert I got on fast; and, with
one or the other always at my elbow to give me the start I wanted, and
clear obstructions out of my road, I must have been as great a dolt as
Drummle if I had done less.