She drew her arm through mine, as if it must be done, and I requested a
waiter who had been staring at the coach like a man who had never seen
such a thing in his life, to show us a private sitting-room. Upon that,
he pulled out a napkin, as if it were a magic clew without which he
couldn't find the way up stairs, and led us to the black hole of the
establishment, fitted up with a diminishing mirror (quite a superfluous
article, considering the hole's proportions), an anchovy sauce-cruet,
and somebody's pattens. On my objecting to this retreat, he took us into
another room with a dinner-table for thirty, and in the grate a scorched
leaf of a copy-book under a bushel of coal-dust. Having looked at this
extinct conflagration and shaken his head, he took my order; which,
proving to be merely, "Some tea for the lady," sent him out of the room
in a very low state of mind.

I was, and I am, sensible that the air of this chamber, in its strong
combination of stable with soup-stock, might have led one to infer that
the coaching department was not doing well, and that the enterprising
proprietor was boiling down the horses for the refreshment department.
Yet the room was all in all to me, Estella being in it. I thought that
with her I could have been happy there for life. (I was not at all happy
there at the time, observe, and I knew it well.) "Where are you going to, at Richmond?" I asked Estella.