For eleven years, I had not seen Joe nor Biddy with my bodily
Eyes,--though they had both been often before my fancy in the
East,--when, upon an evening in December, an hour or two after dark, I
laid my hand softly on the latch of the old kitchen door. I touched it
so softly that I was not heard, and looked in unseen. There, smoking his
pipe in the old place by the kitchen firelight, as hale and as strong as
ever, though a little gray, sat Joe; and there, fenced into the corner
with Joe's leg, and sitting on my own little stool looking at the fire,
was--I again!

"We giv' him the name of Pip for your sake, dear old chap," said Joe,
delighted, when I took another stool by the child's side (but I did not
rumple his hair), "and we hoped he might grow a little bit like you, and
we think he do."

I thought so too, and I took him out for a walk next morning, and we
talked immensely, understanding one another to perfection. And I took
him down to the churchyard, and set him on a certain tombstone there,
and he showed me from that elevation which stone was sacred to the
memory of Philip Pirrip, late of this Parish, and Also Georgiana, Wife
of the Above.

"Biddy," said I, when I talked with her after dinner, as her little girl
lay sleeping in her lap, "you must give Pip to me one of these days; or
lend him, at all events."