`Oh!' she said. `Did you wish to see Miss Havisham?'

`If Miss Havisham wished to see me,' returned Mr Pumblechook, discomfited.

`Ah!' said the girl; `but you see she don't.'

She said it so finally, and in such an undiscussible way, that Mr Pumblechook, though in a condition of ruffled dignity, could not protest. But he eyed me severely - as if I had done anything to him! - and departed with the words reproachfully delivered: `Boy! Let your behaviour here be a credit unto them which brought you up by hand!' I was not free from apprehension that he would come back to propound through the gate, `And sixteen?' But he didn't.

My young conductress locked the gate, and we went across the court-yard. It was paved and clean, but grass was growing in every crevice. The brewery buildings had a little lane of communication with it, and the wooden gates of that lane stood open, and all the brewery beyond, stood open, away to the high enclosing wall; and all was empty and disused. The cold wind seemed to blow colder there, than outside the gate; and it made a shrill noise in howling in and out at the open sides of the brewery, like the noise of wind in the rigging of a ship at sea.

She saw me looking at it, and she said, `You could drink without hurt all the strong beer that's brewed there now, boy.'

`I should think I could, miss' said I, in a shy way.

`Better not try to brew beer there now, or it would turn out sour, boy; don't you think so?'

`It looks like it, miss.'

`Not that anybody means to try,' she added, `for that's all done with, and the place will stand as idle as it is, till it falls. As to strong beer, there's enough of it in the cellars already, to drown the Manor House.'

`Is that the name of this house, miss?'

`One of its names, boy.'

`It has more than one, then, miss?'

`One more. Its other name was Satis; which is Greek, or Latin, or Hebrew, or all three - or all one to me - for enough.'

`Enough House,' said I; `that's a curious name, miss.'

`Yes,' she replied; `but it meant more than it said. It meant, when it was given, that whoever had this house, could want nothing else. They must have been easily satisfied in those days, I should think. But don't loiter, boy.'

Though she called me `boy' so often, and with a carelessness that was far from complimentary, she was of about my own age. She seemed much older than I, of course, being a girl, and beautiful and self- possessed; and she was an scornful of me as if she had been one-and-twenty, and a queen.

We went into the house by a side door - the great front entrance had two chains across it outside - and the first thing I noticed was, that the passages were all dark, and that she had left a candle burning there. She took it up, and we went through more passages and up a staircase, and still it was all dark, and only the candle lighted us.

At last we came to the door of a room, and she said, `Go in.'