As he happened to go out now, and as Wemmick was
brisk and talkative, I said to Wemmick that I hardly knew what to
make of Mr. Jaggers's manner.
"Tell him that, and he'll take it as a compliment," answered
Wemmick; "he don't mean that you should know what to make of it.--
Oh!" for I looked surprised, "it's not personal; it's professional:
only professional."
Wemmick was at his desk, lunching--and crunching--on a dry hard
biscuit; pieces of which he threw from time to time into his slit
of a mouth, as if he were posting them.
"Always seems to me," said Wemmick, "as if he had set a man-trap and
was watching it. Suddenly-click--you're caught!"
Without remarking that man-traps were not among the amenities of
life, I said I supposed he was very skilful?
"Deep," said Wemmick, "as Australia." Pointing with his pen at the
office floor, to express that Australia was understood, for the
purposes of the figure, to be symmetrically on the opposite spot of
the globe. "If there was anything deeper," added Wemmick, bringing
his pen to paper, "he'd be it."
Then, I said I supposed he had a fine business, and Wemmick said,
"Ca-pi-tal!" Then I asked if there were many clerks? to which he
replied,--
"We don't run much into clerks, because there's only one Jaggers,
and people won't have him at second hand.
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