Meg looked merely thoughtful.
[109]
]“Of course you can,” she said; “but of course you will get a bare nothing at first. And, Pip, excuse me saying it, aren’t you rather selfish? You might be able to rough it; but wouldn’t it be very hard on her? Dear Pip, haven’t you too much pride to ask any woman in the world to be your wife, and not have a penny to offer her or a house to take her to?”
This was a new view of the case to Pip. It had certainly not occurred to him it was hard on her; all the sacrifice had seemed on his side, and he had rejoiced to make it.
“She doesn’t mind; she knows I’d have to begin from the beginning,” he said, half sulkily.
“But wouldn’t she rather wait? There is every chance of a bright future before you, as you know, Pip, with all the influence father has. Pip, I am sure she would rather wait and come to you when you are able to take her proudly before every one, than marry you now and make you sink into a fifth-rate clerk for the rest of your life.”
She held her head on one side argumentatively; the colour was beginning to creep back into her cheeks.
As for Pip, he was both surprised and sobered at her moderation. She had not said a word against the girl he loved, she had not been contemptuous; [110] ]she was only laying before him, clearly and rationally, what he had seen and refused to see himself.
The conversation spread itself out over hours; dusk was beginning to fall before they turned to go in again. It would take half this book to narrate everything that was said, but in the end the victory was to Meg.
When it came to the crisis she had been very firm.
Unless he would promise her, before God and before heaven, before their dead mother and all he held holy, not to marry the girl secretly, she should immediately inform his father, who, until he was of age, could make the thing impossible.