I played the game to an end with Estella, and she beggared me. She threw the cards down on the table when she had won them all, as if she despised them for having been won of me.
"When shall I have you here again?" said Miss Havisham. "Let me think. I know nothing of days of the week, or of weeks of the year. Come again after six days. You hear?"
"Yes, ma'am."
"Estella, take him down. Let him have something to eat, and let him roam and look about him while he eats. Go, Pip."
I followed the candle down, as I had followed the candle up, and she stood it in the place where we had found it. Until she opened the side entrance, I had fancied, without thinking about it, that it must necessarily be night-time. The rush of the daylight quite confounded me, and made me feel as if I had been in the candle-light of the strange room many hours.
When I reached home, my sister was very curious to know all about Miss Havisham and what I had seen and done at her house. Uncle Pumblechook, too, came hurrying over, armed with many questions.
I was naturally a truthful boy—as boys go—but I knew instinctively that I could not make myself understood about that strange visit. So I didn't try. When he fired his first question, as to What was Miss Havisham like?
"Very tall and dark," I told him.
"Is she, uncle?" asked my sister.
Mr. Pumblechook winked assent; from which I at once inferred that he had never seen Miss Havisham, for she was nothing of the kind.