Learning the Game of Money — Great Expectations

After a few days in London, Pip and Mr Pocket talk through his future. Jaggers has already decided Pip is not training for a trade; he only needs enough polish to hold his own among young men with money. Pocket treats the arrangement seriously, and Pip answers in kind, so tutor and pupil settle into steady work rather than performance.

Pip asks to keep his room at Barnard's Inn so he can stay near Herbert. Jaggers approves the expense, then tests Pip with a teasing guess at fifty pounds before paying twenty. Wemmick shows Pip the dark side of the office: death masks of famous clients, clerks grinding out cases, and his own rule to grab any portable property that comes his way. He invites Pip to Walworth and warns him to watch Jaggers's housekeeper, a woman Wemmick calls a tamed wild beast.

Pip follows Jaggers into a police court, where his guardian dominates witnesses, magistrates, and thieves alike, turning every answer into a trap. Pip leaves impressed and uneasy, seeing how power in this city is less about titles than about who can frighten a room into silence, and how easily money can buy that kind of fear in London.