Join Host Bree Carlile as she reads the thirty-second chapter of Great Expectations.

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Today we'll be continuing Great Expectations by Charles Dickens.

Chapter 32 one day, when I was busy with my books in Mr pocket, I received a note by the post, the mere outside of which threw me into a great flutter.

For though I had never seen the handwriting in which it was addressed, I divined whose hand it was.

It had no set beginning as dear Mr.

Pip or dear Pip or dear sir dear anything but ran.

Thus I am to come to London the day after to morrow by the midday coach.

I believe it was settled you should meet me at all events.

Miss Havisham has that impression, and I write in obedience to it.

She sends you her regard.

Yours, Estella.

If there had been time, I should probably have ordered several suits of clothes for this occasion, but as there was not, I was feigned to be content.

With those I had.

My appetite vanished instantly, and I knew no peace or rest until the day arrived.

Not that its arrival brought me either, for then I was worse than ever and began haunting the coach office in.

Wood Street cheapside before the coach had.

Left the Blue Boar in our town.

For all that I knew this perfectly well, I still felt as if it were not safe to let the coach office be out of my sight longer.

Than five minutes at a time.

And in this condition of unreason I had performed the first half hour of a watch of four or 5 hours when Wimick ran against me.

Hello, Mr.

Pip, said he.

How do you do?

I should hardly have thought this was your beat.

I explained that I was waiting to meet somebody who was coming up by coach, and I inquired after the Castle.

And the aged, both flourishing.

Thank you, said Wimick, and particularly the aged.

He's in wonderful feather.

He'll be 82 next birthday.

I have a notion of firing 82 times if the neighborhood shouldn't complain, and that cannon of mine should prove equal to the pressure.

However, this is not London talk.

Where do you think I'm going to?

To the office, said I, for he.

Was tending in that direction.

Next thing to it, returned Wimick, I am going to Newgate.

We are in a banker's parcel case just at present, and I've been down the road taking a squint at the scene of action, and thereupon must have a word or two with our client.

Did your client commit the robbery?

I asked.

Lest your soul and body know, answered Wimick very dryly.

Muddy is accused of it.

So might you or I be.

Either of us might be accused of it, you know.

Only neither of us is, I remarked.

Yeah?

Said Wimick, touching me on the breast.

With his forefinger, you're a deep one, Mr.

Pip.

Would you like to have a look at Newgate?

Have you time to spare?

I had so much time to spare that the proposal came as a relief, notwithstanding its irreconcilability with my latent desire to keep an eye on the coach office.

Muttering that I would make the inquiry whether I had time to walk with.

Him, I went into the office and.

Ascertained from the clerk with the nicest precision and much to the trying of his temper, the earliest moment at which the coach could be expected, which I knew beforehand quite as well as he.

I then rejoined Mr.

Wimick, and affecting.

To consult my watch and to be.

Surprised by the information I had received, accepted his offer.

We were at Newgate in a few.

Minutes, and we passed through the lodge.

Where some fetters were hanging up on the bare walls among the prison rules into the interior of the jail.

At that time, jails were much neglected, and the period of exaggerated reaction consequent on all public wrongdoing, and which is always its heaviest and longest punishment, was still far off.

So felons were not lodged and fed better than soldiers, to say nothing of poppers, and seldom set fire to their prisons with the excusable object of improving the flavor of their soup.

It was visiting time when Wimick took me in, and a potman was going his rounds with beer, and the prisoners behind bars and yards were buying beer and talking to friends, and a Frousy, ugly, disorderly, depressing scene it was.

It struck me that Wimick walked among the prisoners much as a gardener might walk among his plants.

This was first put into my head by seeing a shoot that had come.

Up in the night and saying what, Captain Tom, are you there indeed?

And also is that black bill behind the cistern?

I didn't look for you these two months.

How do you find yourself?

Equally in his stopping at the bars and attending the anxious whisperers always singly.

Wimick, with his post office in an.

Immovable state, looked at them while in.

Conference as if he were taking particular notice of the advance they had made since last observed towards coming out in full blow at their trial.

He was highly popular, and I found that he took the familiar department of Mr.

Jaggers'business.

Though something of the state of Mr.

Jaggers hung about him too forbidding approach beyond certain limits.

His personal recognition of each successive client was comprised in a nod and in his settling his hat a little easier.

On his head with both hands and.

Then tightening the post office and putting his hands in his pockets.

In one or two instances there was a difficulty respecting the raising of fees.

And then Mr.

Wimick, backing as far as possible from the insufficient money produced.

Said it's no use, my boy, I'm only a subordinate, I can't take it.

Don't go on in that way with a subordinate.

If you are unable to make up your quantum, my boy, you would better address yourself to a principal.

There are plenty of principles in the profession, you know, and what is not worth the while of 1 may be worth the while of another.

That's my recommendation to you, speaking as a subordinate.

Don't try on useless measures.

Why should you?

Now, who's next?

Thus we walked through Wimick's greenhouse until he turned to me and said notice.

The man I shall shake hands with.

I should have done so without the preparation, as he had shaken hands with no one.

Yet almost as soon as he had spoken.

A portly, upright man whom I can.

See now as I write in a well worn, olive colored frock coat with a peculiar pallor overspreading the red in his complexion and eyes that went wandering about when he tried to fix them.

Came up to a corner of the.

Bars and put his hand to his hat, which had a greasy and fatty surface like cold broth with a half serious and half Jacob's military salute.

Colonel to you said wimick.

How are you, Colonel?

All right, Mr.

Wimick.

Everything was done that could be done.

But the evidence was too strong for us, Colonel.

It was too strong, sir.

But I don't care.

No, no.

Said Wimmet.

Coolly.

You don't care.

Then turning to me, served His Majesty this man was a soldier in the line and bought his discharge.

I said, indeed.

And the man's eyes looked at me and then looked over my head, and then looked all round me and then he drew his hand across his lips and laughed.

I think I shall be out of this on Monday, sir, he said to Wimick.

Perhaps, returned my friend, but there's no knowing.

I'm glad to have the chance of bidding you goodbye, Mr.

Wimick, said the.

Man, stretching out his hand between two bars.

Thank yee, said Wimick, shaking hands with him.

Same to you, Colonel.

If what I had upon me when taken had been real, Mr.

Wimick, said.

The man, unwilling to let his hand.

Go, I should have asked the favor of you wearing another ring in acknowledgement of your attentions.

I'll accept the will for the deed, said Wimick.

By the by, you are quite a pigeon fancier.

The man looked up at the sky.

I am told you had a remarkable breed of tumblers.

Could you commission any friend of yours to bring me a pair?

If you've no further use for them.

It shall be done, sir.

All right, said Wimick.

They shall be taken care of.

Good afternoon, Colonel.

Goodbye.

They shook hands again, and as we.

Walked away, Wimick said to me, a coiner.

A very good workman.

The recorder's report is made today, and he's sure to be executed on Monday.

Still, you see, as far as it goes, a pair of pigeons are portable property.

All the same.

With that, he looked back and nodded at this dead plant and then cast his eyes about him in walking out of the yard as if he were considering what other pot would go best in its place.

As we came out of the prison through the lodge, I found that the great importance of my guardian was appreciated by the turnkeys no less than by those whom they held in charge.

Well, Mr.

Wimick?

Said the turnkey, who kept us between the two studded and spiked lodge gates and who carefully locked one before he unlocked the other.

What's Mr.

Jaggers going to do with that Waterside murder?

Is he going to make it manslaughter, or what's he going to make of it?

Why don't you ask him?

Returned Wimick.

Oh, yes, I dare say, said the turnkey.

Now that's the way with them here.

Mr.

Pip, remarked Wimick, turning to me with his post office elongated.

They don't mind what they ask of me, the subordinate.

But you'll never catch him asking any questions of my principal.

Is this young gentleman one of the apprentices or articleed ones of your office?

Asked the turnkey with a grin at Mr.

Wimick's humor.

There he goes again, you see?

Cried Wimick.

I told you so.

Asks another question of the subordinate before his first is dry.

Well, supposing Mr.

Pip is one of.

Them, why then, said the turnkey, grinning again, he knows what Mr.

Jagger's is.

Yeah, cried Wimick suddenly, hitting out at the turnkey.

In a facetious way, you're dumb as one of your own keys when you have to do with my principal.

You know you are.

Let us out, you old fox, or I'll get him to bring an action against you for false imprisonment.

The turnkey laughed and gave us good.

Day and stood laughing at us over.

The spikes of the wicket when we.

Descended the steps into the street.

Mind you, Mr.

Pip, said Wimick gravely in my ear as he took my arm.

To be more confidential, I don't know.

That Mr.

Jaggers does a better thing than the way in which he keeps himself so high.

He is always so high.

His constant height is of a peace with his immense abilities that Colonel Durst no more take leave of him than that turnkey Durst.

Ask him his intentions respecting a case.

Then between his height and them he slips in his subordinate.

Don't you see?

And so he has him soul and body.

I was very much impressed, and not for the first time by my guardian subtlety.

To confess the truth, I very heartily wished, and not for the first time, that I had had some other guardian of minor abilities.

Mr.

Wimick and I parted at the office in Little Britain where suppliants for Mr.

Jaggers'notice were lingering about as usual and I returned to my watch in the street of the coach office with some 3 hours on hand.

I consumed the whole time in thinking how strange it was that I should be encompassed by all this taint of prison and crime that in my childhood out on our lonely marshes on a winter evening I should have first encountered it.

That it should have reappeared on two occasions starting out like a stain that.

Was faded but not gone.

That it should, in this new way pervade my fortune and advancement while my mind was thus engaged.

I thought of the beautiful young Estella, proud and refined, coming towards me.

And I thought with absolute abhorrence of the contrast between the jail and her.

I wish that Wimick had not met me or that I had not yielded.

To him and gone with him so that of all days in the year on this day I might not have had gate in my breath and on my clothes.

I beat the prison dust off my feet as I sauntered to and fro and I shook it out of my dress and I exhaled its air from my lungs.

So contaminated did I feel, remembering who was coming, that the coach came quickly after all.

And I was not yet free from the soiling consciousness of Mr.

Wimick's conservatory when I saw her face at the coach window and her hand waving to me.

What was the nameless shadow which again in that one instant had passed.

Thank you for joining Bite at a Time Books today while we read a bite of one of your favorite classics.

Again, my name is Brie Carlyle and I hope you come back tomorrow for the next bite of Great Expectations.

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