Join Host Bree Carlile as she reads the thirtieth chapter of Great Expectations.

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

Chapter 30 after well considering the matter while I was dressing at the Blue Boar in the morning, I resolved to tell my guardian that I doubted Orlick's being the right sort of man to fill a post of trust at Miss Havisham's.

Why, of course he's not the right sort of man, Pip, said my guardian, comfortably satisfied beforehand on the general head, because the man who fills the post of trust never is the right sort of man.

It seemed quite to put him into spirits to find that this particular post was not exceptionally held by the right sort of man.

And he listened in a satisfied manner while I told him what knowledge I had of Orlick.

Very good pip.

He observed.

When I had concluded, I'll go round presently and pay our friend off.

Rather alarmed by the summary action, I was for a little delay, and even hinted that our friend himself might be difficult to deal with.

Oh no, he won't.

Said my guardian, making his pocket handkerchief point with perfect confidence.

I should like to see him argue the question with me as we were going back together to London by the midday coach and as I breakfast under such terrors of pumblechuk that I could scarcely hold my cup.

This gave me an opportunity of saying that I wanted a walk and that I would go on along the London road while Mr.

Jaggers was occupied if he would let the coachman know that I would get into my place when overtaken.

I was thus enabled to fly from the Blue Boar immediately after breakfast, by then making a loop of about a couple of miles into the open country at the back of Pumblechuk's premises, I got round into the high street again a little beyond that pitfall, and felt myself in comparative security.

It was interesting to be in the quiet old town once more.

And it was not disagreeable to be here and there suddenly recognized and stared after one or two of the tradespeople even darted out of their shops and went a little way down the street before me that they might turn as if they had forgotten something and passed me face to face.

On which occasions I don't know whether they or I made the worst pretense they of not doing it and I of not seeing it.

Still, my position was a distinguished one, and I was not at all dissatisfied with it until fate threw me in the way of that unlimited misgrand.

Trabs boy casting my eyes along the street.

At a certain point of my progress, I beheld Trabs boy approaching, lashing himself with an empty blue bag, deeming that a serene and unconscious contemplation of him would best beseeum me and would be most likely to quell his evil mind.

I advanced with that expression of countenance and was rather congratulating myself on my success, when suddenly the knees of Trabs boy smote together, his hair up rose, his cap fell off, he trembled violently in every limb, staggered out into the road, and crying to the populace, Hold me, I'm so frightened.

Feigned to be an aperoxism of terror and contrition occasioned by the dignity of my appearance as I passed him, his teeth loudly chattered in his head, and with every mark of extreme humiliation, he prostrated himself in the dust.

This was a hard thing to bear, but this was nothing.

I had not advanced another 200 yards when, to my inexpressible terror, amazement and indignation, I again beheld trabs boy approaching.

He was coming round a narrow corner.

His blue bag was slung over his shoulder.

Honest industry beamed in his eyes.

A determination to proceed to Trabs with cheerful briskness was indicated in his gait.

With a shock he became aware of me and was severely visited as before.

But this time his motion was rotary, and he staggered round and round me with his knees more afflicted and with uplifted hands as if beseeching for mercy.

His sufferings were hailed with the greatest joy by a knot of spectators, and I felt utterly confounded.

I had not got as much further down the street as the post office when I again beheld Trabs boy shooting round by a backway.

This time he was entirely changed.

He wore the blue bag in the manner of my great coat and was strutting along the pavement towards me on the opposite side of the street, attended by a company of delighted young friends, to whom he from time to time exclaimed with a wave of his hand, don't know ya.

Words cannot state the amount of aggravation and injury wreaked upon me by TRAB's boy when, passing a breast of me, he pulled up his shirt collar, twined his side hair, stuck an arm, a kimbo, and smirked extravagantly by wiggling his elbows and body and drawling to his attendants.

Don't know ya.

Don't know ya.

Upon my soul, don't know ya.

The disgrace attendant, on his immediately afterwards taking to Crowing, and pursuing me across the bridge with crows as from an exceedingly dejected fowl who had known me when I was a blacksmith, culminated the disgrace with which I left the town and was, so to speak, ejected by it into the open country.

But unless I had taken the life of Trabs boy on that occasion, I really do not even now see what I could have done to save endure.

To have struggled with him in the street, or to have exacted any lower recompense from him than his heart's best blood, would have been futile and degrading.

Moreover, he was a boy whom no man could hurt an invulnerable and dodging serpent, who, when chased into a corner, flew out again between his captor's legs.

Scornfully yelping.

I wrote, however, to Mr.

TRAB by next day's post to say that Mr.

PIPP must decline to deal further with one who could so far forget what he owed to the best interests of society as to employ a boy who excited loathing in every respectable mind.

The coach with Mr.

Jaggers inside came up in due time, and I took my box seat again and arrived in London safe but not sound, for my heart was gone as soon as I arrived.

I sent a penitential, codfish and barrel of oysters to Joe, as reparation for not having gone myself, and then went on to Barnard's Inn.

I found Herbert dining on cold meat and delighted to welcome me back.

Having dispatched the Avenger to the coffee house for an addition to the dinner, I felt that I must open my breast that very evening to my friend and chum, as confidence was out of the question.

With the Avenger in the hall, which could merely be regarded in the light of an anti chamber to the keyhole, I sent him to the play.

A better proof of the severity of my bondage to that taskmaster could scarcely be afforded than the degrading shifts to which I was constantly driven.

To find him employment so mean is extremity that I sometimes sent him to Hyde Park Corner to see what a clock was.

Dinner done, and we sitting with our feet upon the fender, I said to Herbert, My dear Herbert, I have something very particular to tell you.

My dear Handel, he returned, I shall esteem and respect your confidence it concerns myself, Herbert, said I, and one other person.

Herbert crossed his feet, looked at the fire with his head on one side, and having looked at it in vain for some time, looked at me because I didn't.

Go on, Herbert, said I, laying my head upon his knee.

I love I adore Estella instead of being transfixed, Herbert replied.

In an easy matter, of courseway.

Exactly.

Well, Herbert, is that all you say?

Well, what next?

I mean, said Herbert, of course I know that.

How do you know it?

Said I.

How do I know it, Handle?

Well, from you.

I never told you.

Told me.

You never told me when you've got your hair cut.

But I have had senses to perceive it.

You have always adored her ever since I have known you.

You brought your adoration and your portman toe here together, told me why.

You've always told me all day long.

When you told me your own story.

You told me plainly that you began adoring her the first time you saw her, when you were very young indeed.

Very well, then, said I, to whom this was a new and not unwelcome light I've never left off.

Adoring her and she's come back a most beautiful and most elegant creature.

And I saw her yesterday.

And if I adored her before, I now doubly adore her.

Lucky for you, then, Handle, said Herbert, you are picked out for her and allotted to her without encroaching on forbidden ground.

We may venture to say that there can be no doubt between ourselves of that fact.

Have you any idea yet of Estella's views on the Adoration question?

I shook my head gloomily.

Oh, she's thousands of miles away from me, said I.

Patience, my dear Handle.

Time enough, time enough.

But you have something more to say.

I'm ashamed to say it, I returned, and yet it's no worse to say than to think it.

You can call me a lucky fellow.

Of course I am.

I was a blacksmith boy, but yesterday I am what shall I say I am today?

Say a good fellow, if you want a phrase, returned Herbert, smiling and clapping his hand on the back of mine.

A good fellow.

With impetuosity and hesitation, boldness and diffidence action and dreaming curiously mixed in him.

I stopped for a moment to consider whether there really was this mixture in my character on the whole.

I by no means recognized the analysis, but thought it not worth disputing.

When I asked what I am to call myself today, Herbert, I went on, I suggest what I have in my thoughts.

You say I am lucky.

I know I have done nothing to raise myself in life and that fortune alone has raised me that is, being very lucky.

And yet when I think of Estella and when you don't, you you know.

Herbert threw in with his eyes on the fire, which I thought kind and sympathetic of him.

Then, my dear Herbert, I cannot tell you how dependent and uncertain I feel and how exposed a hundreds of chances avoiding forbidden ground as you did just now.

I may still say that on the constancy of one person naming no person, all my expectations depend, and at the best, how indefinite and unsatisfactory, only to know so vaguely what they are.

In saying this, I relieved my mind of what had always been there, more or less, though no doubt most since yesterday.

Now, Handle, Herbert replied in his gay, hopeful way, it seems to me that in the despondency of the tender passion we are looking into our gift horse's mouth with a magnifying glass.

Likewise, it seems to me that concentrating our attention on the examination, we altogether overlook one of the best points of the animal.

Didn't you tell me that your guardian, Mr.

Jaggers, told you in the beginning that you were not endowed with expectations only?

And even if he had not told you so, though that is a very large if, I grant.

Could you believe that of all the men in London, mr.

Jaggers is the man to hold his present relations towards you unless he were sure of his ground?

I said I could not deny that this was a strong point.

I said it.

People often do in such cases like a rather reluctant concession to truth and justice.

As if I wanted to deny it.

I should think it was a strong point, said Herbert, and I should think you would be puzzled to imagine a stronger.

As to the rest, you must bide your guardian's time, and he must bide his client's time.

You'll be one in 20 before you know where you are, and then perhaps you'll get some further enlightenment.

At all events, you'll be nearer getting it, for it must come at last.

What a hopeful disposition you have said.

I gratefully admiring his cheery ways.

I ought to have, said Herbert, for I have not much else.

I must acknowledge, by the by that the good sense of what I have just said is not my own but my father's.

The only remark I ever heard him make on your story was the final one the thing is settled and done, or Mr.

Jagger's would not be in it.

And now, before I say anything more about my father or my father's son, and repay confidence with confidence, I want to make myself seriously disagreeable to you for a moment positively repulsive.

You won't succeed, said I.

Oh, yes, I shall, said he.

One, two, three.

And now I'm in for it.

Handle, my good fellow.

Though he'd spoke in this light tone, he was very much in earnest.

I've been thinking since we've been talking with our feet on this fender, that Estella surely cannot be a condition of your inheritance if she was never referred to by your guardian.

Am I right in so understanding what you've told me as that he never referred to her directly or indirectly in any way.

Never even hinted, for instance, that your patron might have views as to your marriage ultimately?

Never.

Now, Handle, I'm quite free from the flavor of sour grapes upon my soul and honor not being bound to her.

Can you not detach yourself from her?

I told you I should be disagreeable.

I turned my head aside, for with a rush and a sweep like the old marsh winds coming up from the sea, a feeling like that which had subdued me on the morning when I left the forge, when the mists were solemnly rising and when I laid my hand upon the village fingerpost, smote upon my heart again.

There was silence between us for a little while.

Yes, but, my dear Handle, Herbert went on as if we had been talking instead of silent.

It's having been so strongly rooted in the breast of a boy whom nature and circumstances made so romantic renders it very serious.

Think of her bringing up, and think of Miss Havisham.

Think of what she is herself now.

I am repulsive and you abominate me.

This may lead to miserable things, I know it.

Herbert, said I, with my head still turned away, but I can't help it.

You can't detach yourself.

No, impossible.

You can't try handle.

No, impossible.

Well, said Herbert, getting up with a lively shake as if he had been asleep and stirring the fire.

Now I'll endeavor to make myself agreeable again.

So he went round the room and shook the curtains out put the chairs in their places, tidied the books and so forth that were lying about looked into the hall, peeped into the letterbox, shut the door and came back to his chair by the fire where he sat down, nursing his left leg in both arms.

I was going to say a word or two, Handle, concerning my father and my father's son.

I'm afraid it is scarcely necessary for my father's son to remark that my father's establishment is not particularly brilliant.

In its housekeeping there is always plenty, Herbert, said I, to say something encouraging.

Oh, yes.

And so the dustman says, I believe, with the strongest approval.

And so does the marine store shop in the back street.

Gravely, Handle, for the subject is grave enough.

You know how it is as well as I do.

I suppose there was a time once when my father had not given matters up but if ever there was, the time is gone.

May I ask you if you've ever had an opportunity of remarking down in your part of the country that the children of not exactly suitable marriages are always most particularly anxious to be married?

This was such a singular question that I asked him in return.

Is it so?

I don't know, said Herbert.

That's what I want to know because it is decidedly the case with us.

My poor sister Charlote, who was next to me and died before she was 14 was a striking example.

Little Jane is the same.

In her desire to be matrimonially established, you might supposed her to have passed a short existence in the perpetual contemplation of domestic bliss.

Little Alec, in a frock, has already made arrangements for his union with a suitable young person at queue.

And indeed I think we're all engaged except the baby.

Then you are, said I.

I am, said Herbert, but it's a secret.

I assured him of my keeping the secret and begged to be favored with further particulars.

He had spoken so sensibly and feelingly of my weakness that I wanted to know something about his strength.

May I ask the name?

I said.

Name of Clara, said Herbert.

Live in London?

Yes.

Perhaps I ought to mention, said Herbert, who had become curiously crestfallen and meek since we entered on the interesting theme that she is rather below my mother's nonsensical family notions.

Her father had to do with the victualing of passenger ships.

I think he was a species of pursuer.

What is he now?

Said I.

He's an invalid now, replied Herbert.

Living on the first floor, said Herbert, which was not at all what I meant for had intended my question to apply to his means.

I've never seen him, for he's always kept his room overhead since I've known Clara.

But I have heard him constantly.

He makes tremendous rows, roars and pegs at the floor with some frightful instrument in looking at me.

And then laughing heartily, Herbert for the time recovered his usual lively manner.

Don't you expect to see him?

Said I.

Oh, yes, I constantly expect to see him, returned Herbert, because I never hear him without expecting him to come tumbling through the ceiling.

But I don't know how long the rafters may hold.

When he had once more laughed heartily, he became meek again and told me that the moment he began to realize capital it was his intention to marry this young lady, he added as a self evident proposition, engendering low spirits.

But you can't marry, you know, while you're looking about you.

As we contemplated the fire, and as I thought what a difficult vision to realize the same capital sometimes was, I put my hands in my pockets, a folded piece of paper in one of them.

Attracting my attention, I opened it and found it to be the playbill I had received from Joe relative to the celebrated provincial amateur of Roshan Renown.

And bless my heart, I involuntarily added aloud, it's tonight.

This changed the subject in an instant and made us hurriedly resolve to go to the play.

So when I had pledged myself to comfort and abet Herbert in the affair of his heart by all predictable and impracticable means, and when Herbert had told me that his affiance already knew me by reputation and that I should be presented to her, and when we had warmly shaken hands upon our mutual confidence.

We blew out our candles, made up our fire, locked our door, and issued forth in quest of Mr.

Wapsel in Denmark.

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

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