Join Host Bree Carlile as she reads the twenty-first chapter of Great Expectations.

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San the book and let's see what we can find.

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My name is Brie Carlyle and I love to read and wanted to share my passion with listeners like you.

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

Chapter 21 casting my eyes on Mr.

Wimick as we went along to see what he was like in the light of day, I found him to be a dry man, rather short in stature, with a square wooden face whose expression seemed to have been imperfectly, chipped out with a dull edged chisel.

There were some marks in it that might have been dimples if the material had been softer and the instrument finer, but which, as it was, were only dents.

The chisel had made three or four of these attempts at embellishment over his nose, but had given them up without an effort to smooth them off.

I judged him to be a bachelor from the frayed condition of his linen, and he appeared to have sustained a good many bereavements, for he wore at least four morning rings, besides a brooch representing a lady and a weeping willow at a tomb with an urn on it.

I noticed, too, that several rings and seals hung at his watch chain, as if he were quite laden with remembrances of departed friends.

He had glittering eyes, small, keen and black, and thin, wide, modeled lips.

He had had them, to the best of my belief, from 40 to 50 years.

So you were never in London before?

Said Mr.

Wimick to me.

No, said I.

I was new here once, said Mr.

Wimick, rum to think of now.

You're well acquainted with it now?

Why, yes, said Mr Wimick.

I know the moves of it.

Is it a very wicked place?

I asked more for the sake of saying something than for information.

You may get cheated, robbed and murdered in London.

There are plenty of people anywhere who will do that for you if there's bad blood between you and them, said I to soften it off a little.

Oh, I don't know about bad blood.

Returned, Mr.

Wimick.

There's not much bad blood about.

They'll do it if there's anything to be got by it that makes it worse.

You think so?

Returned, mr.

Wimick.

Much about the same, I should say.

He wore his hat on the back of his head and looked straight before him, walking in a self contained way, as if there were nothing in the streets to claim his attention.

His mouth was such a post office of a mouth that he had a mechanical appearance of smiling.

He had got to the top of Holborn Hill before I knew that it was merely a mechanical appearance, and that he was not smiling at all.

Do you know where Mr.

Matthew pocket lives?

Asked Mr Wimick.

Yes, said he, nodding in the direction.

At Hammersmith West of London.

Is that far?

Well, say 5 miles.

Do you know him?

Why, you're a regular cross examiner, said Mr Wimick, looking at me with an approving air.

Yes, I know him.

I know him.

There was an air of toleration or depreciation about his utterance of these words that rather depressed me, and I was still looking sideways at his block of a face in search of any encouraging note to the text, when he said, Here we were at Bernard's Inn.

My depression was not alleviated by the announcement, for I had supposed that establishment to be a hotel kept by Mr Bernard, to which the Blue Boar in our town was a mere public house, whereas I now found Bernard to be a disembodied spirit or a fiction.

And his inn, the dingiest collection of shabby buildings ever squeezed together in a ranked corner as a club for tomcats.

We entered this haven through a wicked gate, and were disgorged by an introductory passage into a melancholy little square that looked to me like a flat burying ground.

I thought it had the most dismal trees in it, and the most dismal sparrows and the most dismal cats and the most dismal houses in number, half a dozen or so that I'd ever seen.

I thought the windows of the sets of chambers unto which those houses were divided were in every stage of dilapidated blind and curtain, crippled flower pot, cracked glass, dusty, decay and miserable makeshift, while to let, to let, to let glared at me from empty rooms as if no new wretches ever came there.

And the vengeance of the soul of Bernard were being slowly appeased by the gradual suicide of the present occupants and their unholy internment under the gravel.

A Frousy morning of soot and smoke attired this forlorn creation of Bernard, and it had strewn ashes on its head, and was undergoing penance and humiliation as a mere dust hole.

Thus far my sense of sight, while dry rot and wet rot, and all the silent rots that rot, and neglected roof and cellar rot, of rat and mouse and bug and coaching stables near at hand, besides, addressed themselves faintly to my sense of smell, and moaned, Try Bernard's mixture.

So imperfect was this realization of the first of my great expectations that I looked in dismay at Mr.

Wimick.

Ah, said he, mistaking me.

The retirement reminds you of the country.

So it does me.

He led me into a corner and conducted me up a flight of stairs, which appeared to me to be slowly collapsing into sawdust, so that one of those days the upper lodgers would look down at their doors and find themselves without the means of coming down to a set of chambers on the top floor.

Mr.

Pocket June was painted on the door, and there was a label on the letterbox returned shortly.

He hardly thought you'd come so soon, Mr.

Wimick explained.

You don't want me anymore.

No, thank you.

Said I.

As I keep the cash, Mr.

Wimick observed, we shall most likely meet pretty often.

Good day.

Good day.

I put out my hand, and Mr.

Wimick at first looked at it as if he thought I wanted something.

Then he looked at me and said, correcting himself, to be sure, yes.

You're in the habit of shaking hands.

I was rather confused, thinking it must be out of the London fashion, but said, yes.

I have got so out of it, said Mr.

Wimick, except at last very glad, I'm sure, to make your acquaintance.

Good day.

When we had shaken hands and he was gone, I opened the staircase window and had nearly beheaded myself, for the lines had rotted away, and it came down like the guillotine.

Happily it was so quick that I had not put my head out.

After this escape, I was content to take a foggy view of the inn through the windows encrusting dirt, and to stand dolefully looking out, saying to myself that London was decidedly overrated.

Mr.

Pocket Jr's idea shortly was not mine, for I had nearly maddened myself with looking out for half an hour, and had written my name with my finger several times in the dirt of every pane in the window before I heard footsteps on the stairs.

Gradually there arose before me the hat, head, neckcloth, waistcoat, trousers, boots of a member of society of about my own standing.

He had a paper bag under each arm and a puddle of strawberries in one hand, and was out of breath.

Mr.

Pip, said he.

Mr.

Pocket, said I.

Near me he exclaimed, I'm extremely sorry, but I knew there was a coach from your part of the country at midday and I thought you would come by that one.

The fact is, I've been out on your account.

Not that that is any excuse for I thought, coming from the country, you might like a little fruit after dinner and I went to Covent Garden Market to get it good.

For a reason that I had, I felt as if my eyes would start out of my head.

I acknowledged his attention incoherently and began to think this was a dream.

Dear me, said Mr.

Pocket Jr.

This door sticks so.

As he was fast making jam of his fruit by wrestling the door while the paper bags were under his arms, I begged him to allow me to hold them.

He relinquished them with an agreeable smile and combated with the door as if it were a wild beast.

It yielded so suddenly at last that he staggered back upon me and I staggered back upon the opposite door and we both laughed.

But still I felt as if my eyes must start out of my head, as if this must be a dream.

Pray.

Come in.

Said Mr.

Pocket Jr.

Allow me to lead the way.

I'm rather bare here, but I hope you'll be able to make out tolerably well till Monday.

My father thought you would get on more agreeably through tomorrow with me than with him and might like to take a walk about London.

I'm sure I shall be very happy to show London to you.

As to our table, you won't find that bad, I hope, for it will be supplied from our coffee house here.

And it is only right, I should add at your expense such being Mr.

Jagger's directions.

As to our lodging, it's not by any means splendid because I have my own bread to earn and my father hasn't anything to give me and I shouldn't be willing to take it if he had.

This is our sitting room.

Just such chairs and tables and carpet and so forth, you see, as they could spare from home.

He mustn't give me credit for the tablecloth and spoons and casters because they come for you from the coffee house.

This is my little bedroom.

Rather musty, but Bernard's is musty.

This is your bedroom.

The furniture's hired for the occasion, but I trust it will answer the purpose.

If you should want anything, I'll go and fetch it.

The Chambers are retired and we shall be alone together.

But we shan't fight.

I dare say.

But dear me, I beg your pardon.

You're holding the fruit all this time.

Pray let me take these bags from you.

I am quite ashamed.

As I stood opposite to Mr.

Pocket Jr.

Delivering him the bags one, two I saw the starting appearance come into his own eyes that I knew to be in mine.

And he said, falling back, Lord bless me.

You're the prowling boy.

And you said I are the pale young gentleman 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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Hole.

Sand.

Let's see what we can find.

Taking chapter by chapter, one at a time.

So many adventures and mountains we can climb.

Take it word for word, line by line, one bite at a time close.