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

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

Chapter 25.

Bentley Drummel, who was so sulky ollo that he even took up a book as if its writer had done him an injury, did not take up an acquaintance in a more agreeable spirit, heavy in figure, movement and comprehension, in the sluggish complexion of his face and in the large, awkward tongue that seemed to lull about in his mouth as he himself lulled about in a room.

He was idle, proud, niggeredly, reserved and suspicious.

He came of rich people down in Somerset Shire who had nursed this combination of qualities until they made the discovery that it was just of age and a blockhead.

Thus Bentley Drummel had come to Mr.

Pocket when he was a head taller than that gentleman and half a dozen heads thicker than most gentlemen.

Star Top had been spoiled by a weak mother and kept at home when he ought to have been at school.

But he was devotedly, attached to her, and admired her beyond measure.

He had a woman's delicacy of feature and was, as you may see, though you never saw her, said Herbert to me exactly like his mother.

It was but natural that I should take to him much more kindly than to Drummel, and that even in the earliest evenings of our boating, he and I should pull homeward abreast of one another conversing from boat to boat, while Bentley Drummel came up in our wake alone under the overhanging banks and among the rushes.

He would always creep in shore like some uncomfortable amphibious creature even when the tide would have sent him fast upon his way.

And I always think of him as coming after us in the dark or by the backwater when our own two boats were breaking the sunset or the moonlight in midstream.

Herbert was my intimate companion and friend.

I presented him with a half share in my boat which was the occasion of his often coming down to Hammersmith and my possession of a half share in his chambers often took me up to London.

We used to walk between the two places at all hours.

I have an affection for the road yet though it is not so pleasant a road as it was then formed in the impressibility of untried youth and hope.

When I'd been in Mr.

Pocket's family a month or two mr.

And Mrs.

Camilla turned up.

Camilla was Mr.

Pocket'sister Georgiana whom I had seen at Miss Havisham's on the same occasion also turned up.

She was a cousin, an indigestive single woman who called her rigidity religion and her liver love.

These people hated me with the hatred of cupidity and disappointment.

As a matter of course, they fawned upon me and my prosperity with the basis meanness towards Mr.

Pocket.

As a grown up infant with no notion of his own interests.

They showed the complacent, forbearance I had heard them express Mrs.

Pocket they held in contempt but they allowed the poor soul to have been heavily disappointed in life because they shed a feeble reflected light upon themselves.

These were the surroundings among which I settled down and applied myself to my education.

I soon contracted expensive habits and began to spend an amount of money that within a few short months I should have thought almost fabulous.

But through good and evil I stuck to my books.

There was no other merit in this than my having sense enough to feel my deficiencies between Mr.

Pocket and Herbert.

I got on fast and with one or the other always at my elbow to give me the start I wanted and clear obstructions out of my road.

I must have been as great adult as Drummell if I had done less.

I'd not seen Mr.

Wimick for some weeks.

When I thought I would write him a note and propose to go home with him on a certain evening he replied that it would give him much pleasure and that he would expect me at the office at 06:00 thither.

I went and there I found him putting the key of his safe down his back as the clock struck.

Did you think of walking down to Walworth?

Said he.

Certainly, said I, if you approve very much, was lemix reply for I've had my legs under the desk all day and shall be glad to stretch them.

Now I'll tell you what I've got for supper, Mr.

Pip?

I've got a stewed steak, which is of home preparation, and a cold roast fowl, which is from the cook's shop.

I think it's tender because the master of the shop was a jury man in some cases of ours the other day, and we let him down easy.

I reminded him of it when I bought the fowl and I said, Pick us out a good one, Old Britain, because if we had chosen to keep you in the box another day or two, we could easily have done it.

He said to that, Let me make you a present of the best fowl in the shop.

I let him, of course, as far as it goes, it's property and portable.

You don't object to an aged parent, I hope.

I really thought he was still speaking of the fall until he added, because I've got an aged parent at my place.

I then said what politeness required.

So you haven't dined with Mr.

Jaggers yet?

He pursued as we walked along.

Not yet.

He told me so this afternoon when he heard you were coming.

I expect you'll have an invitation tomorrow.

He's going to ask your pals, too.

Three of them ain't there?

Although I was not in the habit of counting drummel as one of my intimate associates, I answered, yes, well, he's going to ask the whole gang.

I hardly felt complimented by the word.

And whatever he gives you, he'll give you good.

Don't look forward to variety, but you'll have excellence.

And there's another rum thing in this house, proceeded Wimick after a moment's pause, as if the remark followed on the housekeeper understood.

He never lets a door window be fastened at night.

Is he never robbed?

That's it, returned Wimick, he says, and gives it out publicly.

I want to see the man who'll rob me.

Lord bless you.

I've heard him a hundred times.

If I've heard him once say to regular cracksman in our front office, you know where I live now.

No bolt is ever drawn there.

Why don't you do a stroke of business with me?

Come.

Can't I tempt you?

Not a man of them, sir, would be bold enough to try it on for love or money.

They dread him so much, said I.

Dread him.

Said Wimick.

I believe you.

They dread him not but what he's artful, even in his defiance of them.

No silver, sir.

Burdenia medal, every spoon.

So they wouldn't have much, I observed, even if they ah, but he would have much, said Wimick, cutting me short, and they know it.

He'd have their lives and the lives of scores of them.

He'd have all he could get.

And it's impossible to say what he couldn't get if he gave his mind to it.

I was falling into meditation on my guardian's greatness when Wimick remarked as to the absence of plate.

That's only his natural depth, you know, a river's.

Its natural depth and he's his natural depth.

Look at his watch chain.

That's real enough.

It's very massive.

Said I.

Massive?

Repeated Wimmeck.

I think so.

And his watch is a gold repeater and worth a hundred pound if it's worth a penny.

Mr.

Pip, there are about 700 thieves in this town who know all about that watch.

There's not a man, a woman or a child among them who wouldn't identify the smallest link in that chain and drop it as if it was red hot.

If envagled into touching it.

At first with such discourse, and afterwards with conversation of a more general nature, did Mr.

Wimick and I beguile the time and the road until he gave me to understand that we had arrived in the district of Walworth.

It appeared to be a collection of back lanes, ditches and little gardens, and to present the aspect of a rather dull retirement, wimick's house was a little wooden cottage in the midst of plots of garden, and the top of it was cut out and painted like a battery mounted with guns.

My own doing, said Wimick.

Looks pretty, don't it?

I highly commended it.

I think it was the smallest house I ever saw, with the queerest Gothic windows, by far the greater part of them sham, and a Gothic door, almost too small to get in at.

That's a real flagstaff, you see, said Wimick.

And on Sundays I run up a real flag.

Then look here.

After I've crossed this bridge, I hoisted up so and cut off the communication.

The bridge was a plank, and it crossed a chasm about 4ft wide and too deep.

But it was very pleasant to see the pride with which he hoisted it up and made it fast, smiling as he did so with a relish, and not merely mechanically.

00 every night, Greenwich time, said Wimk, the gun fires.

There he is, you see.

And when you hear him go, I think you'll say he's a stinger.

The piece of ordinance referred to was mounted in a separate fortress constructed of latice work.

It was protected from the weather by an ingenious little tarpulin contrivance in the nature of an umbrella.

Then at the back, said Wimick, out of sight, so as not to impede the idea of fortifications.

For it's a principle with me if you have an idea, carry it out and keep it up.

I don't know whether that's your opinion, I said decidedly.

At the back there's a pig and there are fowls and rabbits.

Then I knock together my own little frame, you see, and grow cucumbers, and you'll judge at supper what sort of a salad I can raise.

So, sir, said Wimick, smiling again, but seriously too, as he shook his head, if you can suppose the little place besieged it would hold out a devil of a time in point of provisions.

Then he conducted me to a bower about a dozen yards off, but which was approached by such ingenious twists of path that it took quite a long time to get at.

And in this retreat our glasses were already set forth.

Our punch was cooling in an ornamental lake, on whose margin the bower was raised.

This piece of water with an island in the middle, which might have been the salad for supper, was of a circular form and he had constructed a fountain in it which, when you set a little mill going and took a cork out of a pipe, played to that powerful extent then it made the back of your hand quite wet.

I am my own engineer, and my own carpenter and my own plumber and my own gardener and my own jack of all trades, said Wimick in acknowledging my compliments.

Well, it's a good thing, you know.

It rushes the new gate cobwebs away and pleases the Aged.

You wouldn't mind being at once introduced to the Aged, would you?

It wouldn't put you out.

I expressed the readiness, I felt, and we went into the castle.

There we found, sitting by a fire, a very old man in a flannel coat, clean, cheerful, comfortable and well cared for, but intensely deaf.

Well aged parent, said Wimick, shaking hands with him in a cordial and Jacob's way.

How am you?

All right, John, all right, replied the old man.

Here, Mr.

Pip.

Aged parent, said Wimick, and I wish you could hear his name.

Nod away at him, Mr.

Pip.

That's what he likes.

Not away at him, if you please.

Like winking.

This is a fine place of my son, sir, cried the old man, while I nodded as hard as I possibly could.

This is a pretty pleasure ground, sir.

This spot and these beautiful works upon it ought to be kept together by the nation after my son's time for the people's enjoyment.

You're as proud of it as punch, ain't you, Aged?

Said Wimick, contemplating the old man with his hard face really softened.

There's a nod for you giving him a tremendous one.

There's another for you giving him a still more tremendous one.

You like that, don't you?

If you're not tired, Mr.

Pip, though I know it's tiring the strangers.

Will you tip him one more?

You can't think how it pleases him.

I tipped him several more, and he was in great spirits.

We left him bestiring himself to feed the fowls, and we sat down to our punch in the arbor, where Wimick told me, as he smoked a pipe, that it had taken him a good many years to bring the property up to its present pitch of perfection.

Is it your own, Mr.

Wimick?

Oh, yes, said Wimick.

I've got a hold of it a bit at a time.

It's a freehold, by George.

Is it indeed?

I hope Mr.

Jaggers admires it.

Never seen it, said Wimick.

Never heard of it.

Never seen The Aged.

Never heard of him, no.

The office is one thing, and private life is another.

When I go into the office, I leave the castle behind me, and when I come into the castle, I leave the office behind me.

If it's not in any way disagreeable to you, you'll oblige me by doing the same.

I don't wish it professionally spoken about.

Of course, I felt my good faith involved in the observance of his request.

The punch being very nice, we sat there drinking it and talking until it was almost 09:00.

Getting near gunfire, said Wimick.

Then, as he laid down his pipe, it's the Aged treat.

Proceeding into the castle again, we found the Aged heating the poker with expectant eyes.

As a preliminary to the performance of this great nightly ceremony, wimick stood with his watch in his hand until the moment was to come for him to take the red hot poker from the Aged and repair to the battery.

He took it and went out, and presently the stinger went off with a bang that shook the crazy little box of a cottage as if it must fall to pieces and made every glass and teacup in it ring.

Upon this the Aged, who I believe would have been blown out of his armchair but for holding on by the elbows, cried out exultingly.

He's fired.

I heared him.

And I nodded at the old gentleman until it is no figure of speech to declare that I absolutely could not see him.

The interval between that time and supper wimick devoted to showing me his collection of curiosities.

They were mostly of a felonious character, comprising the pen with which a celebrated forgery had been committed, a distinguished razor or two, some locks of hair, and several manuscript confessions written under condemnation, upon which Mr.

Wimick set particular value as being, to use his own words, every one of them lies, sir.

These were agreeably dispersed among small specimens of china and glass, various neat trifles made by the proprietor of the museum, and some tobacco stoppers carved by the Aged.

They were all displayed in that chamber of the castle into which I'd been first inducted, in which served not only as the general sitting room, but as the kitchen, too, if I might judge from a saucepan on the hob and a brazen bijou over the fireplace designed for the suspension of a roasting jack.

There was a neat little girl in attendance who looked after the Aged in the day.

When she had laid the supper cloth, the bridge was lowered to give her means of egress, and she withdrew for the night.

The supper was excellent, and though the castle was rather subject to dry rot, insomuch that it tasted like a bad nut and though the pig might have been further off, I was heartily pleased with my whole entertainment.

Nor was there any drawback on my little turret bedroom beyond there being such a very thin ceiling between me and the flagstaff that when I laid down on my back in bed.

It seemed as if I had to balance that pole on my forehead all night.

Wimick was up early in the morning and I'm afraid I heard him cleaning my boots.

After that, he felt a gardening, and I saw him from my Gothic window pretending to employ the aged and nodding at him in a most devoted manner.

Our breakfast was as good as the supper, and at 08:30 precisely we started for Little Britain.

My degree is wimmet got drier and harder as we went along, and his mouth tightened into a post office again.

At last when we got to his place of business and he pulled out his key from his coat collar he looked as unconscious of his Walworth property as if the castle and the drawbridge and the arbor and the lake and the fountain and the aged had all been blown into space together by the last discharge of the stinger.

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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