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

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Today we'll be continuing great Expectations by Charles Dickens Chapter Twelve My mind grew very uneasy on the subject of the Pale Young gentleman.

The more I thought of the fight and recalled the Pale young gentleman on his back in various stages of Puffy and in Crimson countenance, the more certain it appeared that something would be done to me.

I felt that the pale young gentleman's blood was on my head, and that the law would avenge it.

Without having any definite idea of the penalties I had incurred, it was clear to me that village boys could not go stalking about the country, ravaging the houses of gentle folks, and pitching into the studious youth of England without laying themselves open to severe punishment.

For some days I have been kept close at home and looked out at the kitchen door with the greatest caution and trepidation before going on an errand, lest the officers of the county jail should pounce upon me.

The pale young gentleman's nose had stained my trousers, and I tried to wash out that evidence of my guilt.

In the dead of night I had cut my knuckles against the pale young gentleman's teeth.

And I twisted my imagination into a thousand tangles as I devised incredible ways of accounting for that damnatory circumstance when I should be hailed before the judges.

When the day came round for my return to the scene of the deed of violence, my terrors reached their height.

Whether mermaidons of justice, especially sent down from London, would be lying in ambush behind the gate.

Whether Miss Havisham, preferring to take personal vengeance for an outrage done to her house, might rise in those grave clothes of hers, draw a pistol and shoot me dead.

Whether suborned boys, a numerous band of mercenaries, might be engaged to fall upon me in the brewery and cuff me until I was no more.

It was high testimony to my confidence in the spirit of the pale young gentleman that I never imagined him accessory to these retaliations.

They always came into my mind as the acts of injudicious relatives of his, goaded on by the state of his visage and an indignant sympathy with the family features.

However, go to Miss Havisham's I must.

And go I did.

And behold, nothing came of the late struggle.

I was not alluded to in any way, and no pale young gentleman was to be discovered on the premises.

I found the same gate open and I explored the garden and even looked in at the windows of the detached house.

But my view was suddenly stopped by the closed shutters within, and all was lifeless.

Only in the corner where the combat had taken place, could I detect any evidence of the young gentleman's existence.

There were traces of his gore in that spot, and I covered them with garden mold from the eye of man.

On the broad landing between Miss Havisham's own room and that other room in which the long table was laid out, I saw a garden chair, a light chair on wheels that you pushed from behind.

It had been placed there since my last visit.

And I entered that same day on a regular occupation of pushing Miss Havisham in this chair when she said she was tired of walking with her hand upon my shoulder.

Round her own room and across the landing and round the other room, over and over and over again we would make these journeys, and sometimes they would last as long as 3 hours at a stretch.

I insensibly fall into a general mention of these journeys, as numerous because it was at once settled that I should return every alternate day at noon.

For these purposes, and because I'm now going to sum up a period of at least eight or ten months.

As we began to be more used to one another, Miss Havisham talked more to me and asked me such questions as what had I learnt and what was I going to be?

I told her I was going to be apprentice to Joe, I believed, and I enlarged upon my knowing nothing and wanting to know everything, in the hope that she might offer some help towards that desirable end.

But she did not.

On the contrary, she seemed to prefer my being ignorant.

Neither did she ever give me any money or anything but my daily dinner, nor ever stipulate that I should be paid for my services.

Stella was always about and always let me in and out, but never told me I might kiss her again.

Sometimes she would coldly tolerate me.

Sometimes she would condescend to me.

Sometimes she would be quite familiar with me.

Sometimes she would tell me energetically that she hated me.

Miss Havisham would often ask me in a whisper or when we were alone, does she grow prettier and prettier, Pip?

And when I said yes, for indeed she did, would seem to enjoy it greedily.

Also, when we played at cards, Miss Havisham would look on with a miserly relish of Estella's moods, whatever they werE.

And sometimes, when her moods were so many and so contradictory of one another that I was puzzled what to say or do.

Miss Havisham would embrace her with lavish fondness, murmuring something in her ear that sounded like, break their hearts, my pride and hope, break their hearts and have no mercy.

There was a song Joe used to hum fragments of at the forge, of which the burden was Old Clem.

This was not a very ceremonious way of rendering homage to a patron saint, but I believe Old Clem stood in that relation toward Smith's.

It was a song that imitated the measure of beating upon iron, and was a mere lyrical excuse for the introduction of Old Clem's respected name.

Thus you were to hammer boys round, Old Clem with a thump and a sound old clem, beat it out, beat it out, old Clem with a clink for the stout old Clem blow the fire, blow the fire old Clem roaring dryer, soaring higher, old Clem.

One day, soon after the appearance of the chair, Miss Havisham suddenly said to me with the impatient movement of her fingers, there, there, sing.

I was surprised into crooning this diddy as I pushed her over the floor.

It happened so to catch her fancy that she took it up in a low, brooding voice, as if she were singing in her sleep.

After that it would become customary with us to have it as we moved about, and Estella would often join in, though the whole strain was so subdued, even when there were three of us, that it made less noise in the grim old house than the lightest breath of wind?

What could I become with these surroundings?

How could my character fail to be influenced by them?

Is it to be wondered at if my thoughts were dazed, as my eyes were when I came out into the natural light from the misty yellow rooms?

Perhaps I might have told Joe about the pale young gentleman if I had not previously been betrayed into those enormous inventions to which I had confessed.

Under the circumstances, I felt that Joe could hardly fail to discern in the pale young gentleman an appropriate passenger to be put into the black velvet coach.

Therefore I said nothing of him.

Besides that, shrinking from having Miss Havisham and Estella discussed, which had come upon me in the beginning, grew much more potent as time went on.

I reposed complete confidence in no one but Biddy.

But I told poor Biddy everything.

Why it came natural to me to do so, and why Biddy had a deep concern in everything I told her.

I did not know then.

No, I think I know now.

Meanwhile, counsels went on in the kitchen at home, fraught with almost insupportable aggravation to my exasperated spirit.

That a** Pumblechuk used often to come over of a night for the purpose of discussing my prospects with my sister.

And I really do believe to this hour with less penitence than I ought to feel, that if these hands could have taken a linchpin out of his chase cart, they would have done it.

The miserable man was a man of that confined solidity of mind, that he could not discuss my prospects without having me before him, as it were, to operate upon.

And he would drag me up from my stool, usually by the collar, where I was quiet in a corner, and putting me before the fire, as if I were going to be cooked, would begin by saying, now, Mum, here is this boy, here is this boy, which you brought up by hand.

Hold up your head, boy, and be forever grateful unto them.

Which so did do now, Mum, with respections to this boy.

And then he would rumple my hair the wrong way, which from my earliest remembrances already hinted Ivan, my soul denied the right of any fellow creature to do.

And would hold me before him by the sleeve, a spectacle of imbecility, only to be equaled by himself.

Then he and my sister would pair off in such nonsensical speculations about Mitch Havisham and about what she would do with me and for me that I used to want, quite painfully, to burst in, despiteful tears, fly at Pumblechuk, and pummel him all over.

In these dialogues my sister spoke to me as if she were morally wrenching one of my teeth out at every reference.

While Pumblechuk himself self constituted, my patron would sit supervising me with a depreciatory eye, like the architect of my fortunes, who thought himself engaged on a very unremunitive job.

In these discussions Joe Borne part, but he was often talked at while they were in progress, by reason of Mrs.

Joe's perceiving that he was not favorable to my being taken from the forge.

I was fully old enough now to be apprentice to Joe, and when Joe sat with the poker on his knees, thoughtfully raking out the ashes between the lower bars, my sister would so distinctly construe that innocent action into opposition on his part that she would dive at him, take the poker out of his hands, shake him and put it away.

There was the most irritating end to every one of these debates, all in a moment, with nothing to lead up to it.

My sister would stop herself in a yawn, and catching sight of me, as it were incidentally, would swoop upon me with, come, there's enough of you.

You get along to bed.

You've given trouble enough for one night, I hope.

As if I'd besought them as a favor to bother my life out.

We went on in this way for a long time, and it seemed likely that we should continue to go on in this way for a long time.

When one day Miss Havisham stopped short as she and I were walking, she leaned on my shoulder and said with some displeasure, you are growing tall, Pip.

I thought it best to hint through the medium of a meditative look that this might be occasioned by circumstances over which I had no control.

She said no more at the time, but she presently stopped and looked at me again, and presently again, and after that looked frowning and moody.

On the next day of my attendance, when our usual exercise was over and I'd landed her at her dressing table, she stayed me with a movement of her impatient fingers.

Tell me the name again of that blacksmith of yours.

Joe Gardery, ma'am.

Meaning the master you were to be apprenticed to?

Yes, Miss Havisham.

You had better be apprenticed at once.

Would gargery come here with you and bring your indentures, do you think?

I signified that?

I had no doubt he would take it as an honor to be asked.

Then let him come at any particular time.

Miss Havisham there.

I know nothing about times.

Let him come soon and come along with you.

When I got home, at night and delivered this message for Joe.

My sister went on the rampage in a more alarming degree than at any previous period.

She asked me and Joe whether we supposed she was doormats under our feet and how we dared to use her so, and what company we graciously thought she was fit for when she had exhausted a torrent of such inquiries and threw a candlestick at Joe, burst into a loud sobbing, got out the dustpan, which was always a very bad sign, put on her coarse apron, and began cleaning up to a terrible extent.

Not satisfied with a dry cleaning, she took to a pail and scrubbing brush and cleaned us out of house and home so that we stood shivering in the backyard.

It was 10:00 at night before we ventured to creep in again, and then she asked Joe why he hadn't married a slave at once.

Joe offered no answer, poor fellow, but stood feeling his whisker and looking dejectedly at me as if he thought it really might have been a better speculation.

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.

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