Join Host Bree Carlile as she reads the forty-eighth chapter of Great Expectations.

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Today we'll be continuing great expectations by Charles Dickens chapter 48 the second of the two meetings referred to in the last chapter occurred about a week after the first.

I had again left my boat at the wharf below bridge.

The time was an hour earlier in the afternoon, and undecided where to dine, I had strolled up into cheapside and was strolling along it, surely the most unsettled person in all the busy concourse, when a large hand was laid upon my shoulder by someone overtaking me.

It was Mr.

Jaggers'hand, and he passed it through my arm.

As we are going in the same direction, Pip, we may walk together.

Where are you bound for?

For the temple, I think, said I don't.

You know, said Mr.

Jaggers.

Well, I returned, glad for once to get the better of him in cross examination.

I do not know, for I've not made up my mind.

You are going to dine, said Mr.

Jaggers.

You don't mind admitting that, I suppose?

No, I returned, I don't mind admitting that, and are not engaged.

I don't mind admitting also that I am not engaged.

Then said Mr.

Jaggers, come and dine with me.

I was going to excuse myself when he added, Lemmex coming.

So I changed my excuse into an acceptance, the few words I had uttered serving for the beginning of either, and we went along cheapside and slanted off to Little Britain, while the lights were springing up brilliantly in the shop windows, and the street lamp lighters, scarcely finding ground enough to plant their ladders on in the midst of the afternoon's bustle, were skipping up and down and running in and out, opening more red eyes in the gathering fog than my rush light.

Tower at the humams had opened white eyes in the ghostly wall.

At the office in Little Britain, there was the usual letter writing, hand washing, candle snuffing, and safe locking that closed the business of the day.

As I stood idle by Mr.

Jaggers'fire, its rising and falling flame made the two casts on the shelf look as if they were playing a diabolical game at bo peep with me, while the pair of coarse, fat office candles that dimly lighted Mr.

Jaggers as he rode in a corner were decorated with dirty, winding sheets, as if in remembrance of a host of hanged clients.

We went to Gerard street, all three together in a hackney coach, and as soon as we got there, dinner was served, although I should not have thought of making in that place the most distant reference by so much as a look to Wimick's Walworth sentiments.

Yet I should have had no objection to catching his eye now and then in a friendly way.

But it was not to be done.

He turned his eyes on Mr.

Jaggers whenever he raised them from the table, and was as dry and distant to me as if there were twin wimics, and this was the wrong one.

Did you send that note of Ms.

Havisham's to Mr.

Pip, Wimick?

Mr.

Jaggers asked soon after we began dinner.

No, sir, returned Wimick.

It was going by post when you brought Mr.

Pip into the office.

Here it is.

He handed it to his principal instead of to me.

It's a note of two lines, Pip, said Mr.

Jaggers, handing it on.

Sent up to me by Miss Havisham on account of her not being sure of your address.

She tells me that she wants to see you on a little matter of business you mentioned to her you'll go down?

Yes, said I, casting my eyes over the note, which was exactly in those terms.

When do you think of going down?

I have an impending engagement, said I, glancing at Wimick, who was putting fish into the post.

Office.

That renders me rather uncertain of my time.

At once, I think.

If Mr.

Pip has the intention of going.

At once, said Wimick to Mr.

Jaggers.

He needn't write an answer, you know.

Receiving this as an intimation that it was best not to delay, I settled that I would go tomorrow and said so.

Wimick drank a glass of wine and looked with a grimly satisfied air at Mr.

Jaggers, but not at me.

So, Pip, our friend the spider said, Mr.

Jaggers has played his cards.

He has won the pool.

It was as much as I could do to.

Ah, he's a promising fellow in his way, but he may not have it all his own way.

The stronger will win in the end, but the stronger has to be found out first.

If he should turn too, and beat her.

Surely, I interrupted with a burning face and heart, you do not seriously think that he is scoundrel enough for that, Mr.

Jaggers?

I didn't say so, Pip.

I am putting a case.

If he should turn to and beat her, he may possibly get the strength on his side.

If it should be a question of intellect, he certainly will not.

It would be a chance work to give an opinion how a fellow of that sort will turn out in such circumstances, because it's a toss up between two results.

May I ask what they are?

A fellow like our friend the spider, answered Mr.

Jaggers either beats or cringes.

He may cringe and growl or cringe and not growl, but he either beats or cringes.

Ask Wimick his opinion.

Either beats or cringes, said Wimick, not.

At all addressing himself to me.

So here's to Mrs.

Bentley Drummel, said Mr.

Jaggers, taking a decanter of choice or wine from his dumb waiter and filling for each of us and for himself.

And may the question of supremacy be settled to the lady's satisfaction?

To the satisfaction of the lady and the gentleman, it never will be.

Now, Molly, Molly, Molly, Molly.

How slow you are today.

She was at his elbow when he addressed her, putting a dish upon the table.

As she withdrew her hands from it, she fell back a step or two, nervously muttering some excuse.

And a certain action of her fingers as she spoke arrested my attention.

What's the matter?

Said Mr.

Jaggers.

Nothing.

Only the subject we were speaking of said I was rather painful.

To me, the action of her fingers was like the action of knitting.

She stood looking at her master, not understanding whether she was free to go or whether he had more to say to her and would call her back if she did.

Go.

Her look was very intent.

Surely I had seen exactly such eyes and such hands on a memorable occasion very lately.

He dismissed her and she glided out of the room.

But she remained before me as plainly as if she were still there.

I looked at those hands.

I looked at those eyes.

I looked at that flowing hair, and I compared them with other hands, other eyes, other hair that I knew of and with what those might be after 20 years of a brutal husband and a stormy life.

I looked again at those hands and the eyes of the housekeeper and thought of the inexplicable feeling that had come over me when I last walked.

Not alone in the ruined garden and through the deserted brewery.

I thought how the same feeling had come back when I saw his face looking at me and a hand waving to me from a stagecoach window.

And how it had come back again.

And had flashed about me like lightning when I had passed in a carriage.

Not alone through a sudden glare of light in a dark street.

I thought how one link of association had helped that identification in theater, and how such a link, wanting before had been riveted for me now when I had passed by a chance, swift from Estella's name to the fingers with their knitting action and the attentive eyes.

And I felt absolutely certain that this woman was Estella's mother.

Mr.

Jaggers had seen me with Estella and was not likely to have missed the sentiments I had been at no pains to conceal.

He nodded when I said the subject was painful to me, clapped me on the back, put round the wine again, and went on with his dinner.

Only twice more did the housekeeper reappear, and then her stay in the room was very short, and Mr.

Jaggers was sharp with her.

But her hands were Estella's hands, and her eyes were Estella's eyes.

And if she had reappeared a hundred times, I could have been neither more sure nor less sure that my conviction was the truth.

It was a dull evening, for Wimick drew his wine when it came round, quite as a matter of business, just as he might have drawn his salary when that came round, and with his eyes on his chief, sat in a state of perpetual readiness for cross examination.

As to the quantity of wine, his post office was as indifferent and ready as any other post office for its quantity of letters.

From my point of view, he was the wrong twin all the time, and only externally.

Like the Wimick of Walworth, we took our leave early and left together, even when we were groping among Mr.

Jaggers'stock of boots for our hats I felt that the right twin was on his way back, and we had not gone half a dozen yards down Gerard street in a Walworth direction before I found that I was walking arm in arm with the right twin and that the wrong twin had evaporated into the evening air.

Well, said Wemeck, that's over.

He is a wonderful man without his living likeness.

But I feel that I have to screw myself up when I dine with him, and I dine more comfortably unscrewed.

I felt that this was a good.

Statement of the case and told him so.

Wouldn't say it to anybody but yourself, he answered.

I know that what is said between you and me goes no further.

Asked him if he had ever seen Miss Havisham's adopted daughter, Mrs.

Bentley Drummel.

He said no, to avoid being too abrupt.

I then spoke of the aged and of Miss Giffins.

He looked rather sly when I mentioned Miss Skiffins, and stopped in the street to blow his nose with a roll of the head and a flourish.

Not quite free from latent boastfulness, Wimick said, I.

Do you remember telling me, before I first went to Mr.

Jaggers's private house, to notice that housekeeper?

Did I?

He replied.

I dare say I did.

Deuce, take me, he added suddenly.

I know I did.

I find I'm not quite unscrewed yet.

A wild beast tamed, you called her.

And what do you call her?

The same.

How did Mr.

Jaggers tame her?

Wimic.

That's his secret.

She's been with him many a long year.

I wish you would tell me her story.

I feel a particular interest in being acquainted with it.

You know that what is said between you and me goes no further.

Well, Wemec replied, I don't know her story.

That is, I don't know all of it.

But what I do know, I'll tell you.

We're in our private and personal capacities, of course.

Of course.

A score or so of years ago, that woman was tried at the Old Bailey for murder and was acquitted.

She was a very handsome young woman.

And I believe had some gypsy blood in her.

Anyhow, it was hot enough when it.

Was up, as you may suppose, but she was acquitted.

Mr.

Jaggers was for her pursued.

Wimick with a look full of meaning.

And worked the case in a way quite astonishing.

It was a desperate case, and it was comparatively early days with him then, and he worked it to general admiration.

In fact, it may almost be said to have made him.

He worked it himself at the police office, day after day for many days, contending against even a committal.

And at the trial, where he couldn't work it himself, sat under counseland everyone knew, put in all the salt and pepper.

The murdered person was a woman.

A woman a good ten years older, very much larger, and very much stronger.

It was a case of jealousy.

They both led tramping lives.

And this woman in Gerard street here had been married very young, over the broomstick, as we say, to a tramping man.

And was a perfect fury in point of jealousy.

The murdered woman, more a match for the man, certainly in point of years, was found dead in a barn near Hounslow Heath.

There had been a violent struggle, perhaps a fight.

She was bruised and scratched and torn, and had been held by the throat at last and choked.

Now, there was no reasonable evidence to implicate any person but this woman.

And on the improbabilities of her having been able to do it, Mr.

Jaggers principally rested his case.

You may be sure, said Wimick, touching.

Me on the sleeve.

Nettie never dwelt upon the strength of her hands then, though he sometimes does now.

I had told Wimick of his showing us her wrists that day of the dinner party.

Well, sir, Wimick went on, it happened.

Happened.

Don't you see that this woman was so very artfully dressed from the time of her apprehension, that she looked much slightly than she really was.

In particular, her sleeves are always remembered to have been so skilfully contrived that her arms had quite a delicate look.

She had only a bruise or two about her, nothing for a tramp.

But the backs of her hands were lacerated.

And the question was, was it with fingernails?

Now, Mr.

Jagger showed that she had struggled through a great lot of brambles, which were not as high as her face, which she could not have got through and kept her hands out of.

And bits of those brambles were actually found in her skin and put in evidence, as well as the fact that the brambles in question were found on examination to have been broken through and to have little shreds of her dress and little spots of blood upon them here and there.

But the boldest point he made was this.

It was attempted to be set up in proof of her jealousy that she was under strong suspicion of having, at about the time of the murder, frantically destroyed her child by this man, some three years old, to revenge herself upon him.

Mr.

Jaggers worked that in this way.

We say these are not marks of fingernails, but marks of brambles.

And we show you the brambles.

You say they are the marks of fingernails, and you set up the hypothesis that she destroyed her child.

You must accept all consequences of that hypothesis for anything we know she may have destroyed her child, and the child, in clinging to her, may have scratched her hands.

What then?

You are not trying her for the murder of her child.

Why don't you?

As to this case, if you will have scratches, we say that for anything we know, you may have accounted for them, assuming, for the sake of argument, that you've not invented them.

To sum up, sir, said Wemeck, Mr.

Jaggers was altogether too many for the jury, and they gave in.

Has she been in his service ever since?

Yes.

But not only that, said Wemeck.

She went into his service immediately after her acquittal.

Tamed as she is now, she has since been taught one thing and another in the way of her duties, but she was tamed from the beginning.

Do you remember the sex of the.

Child said to have been a girl?

You have nothing more to say to me tonight?

Nothing.

I got your letter and destroyed it.

Nothing.

We exchanged a cordial good night, and they went home with new matter for my thoughts, though with no relief from the old.

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 Carlisle, and I hope you come back tomorrow for the next bite of great expectations.

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