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

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Today we'll be continuing great Expectations by Charles Dickens Chapter Ten the Felicitous idea occurred to me a morning or two later when I woke, that the best step I could take towards making myself uncommon was to get out of bidy everything she knew.

In pursuance of this luminous conception, I mentioned to Bidy when I went to Mr.

Wapsel's great Aunt's at night that I had a particular reason for wishing to get on in life, and that I should feel very much obliged to her if she would impart all her learning to me.

Biddy, who was the most obliging of girls, immediately said she would, and indeed began to carry out her pRomise.

Within five minutes, the educational scheme or course established by Mr.

Wapsel's great aunt may be resolved into the following synopsis.

The pupils ate apples and put straws down one another's backs until Mr.

Wapsel's great aunt collected her energies and made an indiscriminate totter at them with a birch rod.

After receiving the charge with every mark of derision, the pupils formed in line, and buzzingly passed a ragged book from hand to hand.

The book had an alphabet in it, some figures and tables, and a little spelling.

That is to say, it had had once.

As soon as this volume began to circulate, Mr.

Wapsel's great aunt fell into a state of coma, arising either from sleep or rheumatic paroxysm.

The pupils then entered among themselves upon a competitive examination on the subject of boots, with the view of ascertaining who could tread the hardest upon whose toes this mental exercise lasted, until Biddy made a rush at them and distributed three defaced Bibles, shaped as if they had been unskillfully cut off, the chump end of something more allegedly printed at the best than any curiosities of literature I have since met with, speckled all over with iron mold, and having various specimens of the insect world smash between their leaves.

This part of the chorus was usually lightened by several single combats between bidy and refractory students.

When the fights were over, Biddy gave out the number of a page, and then we all read aloud what we could or what we couldn't, in a frightful chorus, bidy leading with a high, shrill, monotonous voice, and none of us having the least notion of, or reverence for, what we were reading about.

When this horrible din had lasted a certain time, it mechanically awoke Mr.

Wapsel's great aunt, who staggered at a boy fortuitously and pulled his ears.

This was understood to terminate the course for the evening, and we emerged into the air with shrieks of intellectual victory.

It is fair to remark that there was no prohibition against any pupils entertaining himself with a slate, or even with the ink when there was any, but that it was not easy to pursue that branch of study in the winter season, on account of the little general shop in which the classes were Holden, and which was also Mr.

Wapsel's great aunt's sitting room and bedchamber.

Being but faintly illuminated through the agency of one low spirited dip candle and no snuffers.

It appeared to me that it would take time to become uncommon under these circumstances.

Nevertheless, I resolved to try it.

In that very evening, Biddy entered on our special agreement.

By imparting some information from her little catalog of prices under the head of moist sugar, and lending me to copy at home a large Old English D, which she had imitated from the heading of some newspaper, and which I supposed, until she told me what it was to be a design for a buckle.

Of course there was a public house in the village, and of course, Joe liked sometimes to smoke his pipe there.

I had received strict orders from my sister to call for him at the three Jolly bargemen that evening on my way from school, and bring him home, at my peril, to the three Jolly Bargemen.

Therefore, I directed my steps.

There was a bar at the Jolly Bargeman, with some alarmingly long chalk scores in it on the wall at the side of the door, which seemed to me to be never paid off.

They had been there ever since I could remember, and had grown more than I had.

But there was a quantity of chalk about our country, and perhaps the people neglected no opportunity of turning it to account.

It being Saturday night, I found the landlord looking rather grimly at these records, but as my business was with Joe and not with him, I merely wished him good evening, and passed into the common room at the end of the passage, where there was a bright, large kitchen fire, and where Joe was smoking his pipe in company with Mr.

Wapsel and a stranger.

Joe greeted me, as usual, with, hello, Pit, old chap.

And the moment he said that, the stranger turned his head and looked at me.

He was a secret looking man whom I had never seen before.

His head was all on one side, and one of his eyes was half shut up, as if he were taking aim at something with an invisible gun.

He had a pipe in his mouth, and he took it out, and after slowly blowing all this smoke away and looking hard at me all the time, nodded.

So I nodded, and then he nodded again and made room on the settle beside him, that I might sit down there, but as I was used to sit beside Joe whenever I entered that place of resort, I said, no, thank you, sir, and fell into the space Joe made for me on the opposite settle.

The strange man, after glancing at Joe and seeing that his attention was otherwise engaged, nodded to me again when I had taken my seat, and then rubbed his leg in a very odd way, as it struck me.

You were saying, said the strange man, turning to Joe, that you was a blacksmith.

Yes, I've said it.

You know, said Joe.

What do you drink, mister?

You didn't mention your name.

By the by, Joe mentioned it now.

And the strange man called him by it.

What do you drink, Mr.

Gardrey?

At my expense, to top up with.

Well, said Joe, to tell you the truth, I ain't much in the habit of drinking at anybody's expense but my own habit.

No, returned the stranger, but once in a way, and on a Saturday night, too.

Come, put a name to it, Mr.

Gardrey.

I wouldn't wish to be Stiff company, said Joe.

Rum, Rum.

Repeated the stranger.

And will the other gentleman originate a sentiment?

Rum, said Mr.

Wapsel.

Three rums.

Cried the stranger, calling to the landlord.

Glasses round.

This other gentleman, observed Joe, by way of introducing Mr.

Wapsel, is a gentleman that you would like to hear.

Give it out.

Our clerk at church.

Ah ha.

Said the stranger quickly in cocking his eye at me.

The lonely church right out on the marshes with graves round it.

That's it, said Joe.

The stranger, with a comfortable kind of grunt over its pipe, put his legs upon the saddle that he had to himself.

He wore a flapping, broad brimmed traveler's hat, and under it a handkerchief tied over his head in the manner of a cap, so that he showed no hair.

As he looked at the fire, I thought I saw a cunning expression, followed by a half laugh come into his face.

I'm not acquainted with this country, gentlemen, but it seems a solitary country towards the river.

Most marshes is solitary, said Joe.

No doubt, no doubt.

Do you find any gypsies now, or tramps or vagrants of any sort out there?

No, said Joe, none but a runaway convict now and then, and we don't find them easy, eh, Mr.

Wapsel?

Mr.

Wapsel, with a majestic remembrance of old discomfiture, assented, but not warmly.

Seems you've been out after such?

Asked the stranger, once returned Joe.

Not that we wanted to take them, you understand.

We went out as lookers on, me and Mr.

Wobsel, and Pip didn't us, Pip?

Yes, Joe.

A stranger looked at me again, still caulking his eye, as if he were expressly taking aim at me with his invisible gun, and said, he is a.

Likely young parcel of bones, that.

What is it you call him?

Pip, said Joe.

Christened Pip.

No, not christened Pip.

Surname Pip.

No, said Joe.

It's a kind of family name, what he gave himself when an infant, and is called by son of yours.

Well, said Joe meditatively.

Not, of course, that it could be in any wise necessary to consider about it, but because it was the way at the Jolly bargeman to seem to consider deeply about everything that was discussed over pipes.

Well, no, no, he ain't, Nevy, said the strange man.

Well, said Joe, with the same appearance.

Of profound cogitation, he is not.

No, not to deceive you.

He is not my nephew.

What the blue blazes is he?

Asked the stranger, which appeared to me to be an inquiry of unnecessary strength.

Mr.

Wapsel struck in upon that as one who knew all about relationships, having professional occasion to bear in mind what female relations a man meant, not marry, and expounded the ties between me and Joe.

Having his hand in, Mr.

Wapsel finished off with a most terrifically snarling passage from Richard II, and seemed to think he had done quite enough to account for it when he added, as the.

Poet says, and here I may remark.

That when Mr.

Wapsel referred to me, he considered it a necessary part of such reference, to rumple my hair and poke it into my eyes.

I cannot conceive why everybody of his standing who visited at our house should always have put me through the same inflammatory process under similar circumstances.

Yet I do not call to mind that I was ever in my earlier youth the subject of remark in our social family circle.

But some large handed person took some such ophthalmolic steps to patronize me.

All this while the strange man looked at nobody but me, and looked at me as if he were determined to have a shot at me at last and bring me down.

But he said nothing, after offering his blue blazes observation, until the glasses of rum and water were brought.

And then he made his shot, and a most extraordinary shot it was.

It was not a verbal remark, but a preceding and dumb show, and was pointedly addressed to me.

He stirred its rum and water pointedly at me, and he tasted his rum and water pointedly at me, and he stirred it, and tasted it, not with a spoon that was brought to him, but with a file.

He did this so that nobody but I saw the file, and when he had done it, he wiped the file and put it in a breast pocket.

I knew it to be Joe's file, and I knew that he knew my convict.

The moment I saw the instrument, I sat gazing at him, spellbound, but he now reclined on his settle, taking very little notice of me, and talking principally about turnips.

There was a delicious sense of cleaning up and making a quiet pause before going on in life afresh in our village on Saturday nights, which stimulated Joe to dare stay out half an hour longer on Saturdays than at other times, the half hour and the rum and water running out together.

Joe got up to go and took me by the hand.

Stop half a moment, Mr.

Gardery, said the strange man.

I think I've got a bright new shilling somewhere in my pocket, and if I have, the boy shall have it.

He looked it out from a handful of small change, folded it in some crumpled paper, and gave it to me.

Yours, said he.

Mind your own.

I thanked him, staring at him far beyond the bounds of good manners and holding tight to Joe.

He gave Joe Goodnight.

And he gave Mr.

Wapsel Goodnight, who went out with us.

And he gave me only a look with his aiming eye.

No, not a look, for he shut it up.

But wonders may be done with an eye by hiding it on the way home.

If I'd been in a humor for talking, the talk must have been all on my side.

For Mr.

Wapsel parted from us at the door of the Jolly bargeman.

And Joe went all the way home with his mouth wide open to rinse the rum out with as much air as possible.

But I was in a manner stupefied by this turning up of my old misdeed and old acquaintance.

And could think of nothing else.

My sister was not in a very bad temper when we presented ourselves in the kitchen.

And Joe was encouraged by that unusual circumstance to tell her about the bright shilling abadden.

I'll be bound, said Mrs.

Joe triumphantly, or he wouldn't have given it to the boy.

Let's look at it.

I took it out of the paper, and it proved to be a good one.

But what's this?

Said Mrs.

Joe, throwing down the shilling and catching up the paper.

Two one pound notes.

Nothing less than two fat, sweltering one pound notes.

That seemed to have been on terms of the warmest intimacy with all the cattle markets in the county.

Joe caught up his hat again and ran with them to the Jolly bargeman to restore them to their owner.

While he was gone, I sat down on my usual stool and looked vacantly at my sister, feeling pretty sure that the man would not be there.

Presently Joe came back, saying that the man was gone, but that he, Joe had left word at the three jolly bargemen concerning the notes.

Then my sister sealed them up in a piece of paper.

And put them under some dried rose leaves.

In an ornamental teapot on top of a press in the state parlor.

There they remained a nightmare to me many and many a night and day.

I had sadly broken sleep when I got to bed through thinking of the strange man taking aim at me with his invisible gun.

And of the guiltily coarse and common thing it was to be on secret terms of conspiracy with convicts.

A feature in my low career that I had previously forgotten.

I was haunted by the file too.

A dread possessed me that when I least expected it, the file would reappear.

I coaxed myself to sleep by thinking of Miss Havisham's next Wednesday.

And in my sleep I saw the file coming at me out of a door without seeing who held it.

And I screamed myself awake.

Thank you for joining ByTe 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 byte of great expectations.

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