Great Expectations | Page 6

fair man, with curls of flaxen
hair on each side of his smooth face, and with eyes of such a very undecided blue that
they seemed to have somehow got mixed with their own whites. He was a mild,
good-natured, sweet-tempered, easy-going, foolish, dear fellow,--a sort of Hercules in
strength, and also in weakness.
My sister, Mrs. Joe, with black hair and eyes, had such a prevailing redness of skin that I
sometimes used to wonder whether it was possible she washed herself with a
nutmeg-grater instead of soap. She was tall and bony, and almost always wore a coarse
apron, fastened over her figure behind with two loops, and having a square impregnable

bib in front, that was stuck full of pins and needles. She made it a powerful merit in
herself, and a strong reproach against Joe, that she wore this apron so much. Though I
really see no reason why she should have worn it at all; or why, if she did wear it at all,
she should not have taken it off, every day of her life.
Joe's forge adjoined our house, which was a wooden house, as many of the dwellings in
our country were,--most of them, at that time. When I ran home from the churchyard, the
forge was shut up, and Joe was sitting alone in the kitchen. Joe and I being
fellow-sufferers, and having confidences as such, Joe imparted a confidence to me, the
moment I raised the latch of the door and peeped in at him opposite to it, sitting in the
chimney corner.
"Mrs. Joe has been out a dozen times, looking for you, Pip. And she's out now, making it
a baker's dozen."
"Is she?"
"Yes, Pip," said Joe; "and what's worse, she's got Tickler with her."
At this dismal intelligence, I twisted the only button on my waistcoat round and round,
and looked in great depression at the fire. Tickler was a wax-ended piece of cane, worn
smooth by collision with my tickled frame.
"She sot down," said Joe, "and she got up, and she made a grab at Tickler, and she
Ram-paged out. That's what she did," said Joe, slowly clearing the fire between the lower
bars with the poker, and looking at it; "she Ram-paged out, Pip."
"Has she been gone long, Joe?" I always treated him as a larger species of child, and as
no more than my equal.
"Well," said Joe, glancing up at the Dutch clock, "she's been on the Ram-page, this last
spell, about five minutes, Pip. She's a coming! Get behind the door, old chap, and have
the jack-towel betwixt you."
I took the advice. My sister, Mrs. Joe, throwing the door wide open, and finding an
obstruction behind it, immediately divined the cause, and applied Tickler to its further
investigation. She concluded by throwing me--I often served as a connubial missile-- at
Joe, who, glad to get hold of me on any terms, passed me on into the chimney and quietly
fenced me up there with his great leg.
"Where have you been, you young monkey?" said Mrs. Joe, stamping her foot. "Tell me
directly what you've been doing to wear me away with fret and fright and worrit, or I'd
have you out of that corner if you was fifty Pips, and he was five hundred Gargerys."
"I have only been to the churchyard," said I, from my stool, crying and rubbing myself.
"Churchyard!" repeated my sister. "If it warn't for me you'd have been to the churchyard
long ago, and stayed there. Who brought you up by hand?"

"You did," said I.
"And why did I do it, I should like to know?" exclaimed my sister.
I whimpered, "I don't know."
"I don't!" said my sister. "I'd never do it again! I know that. I may truly say I've never had
this apron of mine off since born you were. It's bad enough to be a blacksmith's wife (and
him a Gargery) without being your mother."
My thoughts strayed from that question as I looked disconsolately at the fire. For the
fugitive out on the marshes with the ironed leg, the mysterious young man, the file, the
food, and the dreadful pledge I was under to commit a larceny on those sheltering
premises, rose before me in the avenging coals.
"Hah!" said Mrs. Joe, restoring Tickler to his station. "Churchyard, indeed! You may well
say churchyard, you two." One of us, by the by, had not said it at all. "You'll drive me to
the churchyard betwixt you, one of these days, and O, a pr-r-recious pair you'd be without
me!"
As she applied herself to set the tea-things, Joe peeped down at me over his leg, as if he
were mentally casting me and himself up, and calculating what