Mister Pip by Lloyd Jones Read Free Book Online Page A

a sobbing child.

    WHAT DID I HOPE FOR? Just hope itself, really, but in a particular way. I knew things could change because they had for Pip.
    First, he is invited by the wealthy Miss Havisham up to her house to play cards with her adopted girl, Estella. I never took to Estella. I can say now that I was jealous of her. I didn’t like that other teasing girl, Sarah Pocket, either. I was always glad when it came time to leave Miss Havisham’s.
    In
Great Expectations
we learned how a life could change without any warning. Pip is into the fourth year of his apprenticeship with Joe Gargery. So he has leaped ahead of me in age. But this didn’t matter. In other respects he stayed a true friend, a companion I worried about and thought of lots.
    He will become a blacksmith, it seems. A
blacksmith
. There was another word to ask about. Mr. Watts said it was more than a job. By
blacksmith
Mr. Dickens meant more than a man hammering horseshoes into shape. Pip has settled into the routines that go with the blacksmith’s life, including nights huddled around the fire with Joe Gargery and others at a pub with the funny name of Three Jolly Bargemen, drinking ale and listening to one another’s nonsense.
    One night a stranger enters the pub and asks to have Pip pointed out to him. This is Mr. Jaggers, a lawyer from London. He seemed a brave man to us kids. A man unafraid to walk into a group of strangers and start waving his finger about. He asks Pip for a private conference. So Joe and Pip bring him back to the house, and there Mr. Jaggers declares his interest. He has some news for Pip. His life is about to change.
    The reading stumbled around these new words as Mr. Watts had to explain what a lawyer was, as well as the word
benefactor
—which led to the word
beneficiary
. That was the lawyer’s news. Pip was the beneficiary of a lot of money set aside by someone who wished to keep their identity a secret. The money would be used to turn Pip into a gentleman. So he was about to change
into
something.
    When I first heard that I fretted to the end of the chapter. I needed to see what he would change into before I could be sure we would remain friends. I didn’t want him to change.
    Mr. Watts then talked about what it was to be a gentleman. Though it meant many things, he thought the word
gentleman
best described how a man should be in the world. “A gentleman is a man who never forgets his manners, no matter the situation. No matter how awful, or how difficult the situation.”
    Christopher Nutua had his hand up.
    â€œCan a poor person be a gentleman?” he asked.
    â€œA poor person most certainly can,” said Mr. Watts. He was usually tolerant of our questions, even of our dumbest questions, but this one made him testy. “Money and social standing don’t come into it. We are talking about qualities. And those qualities are easily identified. A gentleman will always do the right thing.”
    We understood what had been revealed, and that it was Mr. Watts’ personal conviction. He glanced around the class. As there were no more questions he resumed reading, and I listened carefully.
    The money meant Pip would get to leave behind everything he’d known—the marshes, his rotten sister, dear old rambling Joe, the blacksmith’s forge—for the big, unknown city of London.
    By now I understood the importance of the forge in the book. The forge was home: it embraced all those things that give a life its shape. For me, it meant the bush tracks, the mountains that stood over us, the sea that sometimes ran away from us; it was the ripe smell of blood I could not get out of my nostrils since I saw Black with its belly ripped open. It was the hot sun. It was the fruits we ate, the fish, the nuts. The noises we heard at night. It was the earthy smell of the makeshift latrines. And the tall trees, which like the sea sometimes looked eager to get away from us. It was the jungle