This morose journeyman had no liking for me. When I was very small and timid, he gave me to understand that the Devil lived in a black corner of the forge, and that he knew the fiend very well: also that it was necessary to make up the fire, once in seven years, with a live boy, and that I might consider myself fuel. When I became Joe’s apprentice, Orlick … liked me still less.
I became aware of my sister—lying without sense or movement on the bare boards where she had been knocked down by a tremendous blow on the back of the head, dealt by some unknown hand…
The constables, and the Bow Street men from London … were about the house for a week or two, and did pretty much what I heard and read of like authorities doing in other such cases. They took up several obviously wrong people, and they rang their heads very hard against wrong ideas, instead of trying to extract ideas from the circumstances.
It may have been about a month after my sister’s reappearance in the kitchen, when Biddy came to us with a small speckled box containing the whole of her worldly effects, and became a blessing to the household.
Previous section Chapters 11–13 Next section Chapters 17–19

Popular pages: Great Expectations

Take a Study Break