Charles Dickens' Children Stories Part 10

"Now lookee here, the question being whether you're to be let to live--You know what a file is?"

"Yes, sir."

"And you know what wittles is?"

"Yes, sir."

"You get me a file, and you get me wittles--you bring 'em both to me."

All this time he was tilting poor Pip backwards till he was dreadfully frightened and giddy.

"You bring me, to-morrow morning early, that file and them wittles--You do it, and you never dare to say a word or dare to make a sign concerning your having seen such a person as me, or any person sumever, and you shall be let to live." Then he let him go, saying--"You remember what you've undertook, and you get home."

Pip ran home without stopping. Joe was sitting in the chimney corner, and told him Mrs. Joe had been out to look for him, and taken Tickler with her. Tickler was a cane, and Pip was rather depressed by this piece of news.

Mrs. Joe came in almost directly, and after having given Pip a taste of Tickler, she sat down to prepare the tea, and cutting a huge slice of bread and b.u.t.ter, she gave half of it to Joe and half to Pip. Pip managed, after some time, to slip his down the leg of his trousers, and Joe, thinking he had swallowed it, was dreadfully alarmed and begged him not to bolt his food like that. "Pip, old chap, you'll do yourself a mischief,--it'll stick somewhere, you can't have chewed it, Pip. You know, Pip, you and me is always friends, and I'd be the last to tell upon you at any time, but such a--such a most uncommon bolt as that."

[Ill.u.s.tration: PIP AND THE CONVICT.

HALF DEAD WITH COLD AND HUNGER.]

"Been bolting his food, has he?" cried Mrs. Joe.

"You know, old chap," said Joe, "I bolted myself when I was your age--frequent--and as a boy I've been among many bolters; but I never see your bolting equal yet, Pip, and it's a mercy you ain't bolted dead."

Poor Pip pa.s.sed a wretched night, thinking of the dreadful promise he had made, and as soon as it was beginning to get light outside he got up and crept downstairs.

As quickly as he could he took some bread, some cheese, about half a jar of mince-meat he tied up in a handkerchief, with the slice of bread and b.u.t.ter, some brandy from a stone bottle, a meat bone with very little on it, and a pork pie, which he found on an upper shelf. Then he got a file from among Joe's tools, and ran for the marshes.

Pip found the man waiting for him, half dead with cold and hunger, and he ate the food in such a ravenous way that Pip, in spite of his terror, was quite pitiful over him, and said, "I am glad you enjoy it."

"Thankee, my boy, I do."

Pip watched him trying to file the iron off his leg, and then, being afraid of stopping longer away from home, he ran off.

Pip pa.s.sed a wretched morning expecting every moment that the disappearance of the pie would be found out. But Mrs. Joe was too much taken up with preparing the dinner, for they were expecting visitors.

Just at the end of the dinner Pip thought his time had come to be found out, for his sister said graciously to her guests--

"You must taste a most delightful and delicious present I have had. It's a pie, a savory pork pie."

Pip could bear it no longer, and ran for the door, and there ran head foremost into a party of soldiers with their muskets, one of whom held out a pair of handcuffs to him saying--"Here you are, look sharp, come on." But they had not come for him, they only wanted Joe to mend the handcuffs, for they were on the search for two convicts who had escaped and were somewhere hid in the marshes. This turned the attention of Mrs.

Joe from the disappearance of the pie without which she had come back, in great astonishment. When the handcuffs were mended the soldiers went off, accompanied by Joe and one of the visitors, and Joe took Pip and carried him on his back.

Pip whispered, "I hope, Joe, we shan't find them," and Joe answered "I'd give a s.h.i.+lling if they had cut and run, Pip."

But the soldiers soon caught them, and one was Pip's miserable acquaintance, and once when the man looked at Pip, the child shook his head to try and let him know he had said nothing.

But the convict, without looking at anyone, told the Sergeant he wanted to say something to prevent other people being under suspicion, and said he had taken some "wittles" from the blacksmith's. "It was some broken wittles, that's what it was, and a dram of liquor, and a pie."

"Have you happened to miss such an article as a pie, blacksmith?"

enquired the Sergeant.

"My wife did, at the very moment when you came in."

"So," said the convict, looking at Joe, "you're the blacksmith, are you?

Then I'm sorry to say, I've eat your pie."

"G.o.d knows you're welcome to it," said Joe. "We don't know what you have done, but we wouldn't have you starved to death for it, poor miserable fellow creature. Would us, Pip?"

Then the boat came, and the convicts were taken back to prison, and Joe carried Pip home.

Some years after, some mysterious friend sent money for Pip to be educated and brought up as a gentleman, but it was only when Pip was quite grown up that he discovered this mysterious friend was the wretched convict who had frightened him so dreadfully that cold, dark Christmas Eve.