Mister Pip Read Online Free

couldn’t see past his fat shoulders and big woolly head. So when I heard Mr. Watts speak I thought he was talking about himself. That he was Pip. It was only as he began to walk between our desks that I saw the book in his hand.
    He kept reading and we kept listening. It was some time before he stopped, but when he looked up we sat stunned by the silence. The flow of words had ended. Slowly we stirred back into our bodies and our lives.
    Mr. Watts closed the book and held the paperback up in one hand, like a church minister. We saw him smile from one corner of the room to the other. “That was chapter one of
Great Expectations,
which, incidentally, is the greatest novel by the greatest English writer of the nineteenth century, Charles Dickens.”
    Now we felt silly as bats for thinking we were going to be introduced to someone by the name of Mr. Dickens. Perhaps Mr. Watts had an idea of what was going on in our heads, though. “When you read the work of a great writer,” he told us, “you are making the acquaintance of that person. So you can say you have met Mr. Dickens on the page, so to speak. But you don’t know him yet.”
    One of the younger kids, Mabel, put up her hand to ask a question. At first we thought Mr. Watts hadn’t seen her because he carried on over the top of Mabel’s waving hand. “I welcome questions. I won’t always be able to answer them. Remember that,” he said. “Also, when you raise your hand to ask me something, would you be so kind as to give your name.”
    He nodded in Mabel’s direction. She mustn’t have taken in what Mr. Watts had just said, because she started to ask her question until Mr. Watts stopped her mid-sentence with a raised eyebrow, which, for the first time in twenty-four hours, reminded us of his nickname.
    â€œMabel, Mr. Watts,” she said.
    â€œGood. I’m very pleased to meet you, Mabel. That is a pretty name,” he said.
    Mabel shone. She wriggled in her desk. Then she spoke.
    â€œWhen can we say we know Mr. Dickens?”
    Mr. Watts brought two fingers up to his chin. We watched him think for a moment.
    â€œThat is a very good question, Mabel. In fact, my first response is that you have asked me something to which there is no answer. But I will give it my best shot. Some of you will know Mr. Dickens when we finish the book. The book is fifty-nine chapters long. If I read a chapter a day, that’s fifty-nine days.”
    This was difficult information to bring home. We had met Mr. Dickens but we did not know him yet, and would not know him for another fifty-eight days. It was December 10, 1991. I quickly calculated—we would not know Mr. Dickens until February 6, 1992.
    I N THE TROPICS NIGHT FALLS QUICKLY. There is no lingering memory of the day just been. One moment you can see the dogs looking skinny and mangy. In the next they have turned into black shadows. If you are not ready with candles and kerosene lamps, the quick fall of night is like being put away in a dark cell, from where there is no release until the following dawn.
    During the blockade we could not waste fuel or candles. But as the rebels and redskins went on butchering one another, we had another reason for hiding under the cover of night. Mr. Watts had given us kids another world to spend the night in. We could escape to another place. It didn’t matter that it was Victorian England. We found we could easily get there. It was just the blimmin’ dogs and the blimmin’ roosters that tried to keep us here.
    By the time Mr. Watts reached the end of chapter one I felt like I had been spoken to by this boy Pip. This boy who I couldn’t see to touch but knew by ear. I had found a new friend.
    The surprising thing is where I’d found him—not up a tree or sulking in the shade, or splashing around in one of the hill streams, but in a book. No one had told us kids to look there for a friend. Or that you