e he met another relative
in the person of a pale young gentleman about his own age, but larger,
who promptly lowered his head, butted Pip in the stomach and invited him
to fight. Pip was so sure nobody else's head belonged in the pit of his
stomach that he obliged him at once, and as practice at the forge had
made him tough, it was not many minutes before the pale young gentleman
was lying on his back, looking up at him out of an exceedingly black eye
and with a bleeding countenance.

When Estella let Pip out of the gate that day he guessed that she had
seen the encounter and that somehow it had pleased her, for she gave him
her cheek to kiss. Yet he knew that at heart she thought him only a
coarse, common boy, fit to be treated rudely and insolently. This
thought rankled more and more in him. He made up his mind to study and
learn, and he got faithful little Biddy to teach him all she knew.

Pip saw no more of the pale young gentleman, though for almost a year he
went to Miss Havisham's every other day. Each time he saw Estella and
found himself loving her more and more. But she was always unkind, and
often, when she had been ruder than usual, he saw that Miss Havisham
seemed to take delight in his mortification. Sometimes she would fondle
Estella's hand, and he would hear her say:

"That's right! Break their hearts, my pride and hope! Break their hearts
and have no mercy!"

One day Miss Havisham sent for Joe, the blacksmith, and gave him a bag
of money, telling him that he was not to send Pip to her any more, but
that he should put him to work and teach him the trade of blacksmithing.
So Uncle Pumblechook took Pip to town that very day and had him bound to
Joe as an apprentice.

This was just what Pip had once looked forward to with pleasure. But now
it made him wretched. Through Estella's jeers he had come to feel that
blacksmithing was common and low. As he helped Joe to blow the forge
fire, he thought constantly of Estella's looks of disdain, yet in spite
of all he longed to see her.

On his first half-holiday he went to call on Miss Havisham. But there
was no Estella. Miss Havisham told him she had sent her abroad to be
educated as a lady, and when the miserable tears sprang to Pip's eyes,
she laughed.

When he got home he confided in Biddy. He told her how he loved Estella,
and that he wanted more than anything else in the world to be a
gentleman. Meanwhile he began to study hard in any spare time he had