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V . The Forge Within a week I was bound as Joe’s apprentice at the Town Hall , and Mr Pumblechook told everybody that I owed it all to him . My sister gave a dinner to celebrate the twenty - five guineas , and everyone was cheerful except me . It is a most miserable thing to feel ashamed of home . Once , the forge had seemed to me the glowing road to manhood and independence . Now it was all coarse and common , and I would not have had Miss Havisham and Estella see it for anything . I never told Joe how I felt . I worked hard at the forge , and I believe that I did my work well , but it was not because I loved it . It was because Joe was faithful and good . I was always afraid that one day I would look up and see Estella’s face at the forge window , looking at my black face and hands . Joe had a workman named Orlick . He was a broad - shouldered , dark , slouching fellow who never seemed to hurry . He did not like me , and I did not like him . One day , when I had asked Joe for a half - holiday , Orlick asked for one too , and Joe agreed . My sister heard it and called Orlick a lazy rogue . He called her names in return . My sister screamed until Joe had to fight Orlick , and Joe knocked him down as if he had been a child . That evening I went to see Miss Havisham . Estella was not there . She had gone abroad to be educated for a lady , Miss Havisham said , and she was far out of reach . “ Do you feel that you have lost her ? ” she asked , and laughed in such an unpleasant way that I did not know what to say . When I came home that night , there was a crowd of people round our house . My sister had been attacked in the kitchen . Someone had struck her a terrible blow on the back of the head while she stood at the fire , and she had been found lying on the floor . Beside her lay a convict’s leg iron , which had been filed open . The police came from London and asked many questions , but they never found the person who had done it . I thought about the iron , and I knew that it was not my convict’s . I believed that Orlick had done it , or the stranger with the file . But I could prove nothing , so I said nothing . My sister did not die , but she was never the same again . She could not speak clearly , and she could hardly hear . Her temper was much better , but she could only lie still , or sit in a chair near the fire . One day she drew a strange sign on her slate , like a letter T . We could not understand it , until Biddy said it was a hammer . Then my sister nodded , and it was clear that she wanted to see Orlick . When he came , she seemed very anxious to be friendly to him , which surprised us all .
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