Great Expectations

Now, Joe kept a journeyman at weekly wages whose name was Orlick.

He pretended that his Christian name was Dolge,--a clear

Impossibility,--but he was a fellow of that obstinate disposition that I

believe him to have been the prey of no delusion in this particular, but

wilfully to have imposed that name upon the village as an affront to its

understanding. He was a broadshouldered loose-limbed swarthy fellow of

great strength, never in a hurry, and always slouching. He never even

seemed to come to his work on purpose, but would slouch in as if by mere

accident; and when he went to the Jolly Bargemen to eat his dinner, or

went away at night, he would slouch out, like Cain or the Wandering Jew,

as if he had no idea where he was going and no intention of ever

coming back. He lodged at a sluice-keeper's out on the marshes, and on

working-days would come slouching from his hermitage, with his hands in

his pockets and his dinner loosely tied in a bundle round his neck

and dangling on his back. On Sundays he mostly lay all day on the

sluice-gates, or stood against ricks and barns. He always slouched,

locomotively, with his eyes on the ground; and, when accosted or

otherwise required to raise them, he looked up in a half-resentful,

half-puzzled way, as though the only thought he ever had was, that it

was rather an odd and injurious fact that he should never be thinking.

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 'prentice, Orlick

was perhaps confirmed in some suspicion that I should displace him;

howbeit, he liked me still less. Not that he ever said anything, or did

anything, openly importing hostility; I only noticed that he always beat

his sparks in my direction, and that whenever I sang Old Clem, he came

in out of time.

Dolge Orlick was at work and present, next day, when I reminded Joe of

my half-holiday. He said nothing at the moment, for he and Joe had just

got a piece of hot iron between them, and I was at the bellows; but by

and by he said, leaning on his hammer,-"Now, master! Sure you're not a going to favor only one of us. If Young

Pip has a half-holiday, do as much for Old Orlick." I suppose he was

about five-and-twenty, but he usually spoke of himself as an ancient

person.