Great Expectations

("Let her alone, will you?" said Joe.) "What did you say?" cried my sister, beginning to scream. "What did you

say? What did that fellow Orlick say to me, Pip? What did he call me,

with my husband standing by? Oh! oh! oh!" Each of these exclamations was

a shriek; and I must remark of my sister, what is equally true of all

the violent women I have ever seen, that passion was no excuse for

her, because it is undeniable that instead of lapsing into passion, she

consciously and deliberately took extraordinary pains to force herself

into it, and became blindly furious by regular stages; "what was the

name he gave me before the base man who swore to defend me? Oh! Hold me!

Oh!"

"Ah-h-h!" growled the journeyman, between his teeth, "I'd hold you, if

you was my wife. I'd hold you under the pump, and choke it out of you."

("I tell you, let her alone," said Joe.) "Oh! To hear him!" cried my sister, with a clap of her hands and a

scream together,--which was her next stage. "To hear the names he's

giving me! That Orlick! In my own house! Me, a married woman! With my

husband standing by! Oh! Oh!" Here my sister, after a fit of clappings

and screamings, beat her hands upon her bosom and upon her knees, and

threw her cap off, and pulled her hair down,--which were the last stages

on her road to frenzy. Being by this time a perfect Fury and a complete

success, she made a dash at the door which I had fortunately locked.

What could the wretched Joe do now, after his disregarded parenthetical

interruptions, but stand up to his journeyman, and ask him what he meant

by interfering betwixt himself and Mrs. Joe; and further whether he was

man enough to come on? Old Orlick felt that the situation admitted of

nothing less than coming on, and was on his defence straightway; so,

without so much as pulling off their singed and burnt aprons, they went

at one another, like two giants. But, if any man in that neighborhood

could stand uplong against Joe, I never saw the man. Orlick, as if he

had been of no more account than the pale young gentleman, was very

soon among the coal-dust, and in no hurry to come out of it. Then Joe

unlocked the door and picked up my sister, who had dropped insensible

at the window (but who had seen the fight first, I think), and who was

carried into the house and laid down, and who was recommended to revive,

and would do nothing but struggle and clench her hands in Joe's hair.

Then, came that singular calm and silence which succeed all uproars; and

then, with the vague sensation which I have always connected with such

a lull,--namely, that it was Sunday, and somebody was dead,--I went up

stairs to dress myself.