Pip and Miss Haversham
PIP
My father's family name being Pirrip, and my Christian name Philip, my infant tongue could make of both names nothing more explicit than Pip. So I called myself Pip, and came to be called Pip.
My mother and father both being dead, I was brought up by my sister, Mrs. Joe Gargery, who was more than twenty years older than I, and a veritable shrew by nature. She had acquired a great reputation among the neighbours because she had brought me up by hand. Not understanding this expression, and knowing her to have a hard and heavy hand, and to be much in the habit of laying it upon her husband as well as upon me, I supposed that Joe Gargery and I were both brought up by hand.
Joe, her husband, was a mild, good-natured, sweet-tempered, easy-going, foolish, dear fellow, with light curly hair and blue eyes, and he and I were great chums, as well as fellow-sufferers under the rule of my sharp-tongued sister.
One afternoon I was wandering in the church-yard where my mother and father were buried, when I was accosted by a fearful man all in coarse grey, with a great iron on his leg. He wore no hat and had broken shoes, and an old rag tied round his head. He limped and shivered, and glared and growled, his teeth chattering, as he seized me by the chin.
"O don't cut my throat, sir!" I pleaded in terror. "Pray don't do it, sir!"
"Tell us your name," said the man, "quick!"
"Pip, sir,"