Never see a wretched little heavy-eyed mite
sitting on the edge of a chair against your study wall without saying to
yourselves, "perhaps this boy is he who, if I am not careful, will one
day tell the world what manner of man I was." If even two or three
schoolmasters learn this lesson and remember it, the preceding chapters
will not have been written in vain.
CHAPTER XXIX
Soon after his father and mother had left him Ernest dropped asleep over
a book which Mrs Jay had given him, and he did not awake till dusk. Then
he sat down on a stool in front of the fire, which showed pleasantly in
the late January twilight, and began to muse. He felt weak, feeble, ill
at ease and unable to see his way out of the innumerable troubles that
were before him. Perhaps, he said to himself, he might even die, but
this, far from being an end of his troubles, would prove the beginning of
new ones; for at the best he would only go to Grandpapa Pontifex and
Grandmamma Allaby, and though they would perhaps be more easy to get on
with than Papa and Mamma, yet they were undoubtedly not so really good,
and were more worldly; moreover they were grown-up people--especially
Grandpapa Pontifex, who so far as he could understand had been very much
grown-up, and he did not know why, but there was always something that
kept him from loving any grown-up people very much--except one or two of
the servants, who had indeed been as nice as anything that he could
imagine.
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