When Ernest had a living of 600 or 700 pounds a year with a house, and
not too many parishioners--why, he might add to his income by taking
pupils, or even keeping a school, and then, say at thirty, he might
marry. It was not easy for Theobald to hit on any much more sensible
plan. He could not get Ernest into business, for he had no business
connections--besides he did not know what business meant; he had no
interest, again, at the Bar; medicine was a profession which subjected
its students to ordeals and temptations which these fond parents shrank
from on behalf of their boy; he would be thrown among companions and
familiarised with details which might sully him, and though he might
stand, it was "only too possible" that he would fall. Besides,
ordination was the road which Theobald knew and understood, and indeed
the only road about which he knew anything at all, so not unnaturally it
was the one he chose for Ernest.
The foregoing had been instilled into my hero from earliest boyhood, much
as it had been instilled into Theobald himself, and with the same
result--the conviction, namely, that he was certainly to be a clergyman,
but that it was a long way off yet, and he supposed it was all right.
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