"
Ernest winced again.
"You never brought down Figgins when you were at Roughborough; now I
should have thought Figgins would have been just the kind of boy whom you
might have asked to come and see us."
Figgins had been gone through times out of number already. Ernest had
hardly known him, and Figgins, being nearly three years older than
Ernest, had left long before he did. Besides he had not been a nice boy,
and had made himself unpleasant to Ernest in many ways.
"Now," continued his mother, "there's Towneley. I have heard you speak
of Towneley as having rowed with you in a boat at Cambridge. I wish, my
dear, you would cultivate your acquaintance with Towneley, and ask him to
pay us a visit. The name has an aristocratic sound, and I think I have
heard you say he is an eldest son."
Ernest flushed at the sound of Towneley's name.
What had really happened in respect of Ernest's friends was briefly this.
His mother liked to get hold of the names of the boys and especially of
any who were at all intimate with her son; the more she heard, the more
she wanted to know; there was no gorging her to satiety; she was like a
ravenous young cuckoo being fed upon a grass plot by a water wag-tail,
she would swallow all that Ernest could bring her, and yet be as hungry
as before.
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