It was Christina who did this. Theobald
let them come, because Christina in a quiet, persistent way insisted on
it; when they did come he behaved, as I have said, civilly, but he did
not like it, whereas Christina did like it very much; she would have had
half Roughborough and half Cambridge to come and stay at Battersby if she
could have managed it, and if it would not have cost so much money: she
liked their coming, so that she might make a new acquaintance, and she
liked tearing them to pieces and flinging the bits over Ernest as soon as
she had had enough of them.
The worst of it was that she had so often proved to be right. Boys and
young men are violent in their affections, but they are seldom very
constant; it is not till they get older that they really know the kind of
friend they want; in their earlier essays young men are simply learning
to judge character. Ernest had been no exception to the general rule.
His swans had one after the other proved to be more or less geese even in
his own estimation, and he was beginning almost to think that his mother
was a better judge of character than he was; but I think it may be
assumed with some certainty that if Ernest had brought her a real young
swan she would have declared it to be the ugliest and worst goose of all
that she had yet seen.
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