Pryer, too, was popular
in the pulpit, and, take him all round, it was probable that many worse
curates would be found for one better. When Pryer called on my hero, as
soon as the two were alone together, he eyed him all over with a quick
penetrating glance and seemed not dissatisfied with the result--for I
must say here that Ernest had improved in personal appearance under the
more genial treatment he had received at Cambridge. Pryer, in fact,
approved of him sufficiently to treat him civilly, and Ernest was
immediately won by anyone who did this. It was not long before he
discovered that the High Church party, and even Rome itself, had more to
say for themselves than he had thought. This was his first snipe-like
change of flight.
Pryer introduced him to several of his friends. They were all of them
young clergymen, belonging as I have said to the highest of the High
Church school, but Ernest was surprised to find how much they resembled
other people when among themselves. This was a shock to him; it was ere
long a still greater one to find that certain thoughts which he had
warred against as fatal to his soul, and which he had imagined he should
lose once for all on ordination, were still as troublesome to him as they
had been; he also saw plainly enough that the young gentlemen who formed
the circle of Pryer's friends were in much the same unhappy predicament
as himself.
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