" But to return. I was vexed at Ernest's
having been ordained. I was not ordained myself and I did not like my
friends to be ordained, nor did I like having to be on my best behaviour
and to look as if butter would not melt in my mouth, and all for a boy
whom I remembered when he knew yesterday and to-morrow and Tuesday, but
not a day of the week more--not even Sunday itself--and when he said he
did not like the kitten because it had pins in its toes.
I looked at him and thought of his aunt Alethea, and how fast the money
she had left him was accumulating; and it was all to go to this young
man, who would use it probably in the very last ways with which Miss
Pontifex would have sympathised. I was annoyed. "She always said," I
thought to myself, "that she should make a mess of it, but I did not
think she would have made as great a mess of it as this." Then I thought
that perhaps if his aunt had lived he would not have been like this.
Ernest behaved quite nicely to me and I own that the fault was mine if
the conversation drew towards dangerous subjects. I was the aggressor,
presuming I suppose upon my age and long acquaintance with him, as giving
me a right to make myself unpleasant in a quiet way.
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