It left Ernest, however, not for the first time,
consciously dissatisfied with Pryer, and inclined to set his friend's
opinion on one side--not openly, but quietly, and without telling Pryer
anything about it.
CHAPTER LVII
He had hardly parted from Pryer before there occurred another incident
which strengthened his discontent. He had fallen, as I have shown, among
a gang of spiritual thieves or coiners, who passed the basest metal upon
him without his finding it out, so childish and inexperienced was he in
the ways of anything but those back eddies of the world, schools and
universities. Among the bad threepenny pieces which had been passed off
upon him, and which he kept for small hourly disbursement, was a remark
that poor people were much nicer than the richer and better educated.
Ernest now said that he always travelled third class not because it was
cheaper, but because the people whom he met in third class carriages were
so much pleasanter and better behaved. As for the young men who attended
Ernest's evening classes, they were pronounced to be more intelligent and
better ordered generally than the average run of Oxford and Cambridge
men.
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