Towneley took this for what it was worth and nodded assent, whereon
Ernest imprudently went further and said "Don't you like poor people very
much yourself?"
Towneley gave his face a comical but good-natured screw, and said
quietly, but slowly and decidedly, "No, no, no," and escaped.
It was all over with Ernest from that moment. As usual he did not know
it, but he had entered none the less upon another reaction. Towneley had
just taken Ernest's threepenny-bit into his hands, looked at it and
returned it to him as a bad one. Why did he see in a moment that it was
a bad one now, though he had been unable to see it when he had taken it
from Pryer? Of course some poor people were very nice, and always would
be so, but as though scales had fallen suddenly from his eyes he saw that
no one was nicer for being poor, and that between the upper and lower
classes there was a gulf which amounted practically to an impassable
barrier.
That evening he reflected a good deal. If Towneley was right, and Ernest
felt that the "No" had applied not to the remark about poor people only,
but to the whole scheme and scope of his own recently adopted ideas, he
and Pryer must surely be on a wrong track.
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