It was this that resolved him
to part once and for all with his parents. If he had been going abroad
he could have kept up relations with them, for they would have been too
far off to interfere with him.
He knew his father and mother would object to being cut; they would wish
to appear kind and forgiving; they would also dislike having no further
power to plague him; but he knew also very well that so long as he and
they ran in harness together they would be always pulling one way and he
another. He wanted to drop the gentleman and go down into the ranks,
beginning on the lowest rung of the ladder, where no one would know of
his disgrace or mind it if he did know; his father and mother on the
other hand would wish him to clutch on to the fag-end of gentility at a
starvation salary and with no prospect of advancement. Ernest had seen
enough in Ashpit Place to know that a tailor, if he did not drink and
attended to his business, could earn more money than a clerk or a curate,
while much less expense by way of show was required of him. The tailor
also had more liberty, and a better chance of rising. Ernest resolved at
once, as he had fallen so far, to fall still lower--promptly, gracefully
and with the idea of rising again, rather than cling to the skirts of a
respectability which would permit him to exist on sufferance only, and
make him pay an utterly extortionate price for an article which he could
do better without.
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