"You know, Ellen," he concluded, "I had learnt as a boy things that I
ought not to have learnt, and had never had a chance of that which would
have set me straight."
"Gentlefolks is always like that," said Ellen musingly.
"I believe you are right, but I am no longer a gentleman, Ellen, and I
don't see why I should be 'like that' any longer, my dear. I want you to
help me to be like something else as soon as possible."
"Lor'! Master Ernest, whatever can you be meaning?"
The pair soon afterwards left the eating-house and walked up Fetter Lane
together.
Ellen had had hard times since she had left Battersby, but they had left
little trace upon her.
Ernest saw only the fresh-looking smiling face, the dimpled cheek, the
clear blue eyes and lovely sphinx-like lips which he had remembered as a
boy. At nineteen she had looked older than she was, now she looked much
younger; indeed she looked hardly older than when Ernest had last seen
her, and it would have taken a man of much greater experience than he
possessed to suspect how completely she had fallen from her first estate.
It never occurred to him that the poor condition of her wardrobe was due
to her passion for ardent spirits, and that first and last she had served
five or six times as much time in gaol as he had.
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