What wonder, then, that his imagination should
fail to realise the changes that eight years must have worked? He knew
too much against himself, and was too bankrupt in love to be squeamish;
if Ellen had been only what he thought her, and if his prospects had been
in reality no better than he believed they were, I do not know that there
is anything much more imprudent in what Ernest proposed than there is in
half the marriages that take place every day.
There was nothing for it, however, but to make the best of the
inevitable, so I wished my young friend good fortune, and told him he
could have whatever money he wanted to start his shop with, if what he
had in hand was not sufficient. He thanked me, asked me to be kind
enough to let him do all my mending and repairing, and to get him any
other like orders that I could, and left me to my own reflections.
I was even more angry when he was gone than I had been while he was with
me. His frank, boyish face had beamed with a happiness that had rarely
visited it. Except at Cambridge he had hardly known what happiness
meant, and even there his life had been clouded as of a man for whom
wisdom at the greatest of its entrances was quite shut out.
Pages:
518
519
520
521
522
523
524
525
526
527
528
529
530
531
532
533
534
535
536
537
538
539
540
541
542