Such
a man was worth taking pains with, and when Towneley one day met Ernest
in the street, and Ernest tried to avoid him, Towneley would not have it,
but with his usual quick good nature read his thoughts, caught him,
morally speaking, by the scruff of his neck, and turned him laughingly
inside out, telling him he would have no such nonsense.
Towneley was just as much Ernest's idol now as he had ever been, and
Ernest, who was very easily touched, felt more gratefully and warmly than
ever towards him, but there was an unconscious something which was
stronger than Towneley, and made my hero determine to break with him more
determinedly perhaps than with any other living person; he thanked him in
a low hurried voice and pressed his hand, while tears came into his eyes
in spite of all his efforts to repress them. "If we meet again," he
said, "do not look at me, but if hereafter you hear of me writing things
you do not like, think of me as charitably as you can," and so they
parted.
"Towneley is a good fellow," said I, gravely, "and you should not have
cut him."
"Towneley," he answered, "is not only a good fellow, but he is without
exception the very best man I ever saw in my life--except," he paid me
the compliment of saying, "yourself; Towneley is my notion of everything
which I should most like to be--but there is no real solidarity between
us.
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