I should be in perpetual fear of losing his good opinion if I said
things he did not like, and I mean to say a great many things," he
continued more merrily, "which Towneley will not like."
A man, as I have said already, can give up father and mother for Christ's
sake tolerably easily for the most part, but it is not so easy to give up
people like Towneley.
CHAPTER LXXXI
So he fell away from all old friends except myself and three or four old
intimates of my own, who were as sure to take to him as he to them, and
who like myself enjoyed getting hold of a young fresh mind. Ernest
attended to the keeping of my account books whenever there was anything
which could possibly be attended to, which there seldom was, and spent
the greater part of the rest of his time in adding to the many notes and
tentative essays which had already accumulated in his portfolios. Anyone
who was used to writing could see at a glance that literature was his
natural development, and I was pleased at seeing him settle down to it so
spontaneously. I was less pleased, however, to observe that he would
still occupy himself with none but the most serious, I had almost said
solemn, subjects, just as he never cared about any but the most serious
kind of music.
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