They know what they want and
what is good for them better than I can tell them."
It was hard to deny the soundness of this, and if he had been dependent
only on the 300 pounds a year which he was getting from me I should have
advised him to open his shop again next morning. As it was, I temporised
and raised obstacles, and quieted him from time to time as best I could.
Of course he read Mr Darwin's books as fast as they came out and adopted
evolution as an article of faith. "It seems to me," he said once, "that
I am like one of those caterpillars which, if they have been interrupted
in making their hammock, must begin again from the beginning. So long as
I went back a long way down in the social scale I got on all right, and
should have made money but for Ellen; when I try to take up the work at a
higher stage I fail completely." I do not know whether the analogy holds
good or not, but I am sure Ernest's instinct was right in telling him
that after a heavy fall he had better begin life again at a very low
stage, and as I have just said, I would have let him go back to his shop
if I had not known what I did.
As the time fixed upon by his aunt drew nearer I prepared him more and
more for what was coming, and at last, on his twenty-eighth birthday, I
was able to tell him all and to show him the letter signed by his aunt
upon her death-bed to the effect that I was to hold the money in trust
for him.
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