it
would be made up to him in other ways.

These reflections satisfied Ernest that on the whole he had better smoke,
so he sneaked to his portmanteau and brought out his pipes and tobacco
again. There should be moderation he felt in all things, even in virtue;
so for that night he smoked immoderately. It was a pity, however, that
he had bragged to Dawson about giving up smoking. The pipes had better
be kept in a cupboard for a week or two, till in other and easier
respects Ernest should have proved his steadfastness. Then they might
steal out again little by little--and so they did.

Ernest now wrote home a letter couched in a vein different from his
ordinary ones. His letters were usually all common form and padding, for
as I have already explained, if he wrote about anything that really
interested him, his mother always wanted to know more and more about
it--every fresh answer being as the lopping off of a hydra's head and
giving birth to half a dozen or more new questions--but in the end it
came invariably to the same result, namely, that he ought to have done
something else, or ought not to go on doing as he proposed. Now,
however, there was a new departure, and for the thousandth time he
concluded that he was about to take a course of which his father and
mother would approve, and in which they would be interested, so that at
last he and they might get on more sympathetically than heretofore. He
therefore wrote a gushing impulsive letter, which afforded much amusement
to myself as I read it, but which is too long for reproduction. One
passage ran: "I am now going towards Christ; the greater number of my
college friends are, I fear, going away from Him; we must pray for them
that they may find the peace that is in Christ even as I have myself
found it." Ernest covered his face with his hands for shame as he read
this extract from the bundle of letters he had put into my hands--they
had been returned to him by his father on his mother's death, his mother
having carefully preserved them.

"Shall I cut it out?" said I, "I will if you like."

"Certainly not," he answered, "and if good-natured friends have kept more
records of my follies, pick out any plums that may amuse the reader, and
let him have his laugh over them." But fancy what effect a letter like
this--so unled up to--must have produced at Battersby! Even Christina
refrained from ecstasy over her son's having discovered the power of
Christ's wor