as "my poor dear boy's
father," not as "my husband." But to return. I was vexed at Ernest's
having been ordained. I was not ordained myself and I did not like my
friends to be ordained, nor did I like having to be on my best behaviour
and to look as if butter would not melt in my mouth, and all for a boy
whom I remembered when he knew yesterday and to-morrow and Tuesday, but
not a day of the week more--not even Sunday itself--and when he said he
did not like the kitten because it had pins in its toes.

I looked at him and thought of his aunt Alethea, and how fast the money
she had left him was accumulating; and it was all to go to this young
man, who would use it probably in the very last ways with which Miss
Pontifex would have sympathised. I was annoyed. "She always said," I
thought to myself, "that she should make a mess of it, but I did not
think she would have made as great a mess of it as this." Then I thought
that perhaps if his aunt had lived he would not have been like this.

Ernest behaved quite nicely to me and I own that the fault was mine if
the conversation drew towards dangerous subjects. I was the aggressor,
presuming I suppose upon my age and long acquaintance with him, as giving
me a right to make myself unpleasant in a quiet way.

Then he came out, and the exasperating part of it was that up to a
certain point he was so very right. Grant him his premises and his
conclusions were sound enough, nor could I, seeing that he was already
ordained, join issue with him about his premises as I should certainly
have done if I had had a chance of doing so before he had taken orders.
The result was that I had to beat a retreat and went away not in the best
of humours. I believe the truth was that I liked Ernest, and was vexed
at his being a clergyman, and at a clergyman having so much money coming
to him.

I talked a little with Mrs Jupp on my way out. She and I had reckoned
one another up at first sight as being neither of us "very regular church-
goers," and the strings of her tongue had been loosened. She said Ernest
would die. He was much too good for the world and he looked so sad "just
like young Watkins of the 'Crown' over the way who died a month ago, and
his poor dear skin was white as alablaster; least-ways they say he shot
hisself. They took him from the Mortimer, I met them just as I was going
with my Rose to get a pint o' four ale, and she had her arm in splints.
She told her sister