of a fortnight, the lost 500 pounds had been
recovered, and three or four hundred pounds had been cleared into the
bargain. All the feverish anxiety of that miserable six weeks, when the
500 pounds was being lost, was now being repaid with interest. Ernest
wanted to sell and make sure of the profit, but Pryer would not hear of
it; they would go ever so much higher yet, and he showed Ernest an
article in some newspaper which proved that what he said was reasonable,
and they did go up a little--but only a very little, for then they went
down, down, and Ernest saw first his clear profit of three or four
hundred pounds go, and then the 500 pounds loss, which he thought he had
recovered, slipped away by falls of a half and one at a time, and then he
lost 200 pounds more. Then a newspaper said that these shares were the
greatest rubbish that had ever been imposed upon the English public, and
Ernest could stand it no longer, so he sold out, again this time against
Pryer's advice, so that when they went up, as they shortly did, Pryer
scored off Ernest a second time.

Ernest was not used to vicissitudes of this kind, and they made him so
anxious that his health was affected. It was arranged therefore that he
had better know nothing of what was being done. Pryer was a much better
man of business than he was, and would see to it all. This relieved
Ernest of a good deal of trouble, and was better after all for the
investments themselves; for, as Pryer justly said, a man must not have a
faint heart if he hopes to succeed in buying and selling upon the Stock
Exchange, and seeing Ernest nervous made Pryer nervous too--at least, he
said it did. So the money drifted more and more into Pryer's hands. As
for Pryer himself, he had nothing but his curacy and a small allowance
from his father.

Some of Ernest's old friends got an inkling from his letters of what he
was doing, and did their utmost to dissuade him, but he was as infatuated
as a young lover of two and twenty. Finding that these friends
disapproved, he dropped away from them, and they, being bored with his
egotism and high-flown ideas, were not sorry to let him do so. Of
course, he said nothing about his speculations--indeed, he hardly knew
that anything done in so good a cause could be called speculation. At
Battersby, when his father urged him to look out for a next presentation,
and even brought one or two promising ones under his notice, he made
objections and ex