The Way of All Flesh
likely to help; we find nothing comparable to the Jesuits. Pryer is a thorough gentleman, and an admirable man of business—no less observant of the things of this world, in fact, than of the things above; by a brilliant coup he has retrieved, or nearly so, a rather serious loss which threatened to delay indefinitely the execution of our great scheme. He and I daily gather fresh principles. I believe great things are before me, and am strong in the hope of being able by and by to effect much.
"As for you I bid you God speed. Be bold but logical, speculative but cautious, daringly courageous, but properly circumspect withal," etc., etc.
I think this may do for the present.
CHAPTER LV
I had called on Ernest as a matter of course when he first came to London, but had not seen him. I had been out when he returned my call, so that he had been in town for some weeks before I actually saw him, which I did not very long after he had taken possession of his new rooms. I liked his face, but except for the common bond of music, in respect of which our tastes were singularly alike, I should hardly have known how to get on with him. To do him justice he did not air any of his schemes to me until I had drawn him out concerning them. I, to borrow the words of Ernest's landlady, Mrs Jupp, "am not a very regular church-goer"—I discovered upon cross-examination that Mrs Jupp had been to church once when she was churched for her son Tom some five and twenty years since, but never either before or afterwards; not even, I fear, to be married, for though she called herself "Mrs" she wore no wedding ring, and spoke of the person who should have been Mr Jupp 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
251
