The Way of All Flesh
changed. Mrs Jupp asked if he was still going on writing more books now that this one was done. "Of course I am," he answered, "I'm always writing books; here is the manuscript of my next;" and he showed her a heap of paper.
"Well now," she exclaimed, "dear, dear me, and is that manuscript? I've often heard talk about manuscripts, but I never thought I should live to see some myself. Well! well! So that is really manuscript?"
There were a few geraniums in the window and they did not look well. Ernest asked Mrs Jupp if she understood flowers. "I understand the language of flowers," she said, with one of her most bewitching leers, and on this we sent her off till she should choose to honour us with another visit, which she knows she is privileged from time to time to do, for Ernest likes her.
CHAPTER LXXXVI
And now I must bring my story to a close.
The preceding chapter was written soon after the events it records—that is to say in the spring of 1867. By that time my story had been written up to this point; but it has been altered here and there from time to time occasionally. It is now the autumn of 1882, and if I am to say more I should do so quickly, for I am eighty years old and though well in health cannot conceal from myself that I am no longer young. Ernest himself is forty-seven, though he hardly looks it.
He is richer than ever, for he has never married and his London and North-Western shares have nearly doubled themselves. Through sheer inability to spend his income he has been obliged to hoard in self-defence. He still lives in the Temple in the same rooms I took for him when he gave up his shop, for no one has been able to induce him to take a house. His house, he says, is wherever there is a good hotel. When he is in town he likes to work and to be quiet. When out of
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