Page:The way of all flesh (IA wayofallflesh01butl).pdf/173

 a moment suspecting that he might have capacities to the full as high as theirs though of a different kind, and fell in more with those who were reputed of the baser sort, with whom he could at any rate be upon equal terms. Before the end of the half year he had dropped from the estate to which he had been raised during his aunt's stay at Roughborough, and his old dejection, varied, however, with bursts of conceit rivalling those of his mother, resumed its sway over him. "Pontifex," said Dr Skinner, who had fallen upon him in hall one day like a moral landslip, before he had time to escape, "do you never laugh? Do you always look so preternaturally grave?" The doctor had not meant to be unkind, but the boy turned crimson, and escaped.

There was one place only where he was happy, and that was in the old church of St Michael, when his friend the organist was practising. About this time cheap editions of the great oratorios began to appear, and Ernest got them all as soon as they were published; he would sometimes sell a school-book to a second-hand dealer, and buy a number or two of the "Messiah," or the "Creation," or "Elijah," with the proceeds. This was simply cheating his papa and mamma, but Ernest was falling low again—or thought he was—and he wanted the music much, and the Sallust, or whatever it was, little. Sometimes the organist would go home, leaving his keys with Ernest, so that he could play by himself and lock up the organ and the church in time to get back for calling over. At other times, while his friend was playing, he would wander round the church, looking at the monuments and the old stained glass windows, enchanted as regards both ears and eyes, at once. Once the old rector got hold of him as he was watching a new window being put in, which the rector had bought in Germany—the work, it was supposed, of Albert Dürer. He questioned Ernest, and finding that he was fond of music, he said in his old trembling voice (for he was over eighty), "Then you should have known Dr Burney who wrote the history of music. I knew him exceedingly well when I was a young man." That