Page:The way of all flesh (IA wayofallflesh01butl).pdf/309

 "Then," said he, "I will not take the £100 from my father, and I will never see him or my mother again."

I said: "Take the £100, Ernest, and as much more as you can get, and then do not see them again if you do not like."

This Ernest would not do. If he took money from them, he could not cut them, and he wanted to cut them. I thought my godson would get on a great deal better if he would only have the firmness to do as he proposed, as regards breaking completely with his father and mother, and said so. "Then don't you like them?" said he, with a look of surprise.

"Like them!" said I, "I think they're horrid."

"Oh, that's the kindest thing of all you have done for me," he exclaimed, "I thought all—all middle-aged people liked my father and mother."

He had been about to call me old, but I was only fifty-seven, and was not going to have this, so I made a face when I saw him hesitating, which drove him into "middle-aged."

"If you like it," said I, "I will say all your family are horrid except yourself and your aunt Alethea. The greater part of every family is always odious; if there are one or two good ones in a very large family, it is as much as can be expected."

"Thank you," he replied, gratefully, "I think I can now stand almost anything. I will come and see you as soon as I come out of gaol. Goodbye." For the warder had told us that the time allowed for our interview was at an end.

soon as Ernest found that he had no money to look to upon leaving prison he saw that his dreams about emigrating and farming must come to an end, for he knew that he was incapable of working at the plough or with the axe for long