st prove their want by
taking some little trouble, and the trouble required of them was that
they should come and seek him, Ernest, out; there he was in the midst of
them ready to teach; if people did not choose to come to him it was no
fault of his.

"My great business here," he writes again to Dawson, "is to observe. I
am not doing much in parish work beyond my share of the daily services. I
have a man's Bible Class, and a boy's Bible Class, and a good many young
men and boys to whom I give instruction one way or another; then there
are the Sunday School children, with whom I fill my room on a Sunday
evening as full as it will hold, and let them sing hymns and chants. They
like this. I do a great deal of reading--chiefly of books which Pryer
and I think most 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