she wanted to go to Perry's to get some wool, instead
o' which it was only a stall to get me a pint o' ale, bless her heart;
there's nobody else would do that much for poor old Jupp, and it's a
horrid lie to say she is gay; not but what I like a gay woman, I do: I'd
rather give a gay woman half-a-crown than stand a modest woman a pot o'
beer, but I don't want to go associating with bad girls for all that. So
they took him from the Mortimer; they wouldn't let him go home no more;
and he done it that artful you know. His wife was in the country living
with her mother, and she always spoke respectful o' my Rose. Poor dear,
I hope his soul is in Heaven. Well Sir, would you believe it, there's
that in Mr Pontifex's face which is just like young Watkins; he looks
that worrited and scrunched up at times, but it's never for the same
reason, for he don't know nothing at all, no more than a unborn babe, no
he don't; why there's not a monkey going about London with an Italian
organ grinder but knows more than Mr Pontifex do. He don't know--well I
suppose--"

Here a child came in on an errand from some neighbour and interrupted
her, or I can form no idea where or when she would have ended her
discourse. I seized the opportunity to run away, but not before I had
given her five shillings and made her write down my address, for I was a
little frightened by what she said. I told her if she thought her lodger
grew worse, she was to come and let me know.

Weeks went by and I did not see her again. Having done as much as I had,
I felt absolved from doing more, and let Ernest alone as thinking that he
and I should only bore one another.

He had now been ordained a little over four months, but these months had
not brought happiness or satisfaction with them. He had lived in a
clergyman's house all his life, and might have been expected perhaps to
have known pretty much what being a clergyman was like, and so he did--a
country clergyman; he had formed an ideal, however, as regards what a
town clergyman could do, and was trying in a feeble tentative way to
realise it, but somehow or other it always managed to escape him.

He lived among the poor, but he did not find that he got to know them.
The idea that they would come to him proved to be a mistaken one. He did
indeed visit a few tame pets whom his rector desired him to look after.
There was an old man and his wife who lived next door but one to Ernest
himself; then there was a