plumber of the name of Chesterfield; an aged
lady of the name of Gover, blind and bed-ridden, who munched and munched
her feeble old toothless jaws as Ernest spoke or read to her, but who
could do little more; a Mr Brookes, a rag and bottle merchant in
Birdsey's Rents in the last stage of dropsy, and perhaps half a dozen or
so others. What did it all come to, when he did go to see them? The
plumber wanted to be flattered, and liked fooling a gentleman into
wasting his time by scratching his ears for him. Mrs Gover, poor old
woman, wanted money; she was very good and meek, and when Ernest got her
a shilling from Lady Anne Jones's bequest, she said it was "small but
seasonable," and munched and munched in gratitude. Ernest sometimes gave
her a little money himself, but not, as he says now, half what he ought
to have given.

What could he do else that would have been of the smallest use to her?
Nothing indeed; but giving occasional half-crowns to Mrs Gover was not
regenerating the universe, and Ernest wanted nothing short of this. The
world was all out of joint, and instead of feeling it to be a cursed
spite that he was born to set it right, he thought he was just the kind
of person that was wanted for the job, and was eager to set to work, only
he did not exactly know how to begin, for the beginning he had made with
Mr Chesterfield and Mrs Gover did not promise great developments.

Then poor Mr Brookes--he suffered very much, terribly indeed; he was not
in want of money; he wanted to die and couldn't, just as we sometimes
want to go to sleep and cannot. He had been a serious-minded man, and
death frightened him as it must frighten anyone who believes that all his
most secret thoughts will be shortly exposed in public. When I read
Ernest the description of how his father used to visit Mrs Thompson at
Battersby, he coloured and said--"that's just what I used to say to Mr
Brookes." Ernest felt that his visits, so far from comforting Mr
Brookes, made him fear death more and more, but how could he help it?

Even Pryer, who had been curate a couple of years, did not know
personally more than a couple of hundred people in the parish at the
outside, and it was only at the houses of very few of these that he ever
visited, but then Pryer had such a strong objection on principle to house
visitations. What a drop in the sea were those with whom he and Pryer
were brought into direct communication in comparison with those wh