nk," said Ernest to Mr Rollings, "if he wants to marry Alice when
he gets older he had better do so, and he shall have as many barges as he
likes. In the meantime, Mr Rollings, say in what way money can be of use
to you, and whatever you can make useful is at your disposal."

I need hardly say that Ernest made matters easy for this good couple; one
stipulation, however, he insisted on, namely, there was to be no more
smuggling, and that the young people were to be kept out of this; for a
little bird had told Ernest that smuggling in a quiet way was one of the
resources of the Rollings family. Mr Rollings was not sorry to assent to
this, and I believe it is now many years since the coastguard people have
suspected any of the Rollings family as offenders against the revenue
law.

"Why should I take them from where they are," said Ernest to me in the
train as we went home, "to send them to schools where they will not be
one half so happy, and where their illegitimacy will very likely be a
worry to them? Georgie wants to be a bargeman, let him begin as one, the
sooner the better; he may as well begin with this as with anything else;
then if he shows developments I can be on the look-out to encourage them
and make things easy for him; while if he shows no desire to go ahead,
what on earth is the good of trying to shove him forward?"

Ernest, I believe, went on with a homily upon education generally, and
upon the way in which young people should go through the embryonic stages
with their money as much as with their limbs, beginning life in a much
lower social position than that in which their parents were, and a lot
more, which he has since published; but I was getting on in years, and
the walk and the bracing air had made me sleepy, so ere we had got past
Greenhithe Station on our return journey I had sunk into a refreshing
sleep.

CHAPTER LXXXV

Ernest being about two and thirty years old and having had his fling for
the last three or four years, now settled down in London, and began to
write steadily. Up to this time he had given abundant promise, but had
produced nothing, nor indeed did he come before the public for another
three or four years yet.

He lived as I have said very quietly, seeing hardly anyone but myself,
and the three or four old friends with whom I had been intimate for
years. Ernest and we formed our little set, and outside of this my
godson was hardly known at all.

His main expense