It may be guessed that Ernest was not the chosen friend of the
more sedate and well-conducted youths then studying at Roughborough.
Some of the less desirable boys used to go to publichouses and drink
more beer than was good for them; Ernest's inner self can hardly
have told him to ally himself to these young gentlemen, but he did
so at an early age, and was sometimes made pitiably sick by an
amount of beer which would have produced no effect upon a stronger
boy. Ernest's inner self must have interposed at this point and told
him that there was not much fun in this, for he dropped the habit
ere it had taken firm hold of him, and never resumed it; but he
contracted another at the disgracefully early age of between
thirteen and fourteen which he did not relinquish, though to the
present day his conscious self keeps dinging it into him that the less
he smokes the better.
And so matters went on till my hero was nearly fourteen years old.
If by that time he was not actually a young blackguard, he belonged to
a debatable class between the sub-reputable and the upper
disreputable, with perhaps rather more leaning to the latter except so
far as vices of meanness were concerned, from which he was fairly
free.
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