I gather this partly from what Ernest has told me, and partly
from his school bills which I remember Theobald showed me with much
complaining. There was an institution at Roughborough called the
monthly merit money; the maximum sum which a boy of Ernest's age could
get was four shillings and sixpence; several boys got four shillings
and few less than sixpence, but Ernest never got more than
half-a-crown and seldom more than eighteen pence; his average would, I
should think, be about one and nine pence, which was just too much for
him to rank among the downright bad boys, but too little to put him
among the good ones.
CHAPTER XXXII
I MUST now return to Miss Alethea Pontifex, of whom I have said
perhaps too little hitherto, considering how great her influence
upon my hero's destiny proved to be.
On the death of her father, which happened when she was about
thirty-two years old, she parted company with her sisters, between
whom and herself there had been little sympathy, and came up to
London. She was determined, so she said, to make the rest of her
life as happy as she could, and she had clearer ideas about the best
way of setting to work to do this than women, or indeed men, generally
have.
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