These were oases in his desert, but, as a general rule, the boy
looked thin and pale, and as though he had a secret which depressed
him, which no doubt he had, but for which I cannot blame him. He rose,
in spite of himself, higher in the school, but fell ever into deeper
and deeper disgrace with the masters, and did not gain in the
opinion of those boys about whom he was persuaded that they could
assuredly never know what it was to have a secret weighing upon
their minds. This was what Ernest felt so keenly; he did not much care
about the boys who liked him, and idolised some who kept him as far as
possible at a distance, but this is pretty much the case with all boys
everywhere.
At last things reached a crisis, below which they could not very
well go, for at the end of the half year but one after his aunt's
death, Ernest brought back a document in his portmanteau, which
Theobald stigmatised as "infamous and outrageous." I need hardly say I
am alluding to his school bill.
This document was always a source of anxiety to Ernest, for it was
gone into with scrupulous care, and he was a good deal
cross-examined about it. He would sometimes "write in" for articles
necessary for his education, such as a portfolio, or a dictionary, and
sell the same, as I have explained, in order to eke out his
pocket-money, probably to buy either music or tobacco.
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