The pipes had better be kept in a cupboard for a week or two,
till in other and easier respects Ernest should have proved his
steadfastness. Then they might steal out again little by little- and
so they did.
Ernest now wrote home a letter couched in a vein different from
his ordinary ones. His letters were usually all common form and
padding, for as I have already explained, if he wrote about anything
that really interested him, his mother always wanted to know more
and more about it- every fresh answer being as the lopping off of a
hydra's head and giving birth to half-a-dozen or more new questions-
but in the end it came invariably to the same result, namely, that
he ought to have done something else, or ought not to go on doing as
he proposed. Now, however, there was a new departure, and for the
thousandth time he concluded that he was about to take a course of
which his father and mother would approve, and in which they would
be interested, so at last he and they might get on more
sympathetically than heretofore. He therefore wrote a gushing,
impulsive letter, which afforded much amusement to myself as I read
it, but which is too long for reproduction.
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