Till then, sir, I must wish you a very good morning."
Ernest retreated abashed. An hour sufficed him to perform the task
enjoined upon him by Mr. Shaw; and at the end of that hour the "No,
no, no," which still sounded in his cars as he heard it from Towneley,
came ringing up more loudly still from the very pages of the Bible
itself, and in respect of the most important of all the events which
are recorded in it. Surely Ernest's first day's attempt at more
promiscuous visiting, and at carrying out his principles more
thoroughly, had not been unfruitful. But he must go and have a talk
with Pryer. He therefore got his lunch and went to Pryer's lodgings.
Pryer not being at home, he lounged to the British Museum Reading
Room, then recently opened, sent for the "Vestiges of Creation," which
he had never yet seen, and spent the rest of the afternoon in
reading it.
Ernest did not see Pryer on the day of his conversation with Mr.
Shaw, but he did so next morning and found him in a good temper, which
of late he had rarely been. Sometimes, indeed, he had behaved to
Ernest in a way which did not bode well for the harmony with which the
College of Spiritual Pathology would work when it had once been
founded.
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