"Like them!" said I, "I think they're horrid."
"Oh, that's the kindest thing of all you have done for me," he
exclaimed. "I thought all- all middle-aged people liked my father
and mother."
He had been about to call me old, but I was only fifty-seven, and
was not going to have this, so I made a face when I saw him
hesitating, which drove him into "middle-aged."
"If you like it," said I, "I will say all your family are horrid
except yourself and your Aunt Alethea. The greater part of every
family is always odious; if there are one or two good ones in a very
large family, it is as much as can be expected."
"Thank you," he replied, gratefully, "I think I can now stand almost
anything. I will come to see you as soon as I come out of gaol.
Good-bye." For the warder had told us that the time allowed for our
interview was at an end.
CHAPTER LXVII
AS soon as Ernest found that he had no money to look to upon leaving
prison he saw that his dreams about emigrating and farming must come
to an end, for he knew that he was incapable of working at the
plough or with the axe for long together himself. And now it seemed he
should have no money to pay anyone else for doing so.
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