It was this that
resolved him to part once and for all with his parents. If he had been
going abroad he could have kept up relations with them, for they would
have been too far off to interfere with him.
He knew his father and mother would object to being cut; they
would wish to appear kind and forgiving; they would also dislike
having no further power to plague him; but he knew also very well that
so long as he and they ran in harness together they would be always
pulling one way and he another. He wanted to drop the gentleman and go
down into the ranks, beginning on the lowest rung of the ladder, where
no one would know of his disgrace or mind it if he did know; his
father and mother on the other hand would wish him to clutch on to the
fag-end of gentility at a starvation salary and with no prospect of
advancement. Ernest had seen enough in Ashpit Place to know that a
tailor, if he did not drink and attended to his business, could earn
more money than a clerk or a curate, while much less expense by way of
show was required of him. The tailor also had more liberty, and a
better chance of rising. Ernest resolved at once, as he had fallen
so far, to fall still lower- promptly, gracefully, and with the idea
of rising again, rather than cling to the skirts of a respectability
which would permit him to exist on sufferance only, and make him pay
an utterly extortionate price for an article which he could do
better without.
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