He did not know he was doing anything strange. He
only knew that he had no money, and must provide for himself, a
wife, and a possible family. More than this, he wanted to have some
leisure in an evening, so that he might read and write and keep up his
music. If anyone would show him how he could do better than he was
doing, he should be much obliged to them, but to himself it seemed
that he was doing sufficiently well; for at the end of the first
week the pair found they had made a clear profit of L3. In a few weeks
this had increased to L4, and by the New Year they had made a profit
of L5 in one week.
Ernest had by this time been married some two months, for he had
stuck to his original plan of marrying Ellen on the first day he could
legally do so. This date was a little delayed by the change of abode
from Laystall Street to Blackfriars, but on the first day that it
could be done it was done. He had never had more than L250 a year,
even in the times of his affluence, so that a profit of L5 a week,
if it could be maintained steadily, would place him where he had
been as far as income went, and, though he should have to feed two
mouths instead of one, yet his expenses in other ways were so much
curtailed by his changed social position, that, take it all round, his
income was practically what it had been a twelvemonth before.
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