"If we meet again he said, "do not look at me, but if
hereafter you hear of me writing things you do not like, think of me
as charitably as you can," and so they parted.
"Towneley is a good fellow," said I, gravely, "and you should not
have cut him."
"Towneley," he answered, "is not only a good fellow, but he is
without exception the very best man I ever saw in my life- except," he
paid me the compliment of saying, "yourself; Towneley is my notion
of everything which I should most like to be- but there is no real
solidarity between us. I should be in perpetual fear of losing his
good opinion if I said things he did not like, and I mean to say a
great many things," he continued more merrily, "which Towneley will
not like."
A man, as I have said already, can give up father and mother for
Christ's sake tolerably easily for the most part, but it is not so
easy to give up people like Towneley.
CHAPTER LXXXI
SO he fell away from all old friends except myself and three or four
old intimates of my own, who were as sure to take to him as he to
them, and who like myself enjoyed getting hold of a young fresh
mind. Ernest attended to the keeping of my account books whenever
there was anything which could possibly be attended to, which there
seldom was, and spent the greater part of the rest of his time in
adding to the many notes and tentative essays which had already
accumulated in his portfolios.
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