They know what they want and what is good for them
better than I can tell them."
It was hard to deny the soundness of this, and if he had been
dependent only on the L300 a year which he was getting from me I
should have advised him to open his shop again next morning. As it
was, I temporised and raised obstacles, and quieted him from time to
time as best I could.
Of course he read Mr. Darwin's books as fast as they came out and
adopted evolution as an article of faith. "It seems to me," he said
once, "that I am like one of those caterpillars which, if they have
been interrupted in making their hammock, must begin again from the
beginning. So long as I went back a long way down in the social
scale I got on all right, and should have made money but for Ellen;
when I try to take up the work at a higher stage I fail completely." I
do not know whether the analogy holds good or not, but I am sure
Ernest's instinct was right in telling him that after a heavy fall
he had better begin life again at a very low stage, and as I have just
said, I would have let him go back to his shop if I had not known what
I did.
As the time fixed upon by his aunt drew nearer I prepared him more
and more for what was coming, and at last, on his twenty-eighth
birthday, I was able to tell him all and to show him the letter signed
by his aunt upon her death-bed to the effect that I was to hold the
money in trust for him.
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