He wanted Ernest to
return, but he was to return as any respectable, well-regulated
prodigal ought to return -abject, brokenhearted, asking forgiveness
from the tenderest and most long-suffering father in the whole
world. If he should have shoes and stockings and whole clothes at all,
it should be only because absolute rags and tatters had been
graciously dispensed with, whereas here he was swaggering in a grey
ulster and a blue and white necktie, and looking better than
Theobald had ever seen him in his life. It was unprincipled. Was it
for this that he had been generous enough to offer to provide Ernest
with decent clothes in which to come and visit his mother's death-bed?
Could any advantage be meaner than the one which Ernest had taken?
Well, he would not go a penny beyond the eight or nine pounds which he
had promised. It was fortunate he had given a limit. Why, he,
Theobald, had never been able to afford such a portmanteau in his
life. He was still using an old one which his father had turned over
to him when he went up to Cambridge. Besides, he had said clothes, not
a portmanteau.
Ernest saw what was passing through his father's mind, and felt that
he ought to have prepared him in some way for what he now saw; but
he had sent his telegram so immediately on receiving his father's
letter, and had followed it so promptly that it would not have been
easy to do so even if he had thought of it.
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